This past month I have had the opportunity to observe Mrs. Hartzell's fourth grade science class at Southside Middle School. It has been a wonderful time to observe this class. I really enjoyed getting to see Mrs. Hartzell's teaching methods that I haven't before in the classroom. I have never considered teaching Middle School before mainly because I have always wanted to be elementary, but after this observation I had to re-think what I wanted to do.
Mrs. Hartzell did an amazing job showing her teaching skills in the classroom. The first two times that I observed she involved fun things within her lesson, so the kids didn't get bored. I thought that this was a great way to get her students back involved in the lesson. She made it a point to have her students engaged. She involved digital read-aloud, which I have never seen a teacher do. I thought this was a good use of technology, considering I am writing this as an Education Technology student. I also thought this was a change of pace for the students. Most of the time students around this age either read to themselves or the teacher reading some of it and having the students read the rest. This read-aloud showed the picture of the book as if it were a movie, the students seemed to like this as well.
My greatest takeaway from these two observations was Mrs.Hartzell was having a good classroom layout. While this isn't directly from her teaching skills, it has something to do with her classroom management. Having a good classroom layout is a direct reflection of how you manage the classroom. Mrs. Hartzell had what I would call a group seating layout with six different tables with 4 chairs. This is a great example of group seating, because it works really well for this age group, for group work and group discussions. When the students had a test they had privacy folders so none of the students could cheat.
In conclusion, I had a great time observing Mrs. Hartzell's fourth grade science class. She had amazing resources in her classroom, that worked really well for her students. The classroom environment was decorated as the beach, which the students seemed to love. I may not want to teach middle school, but this observation definitely widened my views on teaching.
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