Observation Day

Mrs. Bruce is a fabulous teacher. She was so enthusiastic and was able to be effective with class time without it feeling like it was regimented or militant in a boring way. She was very funny and had the kids actively involved to keep their attention and encourage deep processing in their learning. She had classroom management methods that promoted fun and positivity such as saying "How are you guys so awesome?" to which the students all replied "It's naaatural." I observed her class for only an hour and during that time I saw journal writing, book reports, new vocabulary practiced, fluency reading, and one other activity having to do with phonetics. Two activities I observed particularly stood out. One was when she read a paragraph about natural disasters but she did it twice with different background music each time. One sounded sad and the other intense and almost angry. She read it with dramatic intonations and used this to demonstrate how fluency is a combination of correct pronunciation and flow. My second favorite activity was when she had the students pick actions to help them remember their vocabulary. One of the words was "collapse" and they all fell to the floor (including her!) which was very funny.

When I have my first lesson with the kids next week, we agreed it would be great for us to do a "get to know you" name game at first. After that I am leaning towards utilizing song to address one of their math learning targets having to do with multiplications. Another fun topic would be helping them memorize the rain cycle to integrate music into a science learning target they have right now.