Observation of Instructional Lesson

Classroom: Language Arts Observer: Jennifer Gulin

Grade: 3
rd
grade Date: 10/20/2014
Curriculum Area: Reading Time: 8:45am
What I Notice/ thoughts, questions, connections to methods classes.
In this lesson instruction the teacher first gathers all students in the carpet. The transition from
their desks to the carpet allowed some of the students to start conversation with each other so the
teacher used 1 2 3 all eyes on me to get all the students ready for her instruction. Students were
ready with their journals and their sticky notes in hand. The teacher started with her focus and
review as she reflected back to what the students had been learning the prior days before about
characters. They had gone from describing characters physically to making connections with
characters and sketching them. Then she introduced todays topic which was character feelings. She
explained what feelings where and asked students if they remember how they were feeling this
morning before they went to school. She gave examples of feelings and students read along and
clarified some words they might not know the meaning of like uneasy. The teacher demonstrated
how to gather ideas of others feelings by doing a read out loud of the book they had been reading
that week. She read the first few pages which had a lot of character feelings. She first would pause
and demonstrate what clues she used to jot down on her sticky note how she thought the character
was feeling, after much demonstration she proceeded to reading but this time she would pause and
ask students how they felt the character might have been feeling during that time. Students used
words like happy and good and the teacher encouraged them to look at the feelings chart and
try to use another word besides those. Students stayed intrigued throughout the lesson plan
because the teacher was pausing very often and allowing students to speak and voice their
opinions. She had a pencil box with all the students names, so rather than calling any student she
wanted she would chose a name from the pencil box. This seemed like a fair choice. Of course
however when she felt like she was losing the attention of a student she would call on that student
next just to get that students attention back. During her instruction it was very clear that she doing
every step in the indirect lesson plan. She did the teacher input then moved on to guided practice
by allowing students to write down what they thought the character was feeling on their sticky
notes and then moved on to independent work. Students were asking to go back to their seats and
independently read the next chapter. She handed out a few sticky notes and asked the students to
reflect at least on 3 of the characters and write down their feelings in that particular moment. She
maintained good classroom management throughout the whole lesson plan and created a positive
environment that encouraged students to want to learn.
Observation of Instructional Lesson
Reflection:
I really enjoyed observing this lesson because I loved how Mrs.Yates easily connected and
transitioned into each aspect of the instruction and how she used the mat as a incentive to
go learn at when students behaved good. I really liked her use of the easel to get the kid's
attention by asking questions about the reading. Before going into the lesson she gave a lot
of examples of characters feelings she even made students make a connection with
themselves when she asked them how they felt about something. She was very kid friendly
yet true to her word when she gave students a warning. I saw how easily she connected
each activity with some relevance and then skillfully switched over to writers workshop,
which made me want to be able to do this in my future classroom.