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Christina Harrigan

Best Practices and Observation Notes


Dr. Gail Watson
Teaching In America

On October 13th and 15th, I started my observations for a second grade class at the Marie
V. Duffy elementary school in Wharton. When I first entered the classroom, only the teacher,
Mrs. Andrea, was there while the kids were finishing up their gym class. Mrs. Andrea welcomed
me into the classroom and briefed me about what would be going on in class that day. She then
showed me where to sit, and said I could take a look around the room. I immediately noticed the
color of the room; a cool blue. There were many fun, colorful decorations on the wall, including
the students work, vocabulary words and math terms. I also noticed the students desks which
were all placed into groups of five. The classroom also had a white board with the SmartBoard
on top of it. As I walked around the room, I came across many posters with classroom rules and
no bullying signs. One specific poster I remember is the one where each child had a handprint
where they wrote down a rule that each of them will follow in the school year. The bell rang after
I observed the room, and I heard the students lined up by the door to enter the classroom. When
they began to enter the classroom, their eyes immediately went straight to me. It was clear that
they realized there was a stranger in the room. Mrs. Andrea then had me introduce myself to the
second graders, in which they reacted positively. The first lesson the kids were learning was how
to do two problems in one question. For example they were learning problems like 6+2, then
subtract 1. The children clearly understood this concept. Mrs. Andrea then used the SmartBoard
for a program that allowed the children to solve an interactive problem. When they had a realistic
example (such as "The gardener has six roses and three tulips. Then the boy takes four flowers
all together. How many are left?"), they really understood what to do. After they used a practice
worksheet, they went to their large, oval reading carpet and had free time reading. After this
period of around 20 minutes, they packed up their backpacks and waited for the bell to ring.

On my second day of observations, I came in after their lunch time. Mrs. Andrea
encountered some chattiness among her students in the hallway and had them flip their cards on
the behavior chart. The way this works is that she has a chart with every child's name. There are
four colored cards in each slot: blue (good behavior), green (first warning), yellow (second
warning and timeout), and red (parents are called). I love this idea of the behavior chart and I feel
like I will incorporate this idea for my own classroom in the future. After she reprimanded the
students who were disruptive, she reintroduced the math idea from the previous observation day,
and went over the homework that she assigned. After this, they began their social studies lesson.
She split them up into groups of five and sent them off to observe different objects such as maps,
clocks, globes and books. Their goal was to create questions that people would ask about each
object. Afterwards, they met on the reading carpet and discussed the questions that they created.
Towards the end of the day, I was fortunate enough to take part in a fire drill. It was a great
learning experience to be a part of this drill and to fall the teacher and lead the class outside
safely. At the end of the day, the children went to their cubbies and grabbed their belongings.
Many of them came over by me and were friendly, curious and very polite. They waved goodbye
on their way out and then Mrs. Andrea lead them to the school entrance to be picked up by their
parents. When she came back, I thanked her for allowing me to visit her classroom, and shared
with her some of the things I really enjoyed in her classroom.
Overall, this observation was a great learning experience for me. It was great to see a
teacher in their normal, everyday setting. I learned many skills from Mrs. Andrea, especially
when it comes to guiding, disciplining, praising and correcting students at a young age. Though
Mrs. Andrea was on the stricter side, the students had a clear sign of respect and admiration for

her. All in all, as observation was enjoyable, and I look forward to the ones I may have in the
future.

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