Latest Visit

I went this past Thursday to observe again, and when I got there my teacher told me that his daughter was having a baby and that he had to leave half way through the class. I talked briefly with my teacher about what they would be covering and then observed an hour and a half of class. For the first half of the class, he went over questions from the homework and covered some new material about polygons and labeling them. He has a promethium board in his classroom that he always uses, and any time he covers new material he leaves blanks that he has the students complete. It is interesting to see that he will ask for someone to go write the answer and usually more than one person gets up from their seat to go write on the board. His students love it and know how to use it very well. I think it is a good thing to have in the classroom and hope to be able to have one or at least to get my students to get up and move (like we talk about in class) and to engage them in this way. Mr. Delaney is very good at this, and his students are usually well behaved and attentive.
Half way through the class, he left and Mr. Mac, whom I observed for homeroom the first day, came in the classroom. Before when I observed him, Mr. Mac never once asked the students to stop talking while hew as talking. He didn't seem to actively engage the students at all. This time, the students were working on a worksheet of word problems that they were allowed to complete together. I walked around the classroom and would answer questions when students asked them. I helped the students break down the problems and look at them piece by piece so that they were easier to understand. I even got to look at some students' work and help them correct it. Mr. Mac walked around and helped some, but he sat in a desk for a while too. There were several students who were talking across the classroom and not doing their work, but he never asked them to stay on task. I would try to ask specific students to help us with a problem, but that didn't really work. I felt frustrated because I don't really have any authority, so I couldn't really say anything to the class about their behavior. Finally, when there were two minutes left in class, Mr. Mac told the students that their teacher doesn't like the noise level to be very high and that they were exceed it. That's all he said to them. I can surely say that I am learning of teaching and classroom management methods that are not the most effective. So, it actually is helpful to observe other teachers and take note of what does and doesn't work.