First Day of Observation

I got the opportunity to observe Wednesday in the elementary school. The class I am observing is 3rd grade. I was there from 12:30 to 2:30. They were just wrapping up their unit on Charlotte's Web, so I walked into a very chaotic room. My teacher's first words after I introduced myself were, "You're here on an awful day." (I had emailed her with the dates and times that I would be there - and she had approved them) I asked her where I should position myself in the room to avoid being in the way. Her response, "We are using it all, so just find a place." Needless to say, this was a slightly intimidating beginning to my observation. However, she found me a spot to sit and things got significantly better from there.

The first order of business for me was to identify the different, obvious signs of technology in the classroom. There is a Smartboard at the front of the room. It is mounted over the top of an existing whiteboard that runs most of the length of the room. The teacher makes use of the 1 1/2 ft of exposed whiteboard on the left by posting the homework for the day there. There are two computer stations in the room with two computers at each station. The projector and computer (laptop) for the Smartboard are located on a table that is butted up against a grouping of student desks.

The setup of things (location of projector and laptop) are not necessarily ideal, but I don't see any other options. This placement seemed beneficial at first (minus the fact that the equipment is in such a precarious location), because it puts the teacher in the middle of the students. However, as the afternoon progressed, I realized that the teacher's back was facing half the class and those students did not appear to be nearly as focused on the lesson as their counterparts that the teacher was able to see.

As the teacher was working with the class, she was able to have three students who had been absent working on a brochure that the class had just turned in that afternoon. I thought this was very helpful, because she was able to insure that they were indeed progressing on their project at the same time that she was moving forward with the remainder of the students. She displayed on the Smartboard a document that she wanted the students to work on after her explanation. She was able to walk them through the different sections and make a modifications to her expectations as she used the Smartboard to make sure all were following her directions. Then she sent the modified document to the laser printer in the room and, in less than two minutes, the class was busy at work. I observed my teacher patiently working with a couple of the students at the computers. It was obvious that one of them did not have much experience working with inserting and editing pictures in a document. I was impressed with the way that she instructed him from time to time, while moving about the room answering questions that the others had regarding the assignment they were doing.

After the class finished and discussed their assignment (character descriptions), she moved on to handwriting. As you may remember, third grade is the wonderful time in education when we all learn how to write in cursive. The teacher was able to use the Smartboard for this activity. She pulled up a document that had three letters: lowercase 'c', lowercase 'a', and lowercase 'd'. Across the top of the board these letters and the lines that they were to be traced on were very large. The letters looked like a dot-to-dot project. Most of us have seen this kind of thing on a much smaller scale (and much more low tech). In my opinion, the size of these initial teaching tools made things much easier for the teacher to demonstrate and for the students to visual the different steps necessary in the formation of these letters. She had handed out handwriting paper for each of them to practice at their desk. On the Smartboard, there were additional handwriting lines (about 1/2 the size of the dot-to-dot version) for the teacher to "practice" as well. She wrote a half dozen of examples and then went back and showed the students the ones that she thought were her best. This encouraged them to do the same. As I walked around the room, I noticed that the majority of the students had circled at least one of their attempts and deemed it their best.

Though my time on this day seemed very short, it felt very fruitful. I can see myself using the handwriting activity in my own classroom. I wondered if it would be good to have the students come to the Smartboard to attempt their letters, but I came to the conclusion that that would probably not be beneficial when they are just learning the technique. Writing on a flat surface and writing on a vertical surface feel very different and it might actually be confusing for a beginner. Overall, I realize that the Smartboard can be used for many more things than I observed today, but it was exciting to see it in action nonetheless!