Field Blog-St. Joseph School Visit 1

For my observations, I had the opportunity to return to my grade school, St. Joseph School in Avon Lake, Ohio.  I got to observe my second grade teacher Miss Bader.  She now teaches third grade.  The desks in the classroom were set up in groups of two facing the front where the teacher’s desk was located.  This allowed the students to work together while keeping the main focus on the front of the room.  There were also many posters and drawings done by the students throughout the classroom making it feel very welcoming and cheery.  There was a carpet in the classroom with a rocking chair where the children were able to gather together for story time.  The day started with announcements followed by the pledge of allegiance and a decade of the rosary.  Once the announcements were completed, the students worked on there Simple Solutions math problems by themselves.  When everyone had completed their problems, they went over them together as a class.  They then continued their math lesson where they were learning about multiplication.  While Miss Bader was teaching, she gave the students opportunities to participate and answer questions.  Once she had finished teaching the lesson, she asked the students to work on some problems alone.  I then had the opportunity to participate and help check their answers when they had completed the problems.  They then worked on more problems by themselves and checked them as a class.  After the math lesson was finished, the students got to switch seats.  Rather than picking everyone’s new seats, the teacher gave the children the chance to pick their own seats.  She only had to rearrange a few students.  When the switching of seats was completed, they wrote their weekly spelling words in their planners.  They then got to practice their words by playing Sparkle.  The students then went to computer class.  After computer class, the students came back and started their reading lesson.  For this lesson, the kids were able to come together on the carpet and change up how they were learning.  They started the reading lesson by talking about the vocabulary words for the story.  Together they listened as Miss Bader read the story aloud to them.  While she was reading, she would stop and explain different things to the students that were happening in the story.