Classroom Observation Paper

Observation: I observed a writing and reading activity for an hour in Ms. Pohlmann’s fifth grade classroom at Providence Elementary School. At 10:00 am, Ms. Pohlmann asked her students to get out their writing journals to complete a writing prompt about what they would do if they were a teacher for a day. The teacher explained to her students that they must have an introduction, a body paragraph, and a conclusion in their writing prompts. After the teacher has finished looking through their drafts, she asked her students to get out another sheet of paper to complete their final drafts. Their writing prompts were timed for 25 minutes. At 10:30 am, the students were asked to participate in a brief interview on a book they were reading outside of the classroom. The teacher called up five students and asked a series of questions such as, “What page or chapter are you at?” “What is the book about so far?” “How are you liking the book so far?” “Is the book easy or difficult to understand?” “Have you made any connections to the characters or events in the book?” Each of the five students explained to their teacher that the books they were reading was very easy to them, and they have either made connections to …show more content…
I saw a few students talking to each other for more than a few minutes rather than focusing on the writing activity. By the time the activity was over, there was only one student that did not start their draft, so he was not able to participate in book interview activity afterwards. I believe the reason why some of the students were not engaged was either because it was timed or the topic they had to write about was not interesting to them because they do not know what to write about. The teacher did not help the student on his writing prompt. However, she kept reminding him that he needed to finish his draft, otherwise he will not be able to participate in other reading