Observation Of Mrs. Walker's Classroom

For this assignment, I observed Mrs. Walker, a 2nd grade teacher in Media Elementary. Mrs. Walker has been teaching for over 20 years and runs her classroom very well. This observation was conducted during my reading practicum during the spring semester and reflects her classroom of students during the 2015-2016 school year, during the morning block that was allotted for morning meeting, reading, writing, phonics, and the first block of math. Her class consisted of 26 students of many different backgrounds. There were students in her class that had IEP’s, 504’s, behavior support plans, and pullout services. Many of her students came from wealthy families, but there were some that came from very low SES backgrounds. Mrs. Walker used many instructional methods in her classroom to assist students’ needs. For morning meeting, whole group instruction was used to ensure that everyone was included and based off of what the activity was for the day, smaller groups or individualized instruction may be used. Teacher led discussion is what typical started reading, writing, phonics, and math, and then afterwards the …show more content…
Walker uses a variety of discipline practices in her classroom. While the student’s are unpacking in the morning, she will often pull students aside to have one-on-one conferences about behavior. There are a few students in the class that have personalized self-regulatory strategies that Mrs. Walker goes over with them at the end of the day. She tends to discipline students based off of what happened and not use a universal strategy. There are some set transitions in the classroom, but many of them are just the use of verbal directions that the students follow. The transitions do not typically take the students longer than a few minutes, but when the classes switch for phonics it can take longer. Many students go to a new classroom for phonics and are placed with different peers, which can make them rowdier and harder for them to settle back into