Observation: The Importance Of Structure In The Classroom

1) While at my observation this past week I learned three valuable lessons. The first lesson that I learned was the importance of structure in a classroom. The teacher for a U.S. history class had planned out a lesson that was both interesting and out of the ordinary. However, with this lesson plan the structure of the class had to be changed. Typically the class was structured with the same type of hook every class period. This hook was what the teacher calls “fun facts”, which are interesting facts that the students have to guess the answer to. The students are typically on the edge of their feet shouting out possible answers, so class participation is very high in the early stages and each student is literally on the edge of their seat shouting out answers like a machine gun going off. This class period consisted of the students taking a virtual tour of Washington D.C. and it was going to take a good amount of class time, so the teacher had to rush into the scope of her lesson plan immediately. Right as she did this, three students raised their hands and said, “Mrs. ********, no fun facts today?” It was as if each of the students in the class had lost their puppy, as they all stared at Mrs.******* with an inquisitive look. What I then observed for the next forty minutes was a class of students that seemed lethargic and uninterested in the material. It was as if the …show more content…
I have heard of the encyclopedia, but I have never actually seen it and I was unaware that the encyclopedia had an online website. After my observation at Bangor High School, I decided to look more closely to Britannica and I was pleasantly surprised how well the encyclopedia was set up. Britannica has some similarities to Wikipedia, but it seems to be better set up and more reliable. I have always used Wikipedia with my research papers and such, but I now believe that I will start using Britannica