Middle School Field Observation

During my field experience I got to observe a 4th grade classroom at Mason Intermediate School and an 8th grade class at Fairfield Middle School. Being able to observe this classrooms was good because I was able to see the differences between the grade levels and also the difference between a schools in an upper middle class community verses a school in a more urban setting. The way that the two classrooms approached things were different and this allowed me to figure out some of the things I would want to incorporate in my own classroom and what I want to avoid doing in the classroom. The students at Mason seemed to me very interested in reading and many of the student I interviewed said reading was their favorite subject in school. The system that Mason Intermediate School uses to track reading and asses comprehension is a programs called AR reading. AR reading has a point system based on the difficulty of the book. The more difficult the reading level, the higher the points. At the beginning of the 9 week quarter, my host teacher Mrs. Nagel, created a goal for each student for the number of points that student should earn by the end of the semester.
Mrs. Nagel took each students individual reading skills into consideration and created the …show more content…
“There is evidence that a teacher’s view on what reading is affect student’s perceptions of reading and their long-term interest in it, too” (Miller, 2009, p. 108). Teacher have a strong impact on students. If a teacher views reading a certain way then chances are the student will then begin to view reading that way. That is why it is so important that we have a positive view and encourage our students wither we are efferent readers or aesthetic readers. If a teacher does not value reading and just thinks that only 15 minutes of reading a day is good enough than this view will rub off on the