Today we dropped in during Language Centers time (our usual time to visit as it falls nicely during 488/502/501 class time and Ana and I are crazy-busy the rest of the week). We got to meet and chat with Mrs. Dixon's student teacher. She seems pretty cool. Her placement is definitely different than ours as she's only spending around 2.5-3 months in the classroom... not the whole semester. Much like Dixon, she was incredibly accommodating of our requests for class time to teach our unit and it seemed like she was pretty excited to have us come in and help out. Overall, I'd say she appeared very comfortable in the classroom and pretty much knew what she was doing... I hope someone can say the same about me when it's my turn to be in her shoes this fall...
As far as the observation went, Ana and I really didn't do very much watching. We talked with Dixon about our lesson ideas and she gave us all sorts of goodies from her filing cabinets that should help us as we go to teach an assess. She was also in the process of giving a Summative assessment for their previous lesson and it was really interesting to talk to her about how she does that kind of evaluation. Basically, she gives the same worksheet/quiz as a pre- and post-assessment. I'm not sure if that's exactly the best idea for our unit (patriotism) as it is a fairly abstract idea and there are many aspects of our KUDs that can't necessarily be assessed in a 5 minute worksheet/quiz format. Perhaps after giving the Pre-Assessment next week we'll have a better idea about what would work best for a Summative assessment.
The ironic moment for me during today's observation was when the classroom management side of things got a little rocky. With Mrs. Dixon, Mrs. Kidd (student teacher), Ms. Chicatelli (reading specialist), Ana and myself all in the classroom you'd think that there would have been enough teacher/adult-figures in the room to keep the atmosphere fairly subdued. Such was not the case. Mrs. Kidd at one point had to take her attention away from the reading group she was working with and raise her voice in order to avoid some serious behavior situations. I guess that just goes to show that having authority present isn't always enough to keep kids on task, sometimes you have to assert that authority.
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It is good you are getting active in the classroom from the get go. It is also a good reminder that constant oversight is needed to avoid disciplinary problems regardless of how many adults are in the classroom.
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