Observation #2

Today was a bit more atypical, compared to our previous visits in Ms. K's classroom. The morning began with an announced fire drill, so TP and I left with the rest of the elementary school students and and walked outiside into the cold. It was a little unusual that the details of the firedrill were announced ahead of time, so that students were lined up at the door before the alarm went off. To me, this misses the point. In the event of a real fire, students would not be lined up neatly at the door, with coats on ready to exit in an organized fashion.

Once the fire drill was over and class began, the students worked on their "soil scrolls". They colored a picture of each layer of soil (top soil, subsoil, and bedrock) and then wrote a summary of each using their textbooks. They then cut the pictures and the summary out and glued them on four sheets of brown construction paper. They also had animals and objects to cut out and glue on the proper layer of soil. Finally, all the papers were stapled to form a scroll. This took the entire 45 minutes. It seemed as though the topic of soil had been covered extensively before hand (based on our previous observation and the children's knowledge), and this was almost a "filler" activity. Ms. K. actually apologized to TP and I for the lesson being so boring. However, even though it was the closest to "busy work" we had seen, the kids seemed to enjoy it and gain knowledge on the topic. And Ms. K explained, "It's impossible to plan a fun, interactive, novel lesson for everyday." It was probably my least favorite of the lessons we have observed, but I understood Ms. K's point.

After the kids went to specials, TP and I discussed our preassessment for our unit on Explorers with Ms. K. We had originially had a constructed response format, where students would have to write in the answer. However, she suggested that we change it to multiple choice, because if the kids had no clue they could guess and perhaps be less discouraged. While we certainly did not want the students to be discouraged by our pretest, TP and I did not feel that we would be able to make inferences that were as accurrate with a MC test, since guesses would tell us nothing of the students knowledge. However, because this is the typical format for all preassessments in her class, and Ms. K specifically requested that we change the format, we decided to go ahead and make the change.