Field Visit #2

This is the schedule for Ms. C's 2nd grade classroom:

8:30-8:50
- Morning work and "Do Now" with reading and math as the focus

8:50-9:50
- Content (Social Studies and Science)

9:50-10:50
- READ (with TA)

10:50-11:20
-Recess

11:20-11:45
- Lunch

11:50-12:50
- READ

12:50-1:50
- Specials

1:50-2:50
- Math (with TA)

2:50-3:00
- Dismissal


From our observation today, it was actually hard to really decipher maximizing time for instruction and eliminating distraction because they were doing an activity with the entire 2nd grade. They were asked to line up and go to the cafeteria where Mrs. B would teach them about "scientific observation". We could see the initial routine that Ms. C had implemented for when the children come in. They know that they are to come into class, look at the board to see what their morning task is, and they are to perform the task. It is well understood that Ms. C should only be asked questions after they have inquired the information from their peers. If their peers don't seem to know, then they know it is alright to ask Ms. C. This is a good way to eliminate distractions if Ms. C is talking to another student or if she is just trying to get supplies together for the rest of the day. In addition, there are different tasks to perform and different ways to perform them, so the children are all around the room and that eliminates any distractions from one another. Once they all finished the task and the attendance people brought the attendance to the office, Ms. C gave the students a 2 minute warning to probe them to start cleaning up and warning them that they were going to walk over to the cafeteria for a special lesson. By the time she counted down from 20 seconds, all of the children were lined up at the door. Her warnings provided the children time to start putting their things away so they could promptly move to the next activity.

After entering the cafeteria, Mrs. B had asked for all of the students attention. Once all of the 2nd grade classrooms had entered the room, she started to explain what they would be working on and certain rules they would need to follow during the activity. Once they were all seated and listening, she began to explain what they would be doing. However, it was hard to record exactly how long because part of her hook included another teacher walking in and interrupting the lesson. Mrs. B was planning on teaching them about "scientific observation" and the importance of it. She began the lesson by telling them they weren't supposed to be in the cafeteria. To all of our surprises, another teacher walked into the cafeteria yelling at Mrs. B saying that she needed the space and then stormed out. Some of the children were definitely confused but then Mrs. B had said that she asked for that teacher to come in and she wanted the children to write down as many things as they could about the characteristics of the woman's physical appearance. From here, she continued with the explanation on the importance of scientific observation. The interruption itself was only about 45 seconds but she had them quickly write down observations which took an additional 5 minutes. So in total, including her initial explanation, the interruption, the observation, and a continued explanation, it was about 15 minutes. After they discussed their observations, she had continued with another 5 minutes to give explicit instructions about the task they were about to perform. There were pieces of candy on the table and they were to pick a piece of candy, write down information on the piece of candy using their senses (with a strong emphasis on NOT using their tasting sense). They were to write down what it looked like, any colors, if the wrapper made a certain noise, what the wrapper looked like, etc. They were then to pass their journal to the right. Once they had all received a new journal, they were to read their new journal and guess what piece of candy that person was describing. There were a lot of directions that were incorporated in this lesson, so as you could assume, with a bunch of 2nd graders, there were a lot of hands being raised. One way she eliminated some of the distractions from hundreds of questions was that she had asked them not to raise their hands until she had completely explained everything. In addition, they were not allowed to perform any of the tasks as she said them. They had to listen to the whole set of directions before they could start their observation. In addition, also helping to reduce distractions, the teachers of each of the classes, in addition to Lauren and I, were walking around to answer any individual questions the students had. By the time they were done with the lesson, it was a full hour. It was good to be involved in helping them to perform the tasks and making sure they were following directions but it was harder for us to really get an accurate count of the time that was going by. Again, I don't think this was a great gauge for me to really understand the time management as it was described in Weinstein so I'm going to focus on this in my next visit and blog about any changes I might have seen.