STUDENT TEACHER OBSERVATION REPORT -- EDUCATION 345

Name: Emily Veenstra

Date: 9/17/15

Cooperating Teacher: Lois Harvey

Observation #: 3

Subject: Writing

Time: Recorded

College Supervisor: J. Genzink

Grade Level: 4/5

LESSON PREPARATION
Main focus & objectives: (appropriate & connected to standards)
Well written clear and measurable; they are also linked appropriately to standards.
Fully developed plan: Looks great I see the expectations included.
Accessibility of lesson content: (ability, learning styles/intelligences, culture, community characteristics)
Youve thought about how you can bring your varied learners into the content and also included a
strategy for keeping students focused/self-regulated.
Integrates faith/worldview: Continue to look for ways that you can authentically integrate your own
faith. This is such a privilege; try to capitalize on it!
Effective use of instructional materials including technology: (variety; materials organized and ready)
Whiteboard, writing journals
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
Content (See Planning and Preparation section for addl comments):
You had thought carefully about how to transition from your Olympic intro into the actual lesson. Well
done!
I wonder if some of your students need the writing time broken down.
Conduct (Strategies for whole class attention, non-attending behaviors.):
Verbal and non-verbal redirections used.
Countdown to zero.
Covenant (Evidence of relationships with students? Positive reinforcement used?)

Ratings//Comments

Content managed effectively

Maintained conduct management

2 3 depending on part of lesson. They did

very well during the first writing block.

Behavioral expectations were clear

and concise

For free write yes. I couldnt tell if you

had stated expectations prior to your grand
opening.

Communicated clearly

Students treated with care and

respect

Lesson Pace/Flow

LESSON IMPLEMENTATION:
Motivation/Set Induction Vocabulary Review: (connects to prior knowledge, real life application, preassessment)
They were very quiet at the opening. Had you reviewed the expectations?

Very dramatic beginning with the Olympic ceremony.

How funny! When you said you believe that they each had it in them to be excellent.writers you got a few
sighs. We know that this can be a difficult task for some of our students. Youre encouraging them and making
it very interesting though!
Love it. You called them up to receive their medal (their writing journal).
Management: Before calling them up, I would have made a statement describing how they should do this. A
medal winner isnt goofy and talking. As a representative of their country, they see this as a great honor and will
accept their award with dignity, ..
Good, Adrian first came up with lots of noise and fanfare and you immediately sent him back to try again.
Appropriate!
Fantastic opening! They are definitely excitedcan you calm them?
5, 4, 31 Good, this worked to settle them down and then you waited until it was quiet.
Im still seeing students walk around and am hearing blurting. Did you start with stated expectations before the
video started? Nowell sort ofright before this we were having silent reading time. I had asked them all to
clear their desks so they could listen without distractions. Two girls brought their binders back up. I paused so
they would put them back down. They did, but then when I continued reading, they put them up to form a wall
and they were playing with their pencils behind it. I told them again to put them down. As soon as they did they
started passing their pencil under the table as if I wouldnt see. SO, much to the class dismay (who were all
listening intently, I just stopped reading the read aloud, and proceeded to talk about how listening the first time
was so important.

Good use of voice volume. You drop your volume and they also drop volume b/c they are trying to hear you.
Good use of wait time. They realize that you are waiting for them. Perfect time to remind them of expectations. I
know it feels funny to have to say it, but they (I) need to hear you state explicitly what type of behavior youre
looking for.

Lesson Development: (use of examples, varied questioning, active involvement of students, checks for
understanding, adaptations to instruction, appropriate practice activities.)
What is fiction? Students gave examples and you reminded one of them to raise his hand when he has a
good idea.
Can you embed your expectation into your question: Quietly raise your hand if you can think of an
example of realistic fiction.
Use of non-verbal the teacher look. Good to see you responding to off task behavior.
You modeled the process:
Small moment
Were not writing yet. Pencils should be down. --OK, here is a clear expectation. The target is
visible to them.
Good idea to model for them. Some of our students will know how to do this, but now youve given an
explicit example for those who may not.
Linked to Charlottes Web nice youre helping them to connect this idea to something else they may
know.
Students begin to work:
You did it! You reviewed the expectations for Free Write. Great! Lets see how they do.
You recapped what they should do start with a moment of high emotion and then do some bullet point
ideas of what your story could be about.
I wonder if it would be helpful to give some time frames for the students. For those who are
overwhelmed with the idea of writing this can be helpful. Lets take 10 minutes to . Then regather
and give the next direction.
Hey, they are really quiet they are meeting your expectations!!! Praise them for this. Wow you are
all doing such a great job of being writers.
Good movement through the classroom while they are doing their free write. Hopefully this allows for
some formative assessment AND I also think that it keeps students on task.
Closure: (review, wrap up.):

Some comments related to their stamina.

Directions for returning journals.
Good you also made a comment about noise level. No need to talk good!
Assessment: (strategies match objectives, strategies reflect student needs, results used for future
instruction....)
So what did you find? Did most of them get started? Any students who seemed to struggle? Most of
them did get started right away. Some of them really surprised and impressed me (like Raeden, the one
who is constantly getting up to do something, wrote an entire page for his story with lots of emotion,
then a bulleted list on the next! So exciting to see. Others came up with lots of different stories of
emotion, and bulleted lists after that. The table at the front really struggled with coming up with ideas.
Mrs. Harvey worked with the front table as well. The three of them basically all said they didnt have
any strong emotions. (Mrs. Harvey told me later that after she had listed lots of different emotions,
Charese came up with guilty on her own and went into a whole story about how she felt so guilty!)

Comments:
Engaging lesson opening

4 Love it!

Engaging and appropriate content

Logical progression of learning

activities

Strategies supported objectives

Provided meaningful authentic

practice

PRESENTATION CHARACTERISTICS: Doing fine in this area!

SUMMARY:
+: Opening: Love it! So much more exciting for them than you telling them what they are going to
do today in class. Age appropriate too.

+: Expectations before free write: You reviewed them quite quickly and they seemed to follow them.
For the most part, they were successful in meeting them. This tells me that they can do it when they
know what youre looking for. I encourage you to keep working on stating the expectations.
Things to think about:
Am I stating the expectations, making clear to my students, what Im looking for related to their
engagement?
Did all of my students make progress in their writing? Do I need to provide any supports? What
might these be?
Binder check: I will hope to review your binder when Im there next week. Hopefully it will be full of
your lesson plans. (Or, if you save them on your computer, you can show me that.) I have them all on
my computer. I find it much more convenient, but, I was going to print them off for your visit. Do I have
to or can I just leave them on my computer?
Assignment Follow Up/Questions: Well talk next week when Im in town!
STUDENT TEACHER REFLECTIONS: In addition to responding to the questions throughout the report,
please respond to the prompts below.
Whats one thing about this lesson of which you are very proud?
I was very excited about how much the students wrote, and how they basically got right to work on
writing when they were told! Overall, I think they came up with some good story seeds.
I am also very excited to be helping Lois get more into the Lucy Calkins writers workshop curriculum.
I know that from my personal experience with doing it in middle school, the writing really does
improve and becomes less cumbersome (at least for me and many of my classmates!)
Whats one thing you might do differently if you were to teach this lesson again?
I think I would have a board with the writing material we go through, kind of like the CAFE board we
do, so that as students begin more writing, they can refer back to that board. For this lesson, I would
have the lesson take-away (authors find seeds of stories in the small moments) prewritten on a sheet of
paper, so that they can see it as a reference point.