Observation

Classroom: Brandi Elmore

Grade: 3rd
Curriculum Area: Science
Observer: Delaney Brigman
Date: March 1, 2017
Time: 1:30pm

What I noticed:
My teacher tries her best to have science in her classroom every single day. She
prioritizes science over social studies and writing workshop even but she still does not have a
lot of time to dedicate to science. In the science lesson that I observed, my teacher taught the
standard 4.E.1.1. To start the lesson, the teacher had the students sit in the area of the carpet
and projected a few questions up on the smartboard. A couple of the questions that were on the
Smartboard were How did you create day and night? and If you put your wet sneakers in the
sunlight to dry, an hour later they are in the shade. How do you know what happened? These
were questions that were review from a day or so before this day. The teacher had the students
turn and talk to a partner about the questions being asked. She gave the students about 2
minutes to talk to one another about the questions. As the students were talking, the teacher
brought over the globe. A day or two before this lesson, the teacher had labeled North Carolina
and Thailand on the globe with sticky note tabs. The teacher had taught the students a day or
two before this lesson why we have day and night. After she gave the students a minute to
discuss the questions with one another, she facilitated a discussion with the whole class. The
teacher called on various students to explain what kind of experiment they did to learn about
day and night. The students used vocabulary words in their answers, such as axis and rotates.
She also had the students explain their predictions that they came up with on how they know
that the sneakers would not be in the sun after an hour later. The students were able to explain
that the sneakers would not be in the sun anymore because the Earth rotated on its axis and
that side of the Earth moved away from the sun. The teacher then talked about how when we
have day time with the sun showing in the United States that her friend who lives in Thailand is
having night time where there is no sun showing and vice versa.
Thoughts, Questions, Connections to Methods Classes:
Overall, I thought this lesson was a good recap lesson. The teacher did not do hands on
activities in this lesson but it was more of a review from the previous days than teaching
something new. A connection that I made to my science class was that science is pushed out
and if it is taught, there is very little time to teach it. The only reason that my teacher was able to
teach science was because she cut out her writing workshop and social studies time with the
students. I am not really sure why the teacher taught a fourth grade standard to a third grade
class but the students seemed to really love enjoying about space and the universe. One of the
things about this lesson that I enjoyed was the question about if there was a pair of sneakers
placed in the sun and then one hour later they were not in the sun anymore. I thought it was
good to pose a question where the students had to think critically and use prior knowledge.