Patricia Curtis

Classroom Observation and Evaluation

I observed Mrs. Loveless fourth grade classroom at Lay Elementary in

Barbourville, Ky. This particular day, her class was learning about acrostic

poems. When the class got in, she started off with the learning objective for

the day. On the board was an I Can statement: I can write an acrostic poem

about myself. As the class got situated she told me they had been working

on a poetry unit and showed me some of the poetry her class had been

working on. When the students were in their seats and ready to go, Mrs.

Loveless picked a student to read the learning objective to the class. Then,

she reviewed some of the other styles of poetry they had been working on.

Once she got a pre-assessment of where the students were at with this unit,

she introduced the new acrostic poem concept. She showed the students

examples of these poems and picked certain students to read them out loud.

This class had been studying American government in their social studies

class, so Mrs. Loveless tied their composition lesson into that. She told the

students to practice this new concept with the word, America. She gave the

students about fifteen minutes to finish this small assignment. Once

everyone was done, she went around the room and had everyone share their

poems. This was a good formative assessment during the lesson to check

and make sure the students were grasping the idea of acrostic poems.
 After everyone shared, she assigned another poem. On their own sheet

of paper, she had students come up with an acrostic for their names. Each

letter of their name was going to start a sentence describing them. She gave

the students longer to complete this one because they were whole sentences

rather than individual words like the America poem. When the students

were done they were to come up to Mrs. Loveless desk and get it approved

by her. Some students got their approved on the first try and others were

sent back to their desk to edit. If their poem was approved, they were given

a colorful sheet of paper to copy the poem onto and make it very neat and

pretty. Then, they drew things they enjoy around the poem. This took the rest

of the class time, but it was a good summative assessment for the day. Mrs.

Loveless told me they were going to display the poems outside of the

classroom for everyone to see, then they would go in with the rest of the

poems her students had completed.

I found Mrs. Loveless teaching strategies and assessments highly

effective. The class quickly got the concept down and she reinforced their

learning with plenty of examples. Her assessments were fun and the

students stayed engaged throughout the entire class period. This was a very

good class for me to observe and I learned quite a bit from this teacher in my

short amount of time there.