WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY TL330 1

Sarah Shurm

Classroom Observation (for your Final Integrated Social Justice Lesson Plan)
To help prepare you for your group Final Integrated Social Justice Lesson Plan, please engage in
a targeted observation of the classroom, and engage in discussions with your teacher around the
following areas. Remember, these are things for you to consider so that you can ensure, to the
best of your ability, that your lesson plan is culturally responsive and accessible to all of the
students in your classroom. Some of these questions can be answered via your observations, but
many will require some discussions with your teacher. Please remember, each individual in
your group needs to submit a classroom observation sheet on Blackboard.
1. What is the general layout of the classroom and resources available for you to use
for your lesson and stations? Whiteboard, projector, laptop, document camera,
smartboard, Chromebooks, etc.? What supplies do the children generally have in
their desks that they can use?

The layout of this classroom is unlike any I have seen before. Due to the oversized
classrooms and lack of enough classrooms to accommodate the number of students in the
pullman school district, Ms. Singh’s classroom is in a resource room, attached to a full
sized kindergarten classroom. This class spends most of their time combined with the
next door class because the space they were given is simply not large enough to function
as the main area for learning. Ms. Singh and her neighboring teacher do a lot of co
teaching in the larger classroom area for most of the school day. In the larger classroom
area, there is a whiteboard near the main carpet and instruction space, a projector also
near/facing the main instruction area, as well as a document camera located at this central
instruction area of the classroom. As for materials and supplies at the student’s desks,
pencils were the only supply that I saw. Supplies such as markers, crayons, and other
manipulatives were found near the back of the classroom in a large cubby type shelf.
Asides from the main carpet area, there were also several smaller areas around the
classroom used for group instruction that I observed my teacher using during my time in
the classroom.

2. What are some of the classroom dynamics to consider? Number of boys and girls in
the class? What grouping strategies might you consider for your stations?

This class has 16 students, 9 of which are girls and 7 of which are boys. Whole group
instruction as well as group work done in pairs seemed to be the most common grouping
strategies used by the teacher. Prior to letting students free to work indecently or on a
given task, the teacher recited a song that went like this: “I am listening, voices off,
bodies still”. The teacher went through this chant in a repeating pattern and it seemed to
be something that the students really enjoyed. Another communication tool/phrase that I
noticed the teacher used a lot with her students was “Kapish?” The teacher would ask this
after giving instruction to check if her class understood what was expected of them. If the
students were understanding, they repeated back “Kapish!”
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3. What are some of the general mathematics concepts that all the students in your
grade level can understand/use, regardless of their math grouping? Are there
particular mathematical concepts that the teacher thinks would be useful for your
lesson to use?

For this class the general mathematics concepts would be adding within 1-5, however,
my teacher told us that some students don’t know how to fluently do that yet. Sorting and
organizing in color and shapes is also something all the students have a general
understanding of at this point in the school year. Students also are learning to organize
manipulatives into accurate order and are working with cubes counting items from 1-20.

4. What are some of the main themes in the social studies curriculum for your grade
level that might be a good tie in for your lesson?
For social studies themes, this class/grade level is focusing on listening skills, being kind
to each other, using self-talk and understanding and recognizing feelings they have as
well as feelings others may have. All these topics are excellent and ones that I feel should
be tied into my lesson!
5. What social studies resources do you observe in the classroom (maps, texts, books,
etc.)?
There were no maps or books found in Ms. Singh’s small classroom. If the students were
to use a map or read books, this would have to be done in the larger classroom area of the
neighboring teacher. Located in the back area of the small classroom, I found the students
book boxes. In these, there were alphabet poem books, season practice books as well as
personal choice books. Other than these book boxes, this classroom had no maps,
textbooks, or even personal choice grade level reading books. The main classroom library
was found in the larger classroom, belonging to the other kindergarten teacher.

6. Regarding ELL students, what is the first/home language? Are they receiving
services in the school? How many years? What strategies have teachers used that
were helpful?
At this point, Ms. Singh does not have any ELL students who are receiving services.

7. Regarding students with special needs, what accommodations do you need to

consider for reading, math, language arts, social studies? Think about students with
documented IEPs and 504 plans as well as those that do not have official plans on
file. What strategies have been successful?
Ms. Singh does not have students with documented IEPs of 504 plans, however, some
students in this class are in focused reading groups to help with their skill level. Ms.
Singh said that, “Speaking clearly and giving ample work time for those students allows
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them to have that think time during their work time and to be able to complete and
assignment when other students finish”