Classroom Observation

I observed Reilly Ryan’s seventh grade English class. We had the opportunity to talk to him before the period started and he explained the structure to us somewhat before we even observed. They have two 40-minute periods with Mr. Ryan. The first, before lunch, is focused on writing. The second, after lunch, is focused on reading. We attended the writing portion. I feel like his classroom expectations were well established because they were fairly well-behaved. I think the organization helped as well. When they come in, they have a writing prompt to get them thinking about that day’s upcoming assignment, kind of like an introduction activity. It’s something that happens everyday and I think the pattern helps and hinders learning. It helps because they know what they’re doing. It’s an activity that gets them involved right away, but it might not be the best for every learning style and it would be well to change it once in a while.

On this particular day they were preparing to research by doing interviews so their prompt was geared to help them develop questions. If their life hero cheated and they had the opportunity to talk to them about it, what would they ask? It was a good prompt to help them pick something interesting to them and get involved in coming up with questions, but I feel the time they had to do it was inadequate to really let them think about and develop their ideas. And I don’t recall much of a discussion happening after. Mr. Ryan proceeded to share two examples. One was a personal hero of his. The other he used media to express his point. He had a video clip with Oprah Winfrey questioning Lance Armstrong about his use of performance enhancing drugs. There were some technical difficulties that hindered the lesson a bit and distracted the students, but it was a perfect media example. And once it was on they were focused. She asked “yes or no” questions and then more open-ended ones. This is something Mr. Ryan tried to point out with leading questions. I’m guilty of using these, too, but as I learned on my mission (when sharing scriptures) and relating to Freire, it supports the idea that people are objects to be filled with information rather than the idea that they have their own thoughts and new ideas to be discussed to expand those of the teacher.

The students were given time to come up with their own questions about the topic they would be interviewing about (getting paid for good grades). The topic choice was well-thought of for practical application to seventh graders, but maybe if they had made their own topics, there could’ve been even more learning and expanding going on. With the class set in parallel rows it was conducive to turning to their neighbor and starting an interview. They were able to apply what they had just been learning. It seemed that discussion between students was being facilitated, but there was a lack of discussion with the teacher. He spoke to them; they spoke to each other—a half way approach, I think, between banking and problem-posing.