Brooklyn Gulbransen EDSC 3000 (Ed Psych)

In my classroom the teacher used Autonomy as a motivating factor for her students. She let her students decide what center to go to and if the center was a writing center she let them choose the topic of their story. She also let students listen to music so that they could keep their brain stimulated if they were doing something that did not require them to listen. I also noticed that with some of the students this did not keep them very motived at times and even saying if you do not get at least one center done you will not receive a grade did not seem to motivate them. Combating students apathy in class is something that I am glad I am learning about because it seems to be a real problem.

There are so many ways that teachers can assess their students, especially in the Language Arts department. I the 7th grade English Language Arts class that I am observing the teacher is constantly assessing where her students are and what her teaching is accomplishing. Mrs. Dodds gave a diagnostic assessment to her students. Next week they are going to be learning about plot, she has not talked to them about it yet but reminded them that they should have learned about it in 6th grade. She had the students watch 2 short videos and fill out a worksheet pointing out certain parts of the plot. Mrs. Dodds wanted to know what her students remembered from last year so that she would not waste time teaching them things they already understood about plot. Mrs. Dodds also gave many informal assessments through out the class periods. She would walk around the class as students work and asked them questions about whether they understood what they are working on. Watched what they were doing....

I have started my observations in a 7th grade classroom. My first day of observations was a Friday. For Fridays lessons the teachers have decided to have the students do centers where the students that need to be retaught are helped, the students that have make up work that needs to be completed can work on that, and the rest of the students can choose between 4 different options for working on what they have been learning that week. On this particular Friday Mrs. Dodds, the teacher, let them choose what center they wanted to do, except for the reteaching and make up work centers, asking them why they chose the center that they did and if they thought it would help them be more prepared for next week ( declarative metacognition ). Mrs. Dodds wanted the students to understand their strengths and use them to help prepare to move forward the next week. It was important that they completed one of these centers so if the student knew that a particular center was going to be difficult for ...