Module 4 Unit 6 Activity 1
Observation and Report
I observed Mr. Hobden’s class at a small academy called Sunshine Academy for this exercise. His class was an English Language Arts class and the classroom had a very big space. It was rectangular shaped around 25 x 40 feet. The layout and classroom decor was great with a huge rug on the right side of the classroom with a fully equipped classroom on the left side. I found it a little problematic to draw the classroom layout with the recommended website (http://classroom.4teachers.org) because the desks can only be laid out completely vertically or horizontally on this program, but the desks in Mr. Hobden’s class were arranged at a 45 degree angle almost in an arrow formation. I have never seen the desks arranged in such a way, but I thought it was unique and worked really well for the students to view the board and also work in groups.
There were 11 boys and 12 girls in this classroom so it was quite large. The class walked in and sat directly in the rug. I guess this was a procedure that they do daily as the teacher didn’t ask them to sit there when they came in from their break. This was a non directed but purposeful student movement. Mr. Hobden was reading them a story and after asking a few questions about the story and teaching some new vocabulary, he stood up and the students returned to their desks on their own. This was another non-directed but purposeful movement I have watched. It was pretty amazing how the students knew what to do and went back to their desks in an orderly fashion. The green arrow above represents one of the male students that returned to his desk from the rug.
Mr. Hobden walked directly to his projector on the left side of the classroom and started with his lesson on segmenting and blending words. As he was explaining the exercise he was walking back and forth between the projector and the two desks closest to him until he called on a student to put one of the words together. This was a female student and it is represented on the picture above with the red arrow. This is an example of a directed student movement as he called on this student so she had to come to the projector. He also called on a few more students and again it demonstrated directed student movements.
When the students were working on their workbooks, one of the female students finished her work and got up to talk to her classmate. It is represented by the violet colored arrow below. She was distracting her friend from finishing her work and Mr. Hobden had to tell her to return to her seat. This was an example of a non-purposeful student movement. I was surprised because I watched this classroom for about 30 minutes but everyone stayed in their seat and I thought I would not be able to observe a non-purposeful student movement. Around the 28 minute mark, this female student got up so I was lucky to record that or else it would have been one of the most well-behaved classes I have observed.
While they were working on their workbooks, Mr. Hobden went around the front of the classroom to help a few students. Then he walked through the middle of the desks and returned to the area with the projector.
Watching the teacher’s movement patterns I couldn’t help noticing that he spent most of his time tethered to the projector and that he had very little contact with the rows in the back. Mr. Hobden spent a lot of the time on the left side of the classroom and walked back and forth in the front of the classroom from left to right. Perhaps he might not always work in the same movement patterns but because he was working with the projector today he might have been standing on the left side a lot for that reason.
One recommendation I have for this situation is that if he has a socket in the back of the classroom, he could move the projector to the back. That way he could have more contact with students in the back of the classroom but if he had to have everyone’s focus, he should have no problem walking to the front of the classroom where he spends a lot of his time anyway. This way it could balance out the time he is spending with the students in the front, as well as the students in the back of the classroom.
I talked to Mr. Hobden after the class and told him what I saw in my observation. He said that he also found that he does spend most of his time in the front of the classroom and thanked me for my suggestion. He might move his desk to the side and move the projector to the back of the room. I also noticed that he had his transitions, and procedures well organized. He uses his classroom space very well including the rug area and the interesting way he organized his students’ desk. His class was well laid out and overall he didn’t have any major issues with any of his students’ behavior. I guess living in Korea helps. He managed his students very well and his class was a great example of having taught the rules and procedures properly to create a positive classroom environment.
* Here is the google doc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n1DX7vAuG-n84u71cfCJwk5iw3I7CHbwF4LX0FDp_wk/edit
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