Field Blog: Shaker Heights Middle School

In the first classroom we observed, the seventh grade students were finishing up a quiz. As the students handed in their quizzes, they were invited to watch the movie playing on the Smart Board. I have noticed that in almost every classroom I have observed in there is a Smart Board. In this particular classroom, to the left of the Smart Board the homework was written down in a list. There was one teacher in the classroom, as well as another adult. I did not get the chance to ask who the other adult was, so perhaps she is an aid to the teacher. The teacher constantly told the students to "shhh." I was wondering myself why the students were so chatty that day. Many students in the class were reading Double Dutch, and I noticed that at the end of the class, one student collected all of the Double Dutch books and put them in a bin. Finally, the students in the class kept organized by having all their materials in their own personal bin that was left in the classroom until next they met. 

The second classroom we observed was different than the first. For starters, the students in the second classroom were eighth graders. In this second classroom, the students were set up at tables versus the rows of desks I saw in the first classroom. Considering we were observing a math class, the students along with the teacher were discussing different shapes and preparing for a test tomorrow. The teacher distributed patty paper to the students to use as they completed the packet. I remember using patty paper in high school in my honors math classes. Someone was sitting at the wrong table; the teacher asked him kindly to move back to his original table. Thankfully, that problem was easily averted with the cooperation of the student by listening to the teacher. For the first fifteen minutes of class, the students worked together at their tables to complete a packet, and then the whole class was going to convene for the remaining time to go over the packet. The teacher was going around to each table, answering any of the questions the students had. A lot of the students had trouble with a particular problem in the packet; the teacher remained patient explaining it so many times. Finally, the students and the teacher were taking turns helping a student one-on-one who had been absent for a little while. All in all, my experience at Shaker Heights Middle School was enjoyable.