Anna Williamson, Hannah Willie, Caroline Ginder (Amy Hood, Kindergarten)

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?
There are many different resources that we will be able to use in the classroom.
These resources include a Smart Board, microphone to talk into, a document
camera, chrome books for each individual student and a basic white board that you
are able to write on. The students desks in the classroom don’t have any room for
storage but they are all aware of where their supplies are, and they are able to grab
them when needed for activities.
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 is a very small class compared to what this teacher has had in the past. In total
there are only 18 students in the classroom, with 2 being special needs students that
are pulled out for a majority of the class time, so on an average day there are only
16 students in the entire class. There are 12 boys and 6 girls in the class but the 2
that are pulled out for most of the day are boys so on an average afternoon there are
10 boys and 6 girls in the class. For our grouping strategies we would divide the
boys and girls evenly and not make groups more boy or girl heavy.
3. What are some of the general mathematics concepts that all of 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?
All of the students in our class are able to identify the four basic shapes being, circle,
square, triangle and rectangle. They are also all able to write their numbers
correctly to the number three and count correctly and efficiently to the number 13.
Our teacher mentioned that if we incorporate counting and numbers into our lesson
that is a strategy and concept she would like the students to continue to work on.
The concepts she think would be useful to use in our lesson are number formation,
counting correctly by 1’s and being able to group by 10’s if there is an object with a
number higher than 10.
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?

There is no formal Social Studies curriculum that they use in Kindergarten or

throughout the school but she gave us main ideas and concepts she is trying to
incorporate. The themes that she has been teaching are timelines and how they got
to where they are now in their life. They have also been working on identifying and
finding their way to different parts of the school, as well as becoming familiar with
different parts of the town they live in.
5. What social studies resources do you observe in the classroom (maps, texts, books, etc)?
Within our classroom there are Social Studies related books that are posted around
the classroom. There are world and US maps that are on the walls around the
classroom for students to observe and look at. Lastly there is a Pledge to the Flag
poster on the wall that they will look at every morning when they recite the Pledge
of Allegiance.

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?
There are 4 ELL students within the classroom, 2 being Mandarin speaking, 1
student who speaks Tagalog, and 1 Spanish speaker. Out of those 4 students, 2 of
them qualify for ELL support and are pulled out of the general education once a
week for a 20 minute period. The other 2 students are fluent in English and didn’t
qualify for any extra English support during the school day.

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?
During the afternoon period of the school day, the two Special Education students are in
the classroom for varied amounts of time and are accompanied by their own Para. One of
the students has zero interaction with the materials or peers in the classroom while he is in
there and will just work on activities with his Para. The other Special Education has little
interaction with his peers and the activities and will typically spend his time drawing or
tracing. The strategies our teacher has used that have been successful are giving fidgety
students something to play with in their hands during carpet time. She also does flexible
and special seating for students and will make individual accommodations for students
based on the activity.