Story About my Observation

                        I observed an 8^th Grade science class at Feinstein Middle School of Coventry. This school is located in a suburban area with some forest and ponds nearby. After I rang the buzzer and got in to the office, I was directed to the room where I would conduct my observation. The room was small, with five tables clustered together like dots on dice. Each table had around five students. The teacher was at the front of the classroom, near the door and the smartboard. The walls of the room were occupied by posters and jokes about science. This gave the room a lively feel and reduced some anxieties I was having about going to the classroom.

In this class, there were 24 students. The students were mostly white, and there were nearly equal numbers of male and female students. There was a table in the back where students with IEPs or 504s sat. This bothered me a little because I think they should be incorporated into the classroom and definitely near the front of the room so the teacher can pay more attention to them. These students had a resource teacher that I noticed was spending most of her time working to adapt the teacher’s assignments for the students, rather than helping them stay on task.

            Today, the lesson was a lab about earthquakes. The students were given handmade seismographs and their lab book to make seismograms from various earthquakes. The seismograph would be placed on the table. Then, the students would hit the table, according to the lab book, to cause vibrations. A sharpie on the seismograph would shake and write on a piece of paper, producing the seismogram. The lab book dictated that the table would be hit with a parallel force, and then a perpendicular force.

While the lab was going on, the student were in total control, and the teacher was writing the test they would have in a few days. The students were very excited to do the lab. There was one group in particular who decided to hit the table with their books to produce a larger force, and a better looking seismogram. In general, all of the students were very excited to do the lab. There was one group who could not understand the directions well enough to do the lab. They got frustrated and quit with around 15 minutes left. I thought that the teacher, or another classmate, should have stopped to help them. It seemed that they just needed to hear that they were doing the lab the right way because the lab book did not show how the seismogram should look.

            This lab allowed every student to participate. The power was entirely with the students and they ran with it. They tried all kinds of things to change the results of the lab. If I was a student in this class, I would be very excited to come to class. When I was in 8^th grade, I did not get to do labs. This class does labs often, and I have noticed that it adds to the atmosphere of the room. As a future science teacher, I would like my class to have many labs and I want to learn more about how to do this.