FORMAL OBSERVATION #1

Observation details
Teacher name: James Macur
Date: 11/10/17
Subject/Grade: Science & Literacy, combined/all 1st graders and 6 2nd graders
Time: 9:50 - 10:30
Pre-conference
Background
I will be scripting what happens in your lesson while I observe. Would you like to me to
send you the unabridged script? Yes.
Questions
What are you trying to achieve through todays lessons or this series of lessons?
Discovery Time. Self-led research starts the lesson. Book shopping, researching
with books, and marking things with yellow sticky notes that use symbols to show
metacognition. Discovery Circle. After Discovery Circle comes Discovery
Journals. They write down their questions, they write down the new things that
they learn. At Discovery Time, the majority of the children will be researching
closely related topics, but if a child just is not into those topics, they can explore
something totally different in parallel with the other children using the same
metacognition.
Jim
What will you do if the discussion starts to drag?
I have flexibility in my time, so I can draw the discussion to a close, if it
feels right. A Slant Question can be helpful: its a question the purpose of
which is to take the conversation in a new direction when its getting stale.
Observation

Time Activity

9:50 Students are involved in Discovery Time. There are several stations in the classroom that each
have between one and four students: a rectangular table with two students reading and writing
silently, an individual table with one student reviewing a student-created learning comic
independently, a table with two students reading a book and talking about it together, a
hexagonal table with three students comparing two books collaboratively while one reads quietly,
and a nature table full of arthropod specimens from large scorpions and spiders to a variety of
beetles, winged insects and other kinds of tiny-to-medium sized arthropods. Students are
examining the insects with magnifying glasses and naked eyes while writing down questions on
post-it notes. The children with their books are using post-it notes to mark evidence of their
thinking.
10:05 Cleanup time is signaled by a Bruno Mars song. Students immediately and with attention to
detail begin putting up all the books and other research tools. They make choices about which
books to bring to the circle. A number of students are singing. All the children circle up while Jim
sings along. He only once gives a verbal instruction: I need one, two, three, four, five people at
circle. What do we have to do?
10:07 J: [Whispers] Everyone brought something to circle. Thats great. [Normal voice level.] I think its
important that everyone has a chance to share, so were going to fall like dominos. The students
pair and share from what they brought to circle. This activity is Discovery Circle.
10:08 A girl named Reya comes in just after the dominos have fallen, and J asks her if she brought
 something to circle, then when she says no, just directs her to join a group which she
immediately does.
10:09 J reviews his anchor charts of the norms in Discovery Circle. Hands are not to be raised.
Students are to look at one another and listen to find their time to share. J reminds about what
he considers to be more advanced norms such as staying on topic and disagreeing politely. J
chooses the student to begin the discussion.
10:11 S: I think I have a connection. Hummingbirds kind of look like something I saw yesterday.
J prompts: So how does this connect to yesterday? S: It said [the hummingbird] can dodge
[the rain] because they can go any direction with their wings. S2: How do they not break their
wings when they go this way? S: Because they dont have bones in their wings. They dont
have bones because theyre so tiny. If they had bones in their wings, they wouldnt fly good. Why
they dont have any bones is because they need to fly. Also, their wings are flat. S3: Wings can
be very fragile. S: Also, their wings can be very fragile.
10:14 S4: How can they go like that without bones? S5: Maybe they have bones in their wings but
theyre very flat.
10:16 J: Hold on, were sort of getting off topic. Some people seem to think that birds wings have
bones, and some people think they dont. S6: I have a connection to my book. S6 struggles to
find the page. S6: I really should start marking my pages. J: [Chuckles] Thats true. S6 finds
her page and begins talking over another student who has begun speaking. J suggests the other
student finishes speaking first.
10:18 J: [S], do you know whether birds have bones or are you wondering whether birds have bones?
S: Im wondering whether birds have bones. J: Were wondering about that. Raise your hand if
youre wondering whether birds have bones. Nearly all students raise hands.
10:19 J: How can we find out whether birds have bones in their wings? All: Research. J: What kind
of book? Several: Books about hummingbirds. Some students are suggesting using Siri or
Google, and J acknowledges that those sources could be helpful, too. J: Take thirty seconds to
think about what you want to write for your sentence.
10:22 J says to one student, based on her verbal response, Youre ready to write. Student
immediately leaves the circle and retrieves a tote of pencils, colored and graphite, and a journal
and begins to write independently at a table.
After a trickle of two or three are dismissed from circle individually this way, J says, Thumbs up
if youre ready to write. Lets get writing. Three of the tables now have a tote of writing
instruments and nearly everyone has his/her journal and is writing.
10:23 J leaves the room to find a book in the next classroom for about 60 seconds after telling the
class why he is leaving. The pattern of student behavior doesnt seem to shift in any noticeable
way in his absence.
10:24 Two students are looking at the book with J. One more comes over. One of the first children
leaves. Two students are there when J finds research to explain that birds have hollow bones.
He high-fives the children who are with him. J redirects one student, Oliver, with three things he
intends to write from circle that, to accomplish that, he needs to get down to business.
10:27 J: Do you have some schema about how to write the word, know? A friend helps that student
to spell it. Then, J points out that it is written on one of the anchor charts from the Discovery
Circle. J writes the word on an index card and asks, Should we add it to the sight word wall?
Well add it after were done with writing.J has been consulting with tables and with individual
students throughout the writing time.

Debrief
How did you assess whether your aims for today had been met?
For the research time, one is just that all the kids are working. Are all the kids getting
started right away? If so, then whats next? If not, whos not and why not?
 The next step is to think about the types of conversations Im having with the kids that
day. Are they doing just surface connections? Are they talking about a hummingbird,
then drawing a picture of a hummingbird. I would say it was sort of a mixed bag today:
students who are digging and I can come and ask further questions; some students who
are still making those surface-level questions.
I use a running record in my journal during Discovery Circle. On the next day, I might just
list the names of those who spoke and ask, Give me a thumbs up if you heard your
name. Did you hear your name a lot? Maybe you want to pull back a little.
What was most successful?
Yesterday, Colin shared for the first time. He has very low self-confidence. Ive spent the
whole year boosting his confidence by going over the things hes accomplished. Then, I
named certain students to not share and just think that day.
Did you make any in-the-moment changes to your plan today?
After the exercise period, I changed my lesson plan because there were so many
questions and some schema that needed to be cleaned up, so instead of waiting over
the weekend, we went over the research about bird bones and muscles today instead of
Monday.
What were moments of magic today?
I love them not answering their questions. At the beginning of the year, some kids know
the answer to everything, whether they know or not. The child who was looking at the
bottom of a bug and wondering why it had blue coloration underneath was an amazing
moment because he had a large amount of thinking and he responded to my questions
and was able to make connections. Thats not business as usual for him.
How might you use the information from todays observation for your class in the future?
I may make changes to the physical space in the classroom by experimenting with
removing a table or, even more interesting to me, I may come up with an explicit way to
draw a third- or fourth-degree distinction between what I call surface connections
versus deeper connections, such as pointing out that building on another students idea
is a deeper-than-deeper connection, so to speak.
Summary Provided to the Teacher via Email
[Unabridged script of the lesson]
The self-guided nature of the science learning environment I saw today is remarkable, given the
1st grade age of the students. Its due to your intentional use of space, your remarkable
relationship with your students, the way you weave music into all aspects of the class, and the
constant emphasis on high-quality discussion and metacognition. All of those things taken
together led to what I witnessed: a classroom of engaged elementary students who are content,
thriving, and operating with minimal teacher direction as they engage in inquiry-based learning
and literacy.
A student who is reluctant to participate participated in the Discovery Circle discussion
yesterday for the first time. Your persistent social-emotional support for Colin, combined with
your intentional facilitation of classroom discussion, has led to a breakthrough for a student who
needs a teacher just like you. You shared that as a moment of magic from your classroom, and
it gave me goosebumps.
One-page Reflection
During the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years when I taught for Uplift Education, I was
being trained as a future leader, and I had opportunities to conduct formal observations for
teachers around our school network and many informal observations for teachers on my own
campus. I realized then that I have a knack for observation. In particular, my ability to provide
 thought-provoking feedback and next steps during a debrief makes an impact. Although its
been a long time since Ive had the opportunity to do a formal observation, that knack was
affirmed today during my observation with James Macur. He clearly got a lot out of being able to
reflect with a partner on the several strengths I highlighted, but when I offered suggestions - at
his prompting - it was clear he found them worth internalizing. He thought my suggestion about
further segmenting his spectrum of surface versus deeper connections being made in the
moment by the students in his classroom was very valuable. Although I cant be sure what form
it will show up in, I am confident he will utilize my insight today in his classroom practice moving
forward.
I felt grateful to be able to deliver a couple of nuggets of insight for Jim, as he prefers to be
called, because his classroom practice is just sparkling, so it was me who received the gift today
as an observer. Watching 1st graders thrive in a thoroughly student-directed, inquiry-based
science classroom was enlightening. Although I have to fill in many of the blanks myself, given
my level of experience in education, I can see how to achieve many of the main elements taking
place in the classroom, both in terms of space and procedures in the room, and I noted down
the two professional development resources he and his grade-level team use as the model for
their classroom. Its the work of Sue Kempton, under two titles: T he Literate Kindergarten and
Lets Find Out: Building Content Knowledge with Young Children.