Field Notes
For the purposes of this portfolio, I define field notes as observational notes taken during teaching and annotated after teaching. Taking field notes hones my observation skills and helps me use my observations to improve my classroom and my instruction (O'Keefe, 1997).
Throughout the school year, I have taken field notes in the classroom, experimenting with a variety of methods. I have a notebook that I carry around with me at all times while in the classroom. I use this notebook to record notes about students’ behavior issues and how I addressed them; I jot notes in this book as events occur in the classroom. I use this same notebook to take notes on my classroom mentor’s teaching. It’s similar to a journal, but over the course of the year, my notebook has been a less personal space – it contains more descriptions of events rather than reactions to events.
As part of my coursework at Penn, I have completed descriptive reviews on three children in my kindergarten class. One was a lengthy, comprehensive look at a student’s academics, behavior, and social relationships, one was a several-page descriptive review of a student with a learning disability and pervasive developmental disorder, and one was a short description of a student who was particularly puzzling to me and on whom I wanted advice from fellow teachers. Through observing and taking notes on each of these students, I learned the value of knowing my students beyond their academic performance in the classroom. As a result of all three descriptive reviews, I changed how I interacted with the students, and I am better able to tailor my teaching to their needs as individual learners. Additionally, I have begun to look for moments during the day to get to know other students better as I teach and interact with them.
Throughout the school year, I have taken field notes in the classroom, experimenting with a variety of methods. I have a notebook that I carry around with me at all times while in the classroom. I use this notebook to record notes about students’ behavior issues and how I addressed them; I jot notes in this book as events occur in the classroom. I use this same notebook to take notes on my classroom mentor’s teaching. It’s similar to a journal, but over the course of the year, my notebook has been a less personal space – it contains more descriptions of events rather than reactions to events.
As part of my coursework at Penn, I have completed descriptive reviews on three children in my kindergarten class. One was a lengthy, comprehensive look at a student’s academics, behavior, and social relationships, one was a several-page descriptive review of a student with a learning disability and pervasive developmental disorder, and one was a short description of a student who was particularly puzzling to me and on whom I wanted advice from fellow teachers. Through observing and taking notes on each of these students, I learned the value of knowing my students beyond their academic performance in the classroom. As a result of all three descriptive reviews, I changed how I interacted with the students, and I am better able to tailor my teaching to their needs as individual learners. Additionally, I have begun to look for moments during the day to get to know other students better as I teach and interact with them.
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This page from my journal shows the mix of notes that appear in my teaching journal. The first section describes new pedagogical techniques I observed my classroom mentor use. Then I took two brief notes on a child in preparation for writing a descriptive review, recorded two more of my classroom mentor's "teacher phrases" I wanted to remember, and filled up the rest of the page with observations about the child on whom I was writing a descriptive review. I went back and reread my journal as I was writing the descriptive review, cross-checking notes I had taken on "M" to see if I could identify patterns in her behavior.
The aspect of school that I take the most field notes on is student learning. I take notes on students’ reading, writing, small-group work, and responses during whole class lessons. I have learned this year how to use the notes I take on students to inform and improve my teaching. After teaching a guided reading lesson, for example, I can go back and review the notes I took on each student and use them to determine what to focus on next with that group. |
I taught a guided reading group on the book Good to Eat. Three of the students in the group have a home language other than English, and as I took notes on their individual reading, I discovered that I had not sufficiently previewed the book for any of the students. Each of the four students was struggling to decode the same words (grain, wheat, yeast and dairy), but they did successfully decode all the words in the text. When I asked them to retell facts from the book, however, only one student remembered more than a third of the material from the book. After reviewing my notes, I realized that I had not thought to ask the students if they knew what the “tricky” words meant after they decoded them. They were decoding, but not comprehending. Below are the notes I took during the first and second groups. The reflective notes I took on students' responses and learning are underlined in yellow.
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I had the opportunity to teach the same book to another guided reading group later that week. After reviewing my own notes and my classroom mentor’s notes, I made changes in how I previewed the book with the students, extending the picture walk to activate students’ prior knowledge about more of the content-specific vocabulary, and none of those students struggled with the same words the first group had struggled with. My notes from the second group focus on completely different skills and words than my notes from the first group.
I have also used notes from guided reading lessons and from Reading and Writing Workshop logs to decide what to teach to the whole class during Word Work. As I saw several students struggle with the same spelling pattern, letter-sound combination, or skill, I would write it down and then design a lesson or a literacy center activity to address that skill. Artifact 6
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For example, in the journal example I provided (Artifact 2), which was about the lesson described above, I noted that based on the students' struggles to decode the word "dairy," I planned and taught a Word Work lesson on the "air" family. Similarly, when I observed that many students were leaving out letters in digraphs and blends that we had studied, I designed a Word Work lesson that had the students “spell check” words I wrote on the board. I also found an activity to put in a literacy center that required the students to sort words that had the sounds /sh/, /th/, or /ch/ (see left) because I noticed students struggling to differentiate between those sounds.
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Note-Taking Methods
I have experimented with several different formats for taking notes on students throughout the day. First, I just used my notebook, jotting down students’ names and notes as I needed to. Then, as shown on the left, I tried using a piece of paper folded to make small boxes, shown on the right. I carried this paper on a clipboard with my lesson plans for the day while I taught, and as I wanted to take notes on students, I would write their names and notes in the boxes. That was easier than using my notebook because I could add notes to each student’s box as needed rather than keeping notes throughout the day and then sorting through them to find a particular student’s notes. (Students' names have been removed.)
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Then I combined my lesson plans and my note-taking space onto one sheet, making it easier to take notes on specific lessons, activities, or students. I carried these sheets around on my clipboard for several days during my two week full takeover of the classroom, and found this to be the best way for me to take notes while I teach. I still prefer a simple notebook, however, for notes that I take while my classroom mentor is teaching or while students are working independently and I am observing.
Another method I implemented for taking notes was an assessment checklist. I created and used an assessment checklist for a small-group math lesson I taught in the fall (see below), and it allowed me to quickly record which students had mastered which concepts, as well as add additional notes. I also used assessment checklists with the whole class while conducting end-of-marking-period math assessments. |
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The Reading Workshop logs that I keep on each student are also a form of assessment checklist, but allow for note-taking on only one student at a time. I like using assessment checklists, but they are not practical for every lesson. They require a lot of time to create, and not every lesson lends itself to a checklist of expected student responses or behaviors.