Observation Day!

New school, new challenges.  My year is going pretty well.  Today was the day of my 1st formal observation (ahhh!) and I like to go big so I kept going back and forth about how I wanted to approach today.

Originally I was thinking Gallery Walk, then I started thinking some sort of Pass-the-Problem strategy.  Originally I wanted them to solve the problems, then the bank I pulled problems out of was waaaaay too much for my students and I was only giving 4 minute rounds.

So today ended up being an informal assessment of how they did on what was in front of them.  What was nice was that I was able to sit down with just about every single student/group and work on things with them - which I feel like I do not do often enough.

This was also the first time I actually ended up using musical cues (Thanks Matt Vaudrey!) in my class.  I really liked how it moved things along and it put a smile on my evaluators face in the end (go Bonanza as the clean-up song!).  Also, my students recommended a few other songs that I will have to preview, cut down and see if I can use for different transitions.

Since I've moved to a different school and did not have a lot of help with decorating my classroom I have been putting it together piece by piece throughout the year.  I feel like it's very blank and I become very sad that it's not as bright and cheery as my middle school classroom (although I am teaching high schoolers now so that may be too much for them).  But being observed makes you worry about all the little things - where my classroom is lacking, where am I lacking, what kind of lesson should I put together, etc., and I am so very glad that it is over.

Tomorrow is the debrief, so we'll see how I ended up doing at the end of that 0_o.  Cross your fingers and wish me luck!