Actively Engaging the Students

To start off the class I decided to start by counting how many questions she asked in a specific amount of time. I decided to look at the clock for just a minute and see. She asked about 10 questions, just about simple things, but it really just engaged the students. It seemed crazy that there were that many questions, but it made sense! Next, I observed a reading period, which was silent a lot of the time, but then she brought them to the back corner to describe a feature of books, this time it was status quo. Then she split them into groups and had them discuss what the status quo was in their books and how it changed. She then had them write it down and present it to a little bit of larger groups. I thought that was interesting because it made them be really involved, and then had them in a little bit larger of a scenario. Next, in social studied, she had them stand to answer true or false questions (stand if you think its true, sit if you think its false). That way everyone’s answer was heard and it worked out really well.
It seemed that she didn’t really have any big ways to involve them; it was just constant little things that made it work. She constantly was splitting them up into little groups and having them work for there in order for everyone to be heard. It was just like in the "active engagement" slide show. All of the options to do instead of pure independent work was used. She always had hands on projects for them to do as well in order to make her point work. For learning about simile's  they were able to draw a picture by numbers picture, and the kids worked together to figure it out. It was really cool to see that the ways used in the slideshow weren't just there for example, but it is actually used!