Observation #1

Our first day back in Lisa's room was wonderful, we really missed all of the kids. When we first arrived they had done a rotation so the teachers were all teaching someone else's class, and Lisa was teaching about Harriet Tubman. She showed the kids pictures that other children had done on the computer about Harriet Tubman's life, and pointed out specific aspects that helped tell the story and made the pictures really wonderful. Then she had sheets with one sentence about Harriet Tubman's life typed up and the kids were supposed to draw a picture corresponding to the sentence, so they would eventually have a book about her life. From what I could tell she was assessing both their ability to give information through a picture--since they talked about filling the page and including details--as well as their understanding of events in Harriet Tubman's life. The pictures were either also going to made into a book or else displayed on the wall. This might demonstrate to the children their understandings and provide them with a concrete representation of it. It might also show them various means of demonstrating their knowledge, since they would be able to look at their classmates' representations of her life. From what I could see, it was also intended instructionally for them to think about Harriet Tubman's life and visualize in depth a specific episode in it. We have discussed in language block how visualization can help with comprehension of text, and in the same way it might help with comprehension of events in social studies, translated through text.