Most important thing learned during field observation? Why?

I think the most important thing I learned during my field observation was that the attitude of the teacher affects the way that your classroom runs. On many occasions, Mrs. Ray told me that the days her class was out of control was because of the way her attitude was that day. She taught me many things about the different learning modalities in her classroom and she was fun to watch in the way she used so many different ways of teaching her students. They were always learning a different way.
Even though there were a few days that I came in and her class was a little rambunctious I always felt like she showed me how to effectively manage a classroom. She is a very good teacher and I hope that I can model my classroom after what I have seen in her classroom.

Classroom rules & how are they enforced?

Mrs. Ray's biggest classroom rule that I heard her tell the students' was they needed to ask 3 before me. If she gave directions the students were expected to listen and if they didn't they needed to ask 3 other students before they came to ask the teacher, then she knew they didn't understand not just coming to ask. She had a big stop sign on the wall with this statement in it to help remind the kids.
Some of the procedures she used to make things run smoothly were she was always prepared for the day with each lesson she was teaching as well. Sometimes things would get a little off and she would have to change it up a bit, but I never saw her get frustrated. Mrs. Ray always reminded the students the next step or activity that would be coming up in the day. She had a couple of kids with anxiety in her class so this helped them know what was coming. At the beginning of the day she went through that days schedule as well.
If students started misbehaving she had a Ray buck system in place and they would get a verbal warning and then if she had to talk to them again they would owe her a Ray buck. This helped keep kids on task because they did not want to owe her their Ray bucks. They also got rewarded with Ray bucks for turning in homework on time.

Engaged Learning in the classroom

This topic of the students being engaged in learning makes me excited! I was in a classroom with a fourth grade teacher who used this concept all the time. She was a very hands on learning teacher and used the concept of engaged learning constantly. A few examples that I saw in the classroom were as follows. One day the students were learning new vocabulary words and she had them get into groups to look at the word on the card she had given them. She let them discuss what the word meant and how they wanted to act out the word that was coming up in the next unit of reading they were doing. Each group got a turn to act out their word in front of the class as the class guessed what the word was. They had so much fun doing this activity.

Another day that I was in the classroom they were learning about arrays and after she taught the lesson she sat 7 papers around the room so the students could walk around the room to look at the pictures and do the problems around the room instead of sitting at their desks and just working on a worksheet about what they had just learned. She also used base ten blocks when she was teaching them about another section of math and each student had their own set of blocks to work with at their desk.

These students had worksheets, but they were using active and engaged learning most of the day in their classroom. I believe it helped them interact with each other and help them to learn the concepts better than just sitting down and doing worksheets all of the time.