Classroom Observation

I arrived on the 27th of April to observe Ms. Duncan's 9th grade mathematics class. The classroom is located on the campus of Coppin State University here in Baltimore. The class had mostly girls about 15 to 5 boys. All in the classroom was African Americans except one boy who was Hispanic. I observed students interacting with the teacher as she explained how to find the slope of a linear equation. The teacher had given the students handouts, key words, and definitions for students to follow. Literacy was used to connect students to problem solving in mathematics. When the teacher called on students to answer questions the students were asked to read the problem "aloud" for all to hear. Then the teacher would ask them to solve the equation step by step as instructed from posted signs on the wall. The walls of the class had many processing steps that the student could read (literacy). The teacher used lecture and literacy but would let the students independently workout their own solutions and ideas.