Science Classroom Visit

Since I enjoy physics, I decided to observe the physics teacher... I had heard rumors from my students, but I decided I wanted to find out for myself as to what type of teacher he was, as well as to gauge the depth and level of the class since there are several concepts within my electrical wiring units that deal with physics. I thought maybe I could somehow help students make the connections between their classes... After I observed, I found out that none of my students in my electrical wiring class were currently in physics... oh well... I can teach them what they need to know about physics as it pertains to electrical wiring.

1.) What were the objectives of the lesson? Not really sure... none on board and not clearly stated...
2.) Were the students interested in the lesson? Some of the students were engaged and asked questions from time to time... others were clearly bored... this was likely due to the extreme "lecture" format of the lesson.
3.) What teaching methods or behaviors were most effective in achieving the objectives? The teacher would ask questions about the lesson, particularly if someone was talking.
4.) Does the teacher "give away" information or facilitate learning? The teacher did some of both, sometimes he would just "give away" an answer and hurry on, other times he would give them more time to figure out the problem, but he did not seem to want to pause or wait any too much on any one question.
5.) How would I evaluate this teacher in term of clarity, enthusiasm, business-like behavior, variability, learner-centeredness, and with-it-ness? His speech was clear, enthusiasm somewhat lacking/fake, very business-like in his teaching with little variability and learner centered learning.

6.) Other comments or observations.
      - He started out the class by taking attendance and collecting homework. No bell work or objectives stated.
      - Chewed gum the entire class which was very distracting to me...
      - Kept students several minutes over after the bell rang because he wanted to finish his content for the day...
      - He occasionally had students give him a "thumbs-up" when they were working on a problem.
      - He taught entirely off of the PowerPoint and an entire board plastered with writing except for a few small diagrams that he drew while working through a few example problems.
      - He spent 1-2 minutes answering questions towards the end of class and then gave them a homework assignment out of their textbook.

Overall, the teacher tried to focus the students' attention on the presentation by asking them questions and moving back and forth across the front of the room.

I did not see any evidence of the teacher incorporating students' interests or experiences in this class session.

In his summary, he added some framework to the topic by stating that they had learned about forces and vectors the previous day, and today they had learned about vector addition, Pythagorean Theorem, and the Angle of the Resultant Vector.

While he did seem to know content, it was obvious that he uses the lecture format frequently, likely because the curriculum comes with pre-made PowerPoint presentations. It would have been interesting to observe him in a lab setting and see if he loosened up, or how he would facilitate a lab.