One of the tasks of students' pedagogical practice is to draw up the characteristics of a class in which future teachers conduct lessons in their specialty. Conducting educational work with children as a class teacher should be based on the identified problems, which will be reflected in the characteristics.
The class description can be written based on a ready-made scheme or based on the results of pedagogical diagnostics with children . For this, students select diagnostic methods that would give objective information and be carried out in a short time, since there is very little time devoted to the study. Diagnostics can be carried out as part of the classroom or with the help of a pair of students conducting an observation: one leads a lesson or event, and the other records the necessary information in the protocol.
The class characteristic includes the results of a comprehensive study:
- fixing the level of health of each student (information is written out from medical records);
- collection of information about families of students based on the results of a conversation with the teacher or according to the questionnaire, which is developed jointly with the teacher or the head of practice;
- analysis of the results of a sociometric study to identify relationships in the team (carried out as a “choice in action” or as a questionnaire on the priority elections of each student);
- monitoring the activity of children in the classroom, recording their performance according to the information from the magazine, conducting discussions about the cognitive interests of students;
- conducting an event to study the attitude of children to a particular social problem (depending on age, topics may relate to smoking, crime, health, family relations, etc.);
- conducting interviews of the entire age parallel on the current school problem in order to determine the rank of this class according to the degree of activity and interest in school life.
The characteristics of the class may also include a brief description of the school - in order to reflect the level of education in the institution and the requirements for students; analysis of the location of the school (in what area is located, what is the social status of students and their parents). If a student has been practicing in this class for more than a first year, it is recommended to track the dynamics of changes in the team by the number of children, by their relationship to each other and to the processes of cognition.
The class characterization is the basis for the development of the educational program of the teacher’s actions, since it is in it that the interests of the students and their main problems are reflected. So, if a student has identified a large number of rejected and isolated students, it is necessary to conduct a number of educational activities to unite the class. If it is revealed that students miss many lessons due to illness, a system of work should be organized to form an active position of students aimed at maintaining their health.
If the characterization for the class is compiled by a social educator, information is collected on the standard of living of students, parental professions, provision of privileges for the poor, teachers visiting children for homework lessons as part of individual instruction, etc. A teacher of a foreign language may additionally include information about leisure in the characterization students abroad, their attitude to a foreign language, attending additional classes to study the culture of other countries or foreign language courses, participating in olympiads in subject.
The characteristics of the elementary school class cannot be compiled based on the results of questioning students, since they are not yet able to generalize information, analyze situations. Most often, observation methods, game diagnostics with elements of the experiment and projective techniques in the form of drawings, interpretation of illustrations are used.
The student makes a conclusion about the relationship of educational work and class characteristics compiled by him independently, and also encloses a report on diagnostics and educational activities with children.