Analysis of Teaching
Before starting our lesson at Lea, we went over the norms of behavior for active listening. We reviewed what they knew about ecosystems from the previous week and built upon their knowledge by adding additional questions about ecosystems and aquariums to the chart. Then we began building the aquarium by assigning responsibilities to each student. Students took turns gathering materials and measuring and placing them into the container. They recorded their observations of plant life on their worksheets. At the end of the lesson, we placed the fish and snails inside the aquarium. Culminating the lesson, the students gave them names.
I feel that the lesson went smoothly, especially in comparison to our experience with the students the previous week. We knew that it would work best to divide and assign responsibilities to each student in order to mitigate any jealousy among them. We also thought it would work to our advantage to pair each student teacher with one student or pair of students in order to make sure that everyone was paying attention and had the opportunity to participate. Given our knowledge that students in this group have frequent conflicts with each other, we were concerned about how the lesson would flow and about the potential level of argument. Our decision to pair teachers with students seemed to be a crucial decision in facilitating student learning and active engagement in the activity.
My partner’s observations noted that although my placement with my assigned student hindered my interaction with all of the students, the pairing worked well because the student I was working with needed extra attention and behavioral assistance. She also noted that I interacted at least once with each of the other students, which allowed me to establish my presence as an instructor and not just as an aide. During the lesson, I was conscious that my placement with this student would prevent me from as much whole group interaction as I would have liked. In his article on “Questioning and Other Behaviors,” Victor discusses the ideas of withitness and overlapping as described by Kounin. He writes that “Withitness is the teacher’s awareness of the whole group, i.e. the ability…to quickly spot and redirect potential student misbehavior. Overlapping is the ability to attend to several matters simultaneously” (Victor, Kellough, & Tai, 2008, p. 49). I felt that I demonstrated withitness during the lesson, and am glad that my partner took note of my efforts to redirect my assigned student. I am also glad that she felt I was able to establish my presence as an instructor and to demonstrate overlapping given the parameters of our decision to pair students and teachers.
I feel that the lesson went smoothly, especially in comparison to our experience with the students the previous week. We knew that it would work best to divide and assign responsibilities to each student in order to mitigate any jealousy among them. We also thought it would work to our advantage to pair each student teacher with one student or pair of students in order to make sure that everyone was paying attention and had the opportunity to participate. Given our knowledge that students in this group have frequent conflicts with each other, we were concerned about how the lesson would flow and about the potential level of argument. Our decision to pair teachers with students seemed to be a crucial decision in facilitating student learning and active engagement in the activity.
My partner’s observations noted that although my placement with my assigned student hindered my interaction with all of the students, the pairing worked well because the student I was working with needed extra attention and behavioral assistance. She also noted that I interacted at least once with each of the other students, which allowed me to establish my presence as an instructor and not just as an aide. During the lesson, I was conscious that my placement with this student would prevent me from as much whole group interaction as I would have liked. In his article on “Questioning and Other Behaviors,” Victor discusses the ideas of withitness and overlapping as described by Kounin. He writes that “Withitness is the teacher’s awareness of the whole group, i.e. the ability…to quickly spot and redirect potential student misbehavior. Overlapping is the ability to attend to several matters simultaneously” (Victor, Kellough, & Tai, 2008, p. 49). I felt that I demonstrated withitness during the lesson, and am glad that my partner took note of my efforts to redirect my assigned student. I am also glad that she felt I was able to establish my presence as an instructor and to demonstrate overlapping given the parameters of our decision to pair students and teachers.
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We planned to begin the lesson by reviewing students’ knowledge of the ecosystems that we had discussed the previous week. By recapping their knowledge, we wanted to “Provide instructional scaffolds, such as building bridges to student learning by helping students connect that which is being learned with what they already know or think they know and have experienced” (Victor, Kellough, & Tai, 2008, p. 48). During our recap, we realized that students had many questions about what they thought they knew. We decided to incorporate these into our ecosystem chart, which was something we had not anticipated during our lesson planning. This idea seemed to work well because it allowed us to leave their questions open-ended. Ready, Set, Science discusses how in a conversation, “the content and structure of students’ arguments can be difficult to follow. Yet if the educational goal is to help students understand not only scientific outcomes and the concepts that support them but also how one knows and why one believes, then students need to talk about evidence, models, and theories” (Michaels & Shouse, 2007, p. 93). Instead of answering students’ questions, we wrote them down and planned to reflect upon them after building the aquarium. Our thinking was that we wanted students to gather evidence and to see if they could come up with the answers to their questions based on evidence from their own scientific observations. In the video clip below, students have a discussion about their scientific understanding prior to beginning the construction of the aquarium.