Screenshot of Sarah's Moodle Site Sarah's Assignment 3 Reflection Questions It was really interesting to observe Sarah’s English 250 class because I have co-taught second language learners with her in the past, but I have never had the opportunity to watch her teach a whole class on her own. Also, it was interesting to observe her because she was teaching English 250, which is the class I will be teaching next semester. To me the sentence I deleted said the same thing as the previous sentence. Principle When I went to observe Sarah’s class on Tuesday, she was asking her students to reflect individually on an assignment that they had turned in that day, and then, she introduced the next assignment. This was really interesting because I had just had my students do something similar just a few hours before in my English 150 class. Due to the fact that our lessons were so similar for that day, I was able to pick up on a lot of the little things she did in her class that I did not do but probably should have done in my class. To be more specific, I was able to analyze the differences between our methods, materials, application of curricular coherence, classroom dynamics and approaches with dealing with issues in the classroom. Method Sarah and I both had our students reflect individually on the assignment they turned in. We both created lists of questions for our students to answer; however, Sarah had a few questions I wish I would have incorporated. In addition to asking about how the students felt their assignment turned out, Sarah asked her students to respond to how well they thought she described the assignment, whether they thought peer review was effective and how it could be improved and how they could apply what they learned in that particular writing assignment to their future writing. I thought this was a simple and effective way for her to get feedback from her students on her teaching as well as how well in-class group activities were going. One thing I noticed that we both did that was effective was give our students a one minute warning to finish up their reflection before we moved onto the next task. For the second half of class, we both introduced a new assignment. Sarah and I approached this in different ways. Sarah had the new assignment hidden on her Moodle (class webpage) so her students could not access it until after she presented it. She did this so her students would not come into class and start asking her questions on the assignment before she introduced it. I, on the other hand, posted the assignment on Moodle beforehand and allowed my students to access it early. I did this because I know some students like to work ahead. In order to avoid the same problem Sarah was trying to avoid, I sent out an email letting the students know the assignment was available, but I would not be taking questions on it until after I introduced it in class on Thursday. I think there are pros and cons to both Sarah and I’s methodology depending on the students that a teacher has in her class, whether or not the teacher believes the students should have the opportunity to work on an assignment before it has formally been introduced and how the teacher reacts to students’ questions before an assignment is introduced. Materials One major difference between our classes was the materials being used. We were both addressing the same basic principles in class; however, the materials in our classrooms varied tremendously. Sarah was in a computer lab, and I was in a regular classroom with a projection screen that I could connect my laptop to in order to show my class our Moodle page. When I was planning for my class, I felt hindered by the fact that all my students would not have a computer in front of them to type their reflections. I feel that if they would have had a computer, they would have been able to develop more of a reflection than they were able to writing by hand because they can type faster than they can write and they would have been less preoccupied with spelling due to MS Word’s automatic spelling and grammar check feature. I believe that during handwritten activities, students choose to avoid certain vocabulary words and sentence structures that they would normally use because they are concerned that the negative effect of their misspellings will outweigh the positive effect of producing complex ideas with specific vocabulary. Sarah, on the other hand, had the opportunity to have her students use the computers to type their reflections. She planned to have her students use the computers to submit the reflections via email, but after experience technical difficulties with a few computers, chose to have all her students write their reflections by hand. I will address this more later in the “Dealing with Issues” section. Curricular Coherence Sarah did an excellent job relating previous activities done in the past to the assignment she was introducing. Curricular coherence was evident in her peer review which I reflected on in the “Methods” section above because of how she had the students reflect on activities building up to the assignment and how she tied the assignment to the students’ future writing. As a beginning teacher, I plan to take some of the strategies Sarah used in her questions for reflection and integrate them to the reflection worksheets I develop for my future assignments to reinforce the links between my classroom activities and content goals. Classroom Dynamics I was a little disappointed with the classroom dynamics in Sarah’s class. The students did not seem to know each other that well and feel comfortable working together. In her teaching, she does recognize the students do not all know each others names so when she divides them into groups she has them go to certain areas of the room so they can find their group easily. I thought this was an effective technique and plan on using this technique in the future when I am grouping students who do not know each other because it saves a lot of time, confusion and sometimes embarrassment for the students. As Sarah divided the groups, she told the students she would give them time to introduce themselves to each other, but after she finished dividing them, she forgot to give the students time to get to know their group. I think setting aside time for group bonding is something that is easily overlooked or forgotten because we have so many other objectives on our mind that group bonding slips onto the back-burner. I was impressed that Sarah had planned some group bonding time into her lesson, but I was not surprised when she forgot to implement it during the hustle and bustle of class time. I am sure I have accidentally overlooked crucial activities this numerous times for the same reason Sarah did which is why in my future lesson planning, I am going to start bolding or starring activities that I am likely to forget or pass over in order to give myself an extra reminder to carry them out. Dealing with Issues There were two major issues Sarah had to deal with the day I observed her in the computer lab. Not surprisingly, they were technology issues. The first issue was that the printer was not functioning and the lab monitor was unable to find quick fix. Normally, this would not have been a huge issue; however, today one of the class’s major assignments was due, and a lot of students in Sarah’s class depend on that printer to print off their assignments. Instead of freezing or pushing back the due date, Sarah made an on the spot decision to have the students who had already printed their assignments submit them and the ones who were planning on printing them off that day turn them in the next class period. But, there was a catch. In order to get credit for submitting the assignment on time, the students had to email a copy to Sarah before 3 P.M. that day. I thought Sarah did an excellent job thinking on her feet, but there is one minor detail I would have changed. I would have required my students to submit the assignment while they were sitting in class because if they were planning on printing off the file in class, they should have had the assignment file with them. The second major issue Sarah had to deal with was that five of the computers in the lab were not allowing students to log in. As a result, there were more students than working computers. This created a problem because Sarah was planning on having her students type and email their reflections to her. To combat this problem, Sarah had all the students write their reflections by hand on a sheet of paper. I think this was a great on the spot solution; however, I would have done things a little differently. Instead of having all the students write by hand, I would have checked to see if any of the students had brought a lap top that day that they could use. Another thing I would have done was have only the students left without computers write by hand. I think there are pros and cons to both Sarah and I’s methods of dealing with this issue. One positive that comes out of the way Sarah dealt with the issue is that all the student had an equal opportunity to reflect, meaning there were not inequalities with some having access to spelling and grammar check and others not. On positive that would have come out of the way I would have resolved the problem is that the majority of the students would have had the opportunity to use the spell and grammar check feature, and as a result, they would have been able to write more extensive in-depth reflections. |