I feel awkward and tongue-tied making any comments on the class period in which I taught, which goes to show me that it is really challenging to make observations while trying to teach at the same time. I will say that I saw a high level of student engagement when my partner taught the next session. I loved it when a student ran around with a notebook taking down samples of her classmates' handwriting. I love that she was motivated to do so, and I thought it was better coming from her than from an adult making the students re-do work (submitting a hand-writing sample) they had just done. The other students seemed to accept that they were helping her out, even though she didn't explain what it was for, and it didn't really disrupt what the other students were up to.
Also, I really liked that it was palpably clear that the third period students needed to know whodunit. My partner drew out the suspense and set up the activities better (the tasks of stations C-E were explicitly explained, and the students were allowed to practice more before just jumping into their work) so that the students were really invested with their part in the mystery.
I also thought it was great that my coordinating teacher was able to figure out what to do with the the fourth period students, since they were not involved in the lesson study at all. These students still had a full hour of science learning, by watching a video that was periodically paused on the diagrams so that students could really spend time analyzing and describing the functions of the different parts of the circulatory system. The teacher also probed the students' misconceptions and had students work and be accountable for de-bunking their misconceptions in groups, so that no one felt embarrassed or called out (which came up in our lesson study). A video shouldn't ever just be filler but be paused at important junctures.
The earth science class at the high school actually watched videos last Thursday and today, as well. The teacher always explains to the students why they're doing what they're doing, which I feel shows respect to the students and is motivating for some of them (there's a purpose associated with the work they're doing). The video shown on Thursday was section of Bill Nye on the seasons. The teacher explained to the students that they were watching the video because Bill Nye explains the seasons using a lot of pictures that are going for explaining how the seasons work, since she wasn't satisfied that the students REALLY understood this concept. She told them that they give her the right textbook definition when she asks but that they aren't able to answer thinking questions if she asks them in a different way. After showing the video snippets (which showed a globe), she brought out her own globe and asked students what would happen if the earth's tilt were 0 degrees, if the earth were farther away or closer to the sun, etc. After watching the video and looking at the globe right in front of them, multiple students gave answers that really impressed me and showed that these students were able to look at this concept in a new way (other than their prior misconceptions).
The teacher also explained to the students today that they were watching a video on different biomes (I didn't stay through the video, because she said anyone who fell asleep and started snoring would be in trouble...). The students are finishing up talking about earth (they "flew" through the section on the atmosphere so that they could spend the rest of the trimester on space!) and that she wanted the students to relate the material to their real lives; these students might go on vacation and experience mountains or valleys shown in the video, and she wanted her students to have a visual reference for what these systems are like. I am really excited for them to talk about space on Thursday!
Speaking of space and videos, I always feel guilty showing more than 2 minutes of a YouTube clip (it's like I'm trying to get out of teaching). However, as we talked about in the discussion board for methods, a useful type of informal teaching is showing an engaging and educational video. I have seen my cooperating teacher use YouTube clips really effectively all semester, especially when it came to providing kids with schema for what the different power plants ACTUALLY look like and the diagrams of what different body systems ACTUALLY look like in action. I would prefer to make research-based decisions in my teaching, rather than my emotions (guilt vs. personal pride/satisfaction that I am the teacher who doesn't show videos...). I also think that I am influenced by my memory of hating to watch videos as a student, since it was hard to stay awake, it was annoying being so close to my friends but not being able to talk to them, and I am NOT an auditory learner and usually need close-captions to follow shows that require even the smallest amount of brainpower.
I do show short clips at least once a day once we get to DNA/RNA in this class (it becomes way too complicated and 3D to see in your head), but this semester, I also showed a longer clip of a Neil deGrasse Tyson video on the origin of life, as we wrapped up our metabolism unit. I found us referring to this or that part of his talk for the rest of the unit (not in terms of visual aids, since he just sits there in a chair, but in regards to the main points we got out of the video). Videos are definitely one of my under-utilized teaching tools, and I owe it to my students to implement them as needed in every class I teach, if it will improve student learning. I can put the close-caption up and make sure I am using universal design to make sure all of my students get something out of the experience.
This week, my students are giving their final presentations. My directions get decreasingly terrible and clearer with each semester; the presentations more closely approximate the content, rigor, knowledge of/skepticism of the research, and clarity that I am hoping for. It is definitely an iterative process. Now, I am thinking that the class as a whole should do more with each presentation; maybe the students could research one remaining question that strikes them from each presentation, and then the students could work in pairs to try to find an answer to that question. I'll have to think about how to re-format the presentations; my students' exit card on Thursday will be to write down suggestions for improvement on this significant project for the class.
Of course, every issue we talk about in methods is the exact thing that I find a problem with when I go to teach; since we talked about running out of things to do with our students today, I am really critical right now that I didn't really push the students to go even further and do more with their presentations today, since we really could have stretched each one out. Another way to go about it would be to give the students everyone's abstracts the weekend before, so that they could research one interesting fact for each of the presentations. Or, we could just do it like we do in methods and have the presenters give the class something to think about/questions to answer in preparation for their presentation (they sent me their abstracts, anyway, so I could write a program for their week of presentations). There are some things to consider for the summer....
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