On Friday, December 6, I filmed a discussion based lesson concerning Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and for the purposes of this analysis, I will focus mostly on a segment of class during which I transition between 3 activities.
For homework the previous 2 nights, the students were assigned to write down open-ended discussion questions that were either interpretive, evaluative, or predictive in nature. The discussion in this day's lesson was based off of the students' questions. At the beginning of the video, the students are answering one of these as a Do Now while I collect the rest of the questions. From 2:12-3:45 in the video I am making announcements and the discussion itself occurs from 3:45-16:05. From 16:05-19:20 I explain the homework assignment as well as what the rest of the class is going to look like. From 19:20-27:50 we do a shared reading of the play, and for the last 10 minutes, students are working independently while I circulate, addressing students' individual concerns and issues.
My main roles in this video are explaining directions, facilitating discussion, elaborating upon student answers, and questioning students. In my performance of these roles I seem to be comfortable and positive in attitude as evidenced by my conversational tone of voice and my acknowledgment of all student contributions. For most of the video I seem fairly confident and knowledgeable of the content. I explain things clearly and I leave space for student questions and contributions before moving on to new topics. During the segment of focus, I seem a little less confident, pausing lengthily at times and saying "Um" more frequently than usual. This is a result of the activity being structured around student questions. For the initial discussion I had reviewed the questions in advance, but for the later discussion I was less prepared because I was structuring things around questions that students had just turned in to me.
I remain in the front of the classroom for the bulk of the lesson without moving much. Part of this is conscious choice. Students generally expect the teacher to be at the front of the room during whole-class activities, and I feel awkward moving to say the back of the room for no discernible (at least in the students' eyes) reason. Moving around more, however, would have helped me better manage some students' problem behaviors. There were, for instance, about 3 students with their heads down for a large portion of the class and 3 students repeatedly pulling their phones out to text. I have addressed these behaviors several times in the past but did not address them on this day.
The rest of the class besides these six students seemed well-engaged, listening to the discussion and following along during the reading. There were about 10 students that actively contributed to the discussion and one student that contributed almost constantly. The contributors and one or two non-contributors also asked questions during the assignment explanation. There were six students that volunteered to read five parts, so one student did not get a part. There was a minor argument regarding this between two students and there was also an argument between these same students earlier in the class at the end of the discussion portion. I chose not to actively reprimand or shut down these arguments because the two girls involved were friends and they ceased the argument themselves before it got out of hand.
Generally speaking the students were meeting my expectations during this lesson. I did not observe anything in the video that I was not aware of while teaching. I feel that my own actions and choices for presentation and management of this lesson were generally appropriate and effective.
That being said, there are things I could have done better. As mentioned before, I should have addressed the problem behaviors I was noticing; I had no conscious reason for not addressing these other than laziness and desire to avoid conflict. I could have circulated about the room to better ensure maximum student engagement.
Were I a student in my own class, I would have been engaged much of the time, but there are also moments I could see myself getting bored or sleepy. The fact that the discussion questions were provided by students would have me invested in the discussion because I'd be interested to see how my peers react to my own question and I'd be curious to see what kinds of things other people asked. There was enough variance in activities (journaling, discussion, shared reading, teacher explanation, independent work) to keep me from checking out at any point. However, my tone of voice as a teacher rarely changes, neither does my position in the classroom, and neither do the students' positions in the classroom. This type of stagnation would likely have resulted in some boredom. This boredom would have been accentuated by a lack of visuals in the lesson as well. While I did make an effort to differentiate activities, they are all highly language based. While this is an English class where language is the focus, I do want to allow students to access multiple intelligences (visual, spatial, kinetic, social, etc.) as part of my class.
All in all, the lesson I taught was effective enough to engage most students and accomplish my goals for the class period. However, I would rate the lesson as average rather than superlative because it could have been improved to be more exciting/engaging and better reach different types of learners with different types of intelligences.
For homework the previous 2 nights, the students were assigned to write down open-ended discussion questions that were either interpretive, evaluative, or predictive in nature. The discussion in this day's lesson was based off of the students' questions. At the beginning of the video, the students are answering one of these as a Do Now while I collect the rest of the questions. From 2:12-3:45 in the video I am making announcements and the discussion itself occurs from 3:45-16:05. From 16:05-19:20 I explain the homework assignment as well as what the rest of the class is going to look like. From 19:20-27:50 we do a shared reading of the play, and for the last 10 minutes, students are working independently while I circulate, addressing students' individual concerns and issues.
My main roles in this video are explaining directions, facilitating discussion, elaborating upon student answers, and questioning students. In my performance of these roles I seem to be comfortable and positive in attitude as evidenced by my conversational tone of voice and my acknowledgment of all student contributions. For most of the video I seem fairly confident and knowledgeable of the content. I explain things clearly and I leave space for student questions and contributions before moving on to new topics. During the segment of focus, I seem a little less confident, pausing lengthily at times and saying "Um" more frequently than usual. This is a result of the activity being structured around student questions. For the initial discussion I had reviewed the questions in advance, but for the later discussion I was less prepared because I was structuring things around questions that students had just turned in to me.
I remain in the front of the classroom for the bulk of the lesson without moving much. Part of this is conscious choice. Students generally expect the teacher to be at the front of the room during whole-class activities, and I feel awkward moving to say the back of the room for no discernible (at least in the students' eyes) reason. Moving around more, however, would have helped me better manage some students' problem behaviors. There were, for instance, about 3 students with their heads down for a large portion of the class and 3 students repeatedly pulling their phones out to text. I have addressed these behaviors several times in the past but did not address them on this day.
The rest of the class besides these six students seemed well-engaged, listening to the discussion and following along during the reading. There were about 10 students that actively contributed to the discussion and one student that contributed almost constantly. The contributors and one or two non-contributors also asked questions during the assignment explanation. There were six students that volunteered to read five parts, so one student did not get a part. There was a minor argument regarding this between two students and there was also an argument between these same students earlier in the class at the end of the discussion portion. I chose not to actively reprimand or shut down these arguments because the two girls involved were friends and they ceased the argument themselves before it got out of hand.
Generally speaking the students were meeting my expectations during this lesson. I did not observe anything in the video that I was not aware of while teaching. I feel that my own actions and choices for presentation and management of this lesson were generally appropriate and effective.
That being said, there are things I could have done better. As mentioned before, I should have addressed the problem behaviors I was noticing; I had no conscious reason for not addressing these other than laziness and desire to avoid conflict. I could have circulated about the room to better ensure maximum student engagement.
Were I a student in my own class, I would have been engaged much of the time, but there are also moments I could see myself getting bored or sleepy. The fact that the discussion questions were provided by students would have me invested in the discussion because I'd be interested to see how my peers react to my own question and I'd be curious to see what kinds of things other people asked. There was enough variance in activities (journaling, discussion, shared reading, teacher explanation, independent work) to keep me from checking out at any point. However, my tone of voice as a teacher rarely changes, neither does my position in the classroom, and neither do the students' positions in the classroom. This type of stagnation would likely have resulted in some boredom. This boredom would have been accentuated by a lack of visuals in the lesson as well. While I did make an effort to differentiate activities, they are all highly language based. While this is an English class where language is the focus, I do want to allow students to access multiple intelligences (visual, spatial, kinetic, social, etc.) as part of my class.
All in all, the lesson I taught was effective enough to engage most students and accomplish my goals for the class period. However, I would rate the lesson as average rather than superlative because it could have been improved to be more exciting/engaging and better reach different types of learners with different types of intelligences.