Saturday, December 1, 2018
Observation
Reflection on Classroom Observation
I observed at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School for 10 hours. Observing two different physics teachers. Just about all the students were Caucasian and while the teacher, Aron, said that about a fourth of the students are Polish, they were almost all native English speakers. Over the course of my observations much of the time was spent on group lab work.
The teachers used disciplinary vocabulary, such as “forces”, but not much more complex language than that at the time. Primarily the material discussed was how objects moved under the effects of gravity. There was a lot of physical demonstrations of movement both performed by the teachers and also within a video that was shown in class. It was standard lecture format, where the teacher would ask an occasional question and if someone answered it then move on. Meaning there was minimal assessment of the material being learned in those instances. No literacy strategies were performed. The only accommodation I had witnessed was of a student who came in during the teacher’s lunch to retake an exam.
Students lab instructions included diagrams and graphs, as well as instructions for the students to create graphs of their own, engaging in deeper discipline specific literacy.
Digital literacy was high for these classes. During labs the students interacted with several forms of technology, both the less familiar detectors to sense and record speed of objects as well as their chromebooks that all students possessed. The teacher said that often the technical equipment had a phone app companion software, and so the chromebooks were optional, especially since he said the student’s phones were often more powerful computing devices than the chromebooks and could take in the data from the equipment better than the chromebooks. The utilization of digital literacy did not end there. The students had regular homework assigned through Wiley Plus, a facilitator of online homework, that all students in the class were expected to be able to access and complete.
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Based on the context where you observed, I can't say I'm too surprised by what you observed. When students 'come with it' to school, many teachers have the opportunity to coast, because students are positioned well to do school and go through the motions. I believe this is one of the reasons why National Assessment data (e.g. the NAEP) are stagnant. The Common Core and NGSS explicitly articulate that literacy should be embedded across the content areas and the fact that you're not seeing it across the observation is problematic. Surely, one can make the argument that if you're not seeing high-quality disciplinary literacy instruction here, then you cannot expect to see it in a school that is under-resourced.
ReplyDeleteFinally, your reflection speaks to the digital divide that exists...not an issue of access, per se, but the degree to which the technology supports automation vs. information goals. Students in this class are leveraging tech to generate knowledge in ways that students in other contexts are not. My suggestion is for you to ask your Science professors for some recommendations on teachers who are really doing good work in regards to disciplinary literacy and begin to draw comparisons across the classes/contexts you observe. Thank you for a thoughtful reflection!