Running Head: Field Observation Adaptation 1

Field Observation Adaptation

Karen Lopez Gonzalez

College of Southern Nevada

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Part A. Classroom Video Questions.

Name of the Video: Classroom Management (Secondary)

URL of the video watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvZyE02EZ8U

Grade level: 8th and 10th

This is a small science class of thirteen students. It contains six females and seven males.

The class is mostly made up of Black and White students. There doesn’t seem to be any ELL

students but the short video doesn’t give much time to student interviews. Each desk can

accommodate two students and two desks are grouped together in a line. From what I could see

the class is arranged so that 24 students could attend the class (please see below for a diagram.)

When the camera passes over the classroom at the beginning of the video Ms. Woodson is

standing in front of the class using a whiteboard, from there you can see students working in

groups on an experiment. I was not able to make out what they are working on but it’s a very

back to the basics style of class.

In the beginning, Ms. Woodson instructed the entire class from the front of the

classroom, from there the students paired up to work on their projects. She walks through the

rows of desks and stops to talk to the groups and offer individual assistance. She assesses her

classroom management style as firm but fair and very structured. I believe that her educational

philosophy aligns with Essentialism. I came to this conclusion when analyzing what she calls

inappropriate behaviors and her list of classrooms do's and don'ts. Ms. Woodson asks kids to

remain seated and quiet during class and does not give hall passes during class. All this points to

a teacher-centered philosophy where the focus is on traditional academic disciplines. She

engages her students auditorily by giving clear and understandable instructions before allowing

them to meet with partners. After each child is able to engage in tactile learning by doing the
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experiment themselves. One of her students said Ms. Woodson knows what every kid is like, she

knows what they are able to do and how they can excel.

At first glance, I would believe that this class is structured. Students are shown taking

notes, pulling papers out of their folder, or following along on their worksheet. As she's walking

through the desk talking to her pupils, a student in the second-row raises her hand to engage in

conversation. There is one time she has students transition from listening to the lecture to

working in pairs. Before she allows them to work on their own Ms. Woodson lists what is

expected of them to do. The main way she demonstrated getting a student’s attention was by

calling their name or walking up to them. Ms. Woodson is a teacher that believes in structure,

routines, and boundaries.

It is clear Ms. Woodson sees herself as an intellectual and moral role model for the

students. When her students are interviewed they say they value her clarity, her ability to manage

the class, and her fairness. At the end of the clip, she is seen happily shaking a student’s hand

while others wait patiently for a moment to speak with her.

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Name of the Video: Whole Brain Teaching: High School Math

URL of the video watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6WJdsb0dfM

Grade level: High School algebra

This is a vibrant math class with posters and signs in cheery colors. It contains nineteen

students and is equal parts female and male. There only seems to be a few students of color in the

class, the majority of the class is made up of White students. There are three rows of desks,

students are paired at each desk. The two middle desks of each row, in front of the whiteboard,

are linked. Ms. DeWit seems well prepared for the lesson having placed multiple posters and

signs on the Whiteboard as well as created a little story to explain the four different kinds of

slope.

I think her method of incorporating the sensory modalities is phenomenal. When

delivering instructions she starts by explaining the topic to the entire class. By explaining with a

story, she captures auditory learners. With the pictures and the posters, it is very clear for visual

learners to understand the difference in each type of slope. And as she teaches, she has hand

gestures and other signals that help to further get the point across. She has her students copy her

movements. While doing this, she engages everyone and really captivates kinetic learners. After

instructing, in each pair of students she has someone who will explain with words as well as with

hand gestures and someone who copies.

I would say that her teaching philosophy is more student-centered and her teaching style

is learn-by-doing. She found a way to integrate activities to facilitate learning for her students.

When transitioning from traditional lecture to mirroring teaching she says “Mirror me please”

letting students know that she wants them to copy her movements. Then when moving from
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whole-class teaching to paired learning she leads the class in a small handclap rhythm and says

“teach.” The clapping is an attention-getting device, and it allows her to punctuate and separate

specific points or subjects. Once they are ready to move on she’ll call for their attention with the

“class-yes” method. Students are engaged during all parts of the lecture whether it is by

listening, mirroring, or teaching to their partners. Another strategy she uses to maintain their

attention is a point system. The video does not go into what the points are for but it does show

the class reacting to getting and losing a point.

Ms. DeWit has done a lot to keep students engaged throughout the class. It is safe to say

she expects students to follow along, pay attention to the lesson, and understand the topic. She

makes her expectations very clear and the points are her way of showing when her expectations

were met and when it fell short. She gave a point when everyone was mirroring each other and

took one away when they didn’t do the last part of the activity. Ms. DeWit taught the basics of

slope, had a specific learning target, she had a formative assessment, engaged every student in

the room, as well as celebrated students’ success all in five minutes. She is very upbeat and her

students respond well to her teaching style.

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Name of the Video: 12th Grade ELA

URL of the video watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KWX452cEvk

Grade level: 12th

The general make-up of this class is very diverse. You can see many Black, White,

Asian, and Latino looking students of both sexes. All students seem to be speaking English, none

appear to be English Language Learners. The classroom is set up with five columns, each has at

least six desks (please see diagram below). Throughout the lesson, this teacher used her

Smartboard to post a discussion prompt, highlight, and underline the essential information. She

also noted her students' responses there. She started the class with whole group instruction letting

them know what they would be discussing and allowing them time for individual thought before

telling them to discuss with their peers. Once they were sharing their thoughts with each other

she walked around the room checking on individuals. After she had talked to and checked on

everyone she went back to Leading the class discussion.

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I believe her teaching philosophy is closest to Perennialism. The class was working on

William Shakespeare’s Othello. She conducts the class discussion in a Socratic Teaching style.

Students were evaluating character roles, and she asked a few students like Jordan to explain

their reasoning. Her class seems to be very auditory and visual learning-based, however, in the

background of the classroom you can see a small scale model of a house possibly used for

engaging kinetic learners. Students are very excited to share their ideas, almost everyone raised

their hand to give examples. After she had gone around the room and knew everyone was ready

to move on she called attention back to the front before transitioning to class discussion.

Her students are very orderly, they came to class prepared and we're quiet while she was

explaining the role of a fool in literature. When a student reached a correct answer quickly she

was very pleased and asked the class to snap for him, which they did. Not only did this call

attention to the student’s answer but it refocused the class. At the end of the lively debate, she

praised them for their cooperation and responses and asked them to snap for each other. Students

were very engaged when she stepped away from literature to talk about pop culture references.

While she does not verbally express her expectations for student learning, it's clear that

she values students’ participation in class discussion. Many students raised their hands twice, but

she made it a point to call on different students every time. When the kids were discussing

among themselves she walked by checking on each of them and discussed their answers. During

the one on one time her students seemed comfortable and confident interacting with her. There

wasn’t any particular student that got called on more and there weren't students yelling out

answers. You can tell she didn’t take herself too seriously. When her students didn’t understand

a reference she was quick with a joke about her age.

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Name of the Video: 11th Grade Mathematics

URL of the video watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyDTdzEc6mA

Grade level: 11th

The general make-up of the class is mostly White but there are two Asian and two Black

students. Desks are arranged in seven groups of four students each. For her lesson, she used an

overhead projector and worksheets. She had her students use tools such as calculators and dry

erase boards. Instructions were delivered to the whole class, but she offered assistance to each

small group. Students were invited to share their graphs using the overhead projector. By trying

to make the math problem more relatable to real-life she strikes me as a progressive teacher. She

gave the example of an Olympic contestant trying to win the 100-meter dash and at the end of

the class, she asked for other professionals that might need to use that formula for something.

Her kids are seen working in small groups and are talking freely about the problem.
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I believe having the students plot the data on a graph helps them visualize and understand

how speeds are decreasing in the 100-meter dash. When the lesson started and it was time for the

individual thought the class was silent. Students can be seen reading their worksheets and

assessing the figures. Before she lets students work in teams she gives clear instructions on what

and where to write their information. When transitioning back to a whole-class discussion she

puts up new questions before calling their attention back to the front.

One thing that got her students' attention was at the beginning of the video she said the

winning team would get a prize. When she said this you could see excitement in the students'

faces. I believe the sense of competition motivated them and correlated well with the story of

having to find the correlation coefficient for the 100- meter dash times. When she wanted their

attention for the reveal of the correct answer she had students do a drum roll. Her goal is to make

students intelligent problem solvers who can work well with other people. She have rapport with

students such as Donny who was quick to identify Michael Phelps. She knew he would know

him because Donny is a swimmer as well. She also gave winning students “gold medals.”

Overall her students seem to like her and weren’t afraid to ask when they needed help.
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Part B Edutopia
A Student-Centered Model of Blended Learning

https://www.edutopia.org/video/student-centered-model-blended-learning

This quick video explains how educators in Washington are leaving the traditional

lectures for a self-paced blended learning model. In a traditional lecture format once a topic is

delivered a teacher must move on to another leaving some kids behind. Students enter these

classes knowing they will pick up the lesson where they left off which has led to lower anxiety

levels in the students. There are three stages a student must pass to complete the lesson and move

on. The first is blended learning which includes watching instructional videos and taking guided

notes. This allows students to pause or rewind as needed until they understand the subject. While

some are working on this others are on stage 2 self-paced structure. They work on actual lesson

assignments and collaborate with others on whiteboards. Lastly, mastery-based grading which is

a short quiz that demonstrates the student has grasped the concept, after they have passed the
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quiz they can start the next lesson. I learned teachers not only have the struggle of classrooms

containing students with varying levels of academic performance but have to deal with catching

up students with lower in-seat attendance rates. While I think Blended learning would have its

drawbacks in grading or with standardized testing overall I think it is a great idea. It gives

students who are at the end of the bell curve more of a chance to pass the class, while also

making it more challenging for advanced students by letting them work at their own pace. And

you could lean on students that are ahead to help others while you focus on students who need

more individual attention.

Level 4: Analyzing: How do you think this model would compare to traditional teaching when it

comes to standardized testing if students are on different topics all the time?

Level 5: Judge the complexity of keeping up with grade book requirements for a teacher whose

students are working on different lessons, especially for those students who take longer on a

given topic.

Level 6 Creating: Many classrooms in Clack county don’t have enough computers for each

student or they have to share laptops with other classes. How can you adapt this blended learning

model if your class doesn’t have access to computers every day?

Inviting Participation With Thumbs-Up Responses

https://www.edutopia.org/video/inviting-participation-thumbs-responses

Ann Young, a middle school teacher has come up with an innovative way to encourage

participation from larger numbers of kids in her class. This method allows time for students to

think after a question is asked, once the student has an answer they give a subtle signal, a thumbs

up at their belly. Students who take a little longer to reach an answer are not discouraged by
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peers who reach an answer quicker and raise their hands. The subtle signal allows for

participation from people who might be reserved or introverted so they can have an entry point to

engage in the lecture as well. I believe this could benefit kids who have a harder time speaking

up or have social anxiety. I have questions over how this teacher manages over-eager kids who

might shout out the answers or students who do not want to participate.

Level 5 Evaluating: argue the effectiveness of this method when students will leave your class

and go back to raising their hands and calling out answers in their other classrooms.

Level 6 Creating: How would you manage students who don’t put their thumbs up because they

are reluctant to participate?

Level 6 Creating: How can you adapt this method to larger-scale classrooms where you might

not get to see the students in the back?

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Part C teacher interview

1: What was the primary reason you became a teacher?

I've always had a great passion for explaining things. When I was in high school, I'd often tutor

other kids in math, proofread papers, and so on. I remember in physics class my senior year, my

teacher let me present a lecture in class on special relativity that I had put together for fun.

Basically, I've always loved the learning process.

2: What are the main challenges you face as a teacher?

Without a doubt, student engagement and behavior management are the biggest challenges. By

itself, delivering content is not difficult. Books, YouTube videos, and websites have all the

information students need, no matter the subject. But you can't just hand students materials and

expect them to learn anything, especially when it comes to skills. Students have to be motivated

to learn the material and to engage with it in a way that helps them process it. For curriculum,

this means making the material relevant and interesting, but also not overwhelming to the point

where students disengage or get confused. For teaching itself, this means setting clear

expectations that promote student learning and designing activities that help students to digest

concepts.

Some young people, though, fight me on both counts. They don't want to engage with the

material and they don't want others to engage with it, either. It's not many students, but it only

takes two or three in a class before the whole classroom climate shifts, and suddenly nobody is

working. I'd estimate at least half of my attention during class is dedicated towards keeping those

students on-task.

3: What is the best part of being a teacher?

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The relationships you build with students. For teenagers, everything is either tragedy or triumph:

work, grades, friends, family, everything. You feel for them when they come to you asking for

advice or help, and you get to celebrate with them when they have their successes and victories.

It's the most rewarding part of the job.

4: How do you determine where students sit in class?

I've alternated in different years between seating charts and student choice. With seating charts, it

starts out random, then I start being more selective once I get to know students. With student

choice, I'll only move students if there are behavior issues, and it's usually just a temporary

arrangement.

To be honest, though, I don't know that I've seen much difference in outcomes. In randomized

groups, students quickly make friends with those around them, so any benefit there might have

been to separating friends is quickly lost. Student choice seating also allows for better

compliance when I ask students to group up or switch seats.

5: How do you select members of any flexible groups?

It depends on the activity. Surprisingly, students seem to naturally form heterogeneous groups

based on skill level. With few exceptions, groups tend to have a mix of high- and low-performers

and a mix of motivated and disengaged students. I usually just tell them to find a group of (4-6)

students and give them a list of roles. Jigsaw activities work well for this, too, since their break-

out groups can help low-performers and disengaged students to at least bring something back to

the group.

6: How often do you interact with parents in person? What are the main reasons for interactions

with parents?
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In-person contact is rare and is usually just during parent-teacher conferences. Mostly, I use

email or phone calls home to contact parents. Although I'd like to say that the majority of

contacts are positive, that's not the case, especially with older teens. Usually, if I'm calling or

emailing home, it's for attendance or discipline issues that haven't resolved through classroom

management strategies. Parents are usually supportive of helping me with interventions.

7: How much grading do you complete on a daily/weekly basis?

Officially, we're supposed to update the grade book by Friday every week. Realistically, it

depends on the work being assigned. Essays and projects can take me a week or two to grade,

while I can check worksheets and small things every day after school. If we're talking formative

work, like exit tickets and checks for understanding, I try to look at those before the next class I

have with them, since that's the only way I can adapt my lessons to fit what students did or didn't

understand. However, I might not put in the points for that work right away (if at all), since that's

not really the point of formative work.

8: How long does it take to prepare lessons for the day/week?

I'm usually spending 2-4 hours preparing materials for each lesson, about 4-10 hours a week.

Keep in mind, though, that this varies greatly depending on the teacher, grade level, subject, and

experience. For some lessons, you can reuse materials from last year, borrow things from other

teachers or outside resources, or have activities that require less preparation overall. For others,

you might be starting from scratch or have to make several worksheets, a slide presentation, and

find other materials.

9: What procedures or strategies do you use to maximize instructional time?

There are a few tricks that I use, though their effectiveness depends on the class and

circumstances. As with most teachers, the most basic one is some type of bell-ringer or do-now
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that the students can work on as soon as they walk in the door. Instructionally, it serves two

purposes: (1) it settles students into instructional time by quieting them down and getting them

ready to work, and (2) it usually introduces the lesson either by continuing a discussion or idea

from last time or by raising a new issue that the lesson will discuss. It's not enough, though, to

just have a bell-ringer. Part of the routine is making sure that students do it and that it serves

some useful purpose.

For me, I also have a cell phone policy that adapts to the work being done in the classroom.

During direct instruction or test time, I ask that students put their phones completely away (red

light). During independent work time, students can check their phones or listen to music (yellow

light). When students are finished with their work for the day, they can use their phones freely

(green light). The advantage I've found with this policy is that it makes sense to students. A lot of

teachers who try to ban all phone use all the time end up fighting with the whole class at all

stages of instruction. Generally, although I have students who get distracted occasionally, I have

much better cell phone compliance than other teachers when it comes to testing and high-stakes

situations, as it's obvious to my students when I am being serious or not about the need for their

attention.

Other than that, I also spend the first couple of weeks practicing basic classroom routines, like

grouping up, moving the desks, cleaning up areas around groups, and so on. For the most part,

students will comply if they know exactly what you expect them to do when you say, for

example, "get into groups of 4," but you have to be specific. Does it have to be with the people

around them? Do they need to move the desks? What if they can't find a group? If you can get

the students to take care of these issues themselves, you don't have to worry about managing it

yourself.
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10: What positive reinforcements you used successfully? What behavioral consequences seem

most effective with this age group?

To be clear, if we're talking about rewards and punitives, I hand out a lot of candy as incentives

or rewards for good work and do one-on-one conferences in the hall with students when we have

problems. If we're talking in more precise terms about reinforcement and punishment, it's not

always clear that candy or conversations encourage good behavior or discourage bad behavior.

Some students aren't motivated by candy, and many students who act out do so for more

attention, which is what a hallway conference is.

In my experience, recognition is the most effective reinforcer. It could be in the form of candy, a

quick comment on a worksheet, or public praise, even if a student hasn't done the best job in the

class. This is why Kahoot is effective, but only really for the first 3-5 students: they get to see

their names on the leaderboard. Students feel engaged when they are seen or heard, and that

motivates them to stay engaged.

Punishments are tougher, especially with older students, because you're often competing with

preferred reinforcements. For example, consider a student who distracts their group with an off-

task conversation. Yelling at the student or taking them aside for a one-on-one talk just further

reinforces the behavior, as those students are really just looking for attention. In these cases, I

find that moving the student is the easiest option, though it doesn't really solve the root problem.

As soon as the student moves back, the off-task conversation resumes, and sometimes that

student will cause more distractions after moving than they did before. That's generally why it's

better to reinforce a student's good behavior instead of punishing the bad. Most teenagers know

that teachers don't hold much real power over students, so you're better off trying to convince

them to do good things than to get into a confrontation.

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11: How are specialist teachers involved in your instructional planning and process?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by specialist teachers, but we have instructional coaches who

are supposed to help us with planning. Honestly, though, almost all of our planning is done in

our professional learning communities (PLCs), which are the other teachers who teach our same

grade levels and subjects. So, for example, every other day, I meet with the other 11th-grade

English teachers for a full class block in order to plan our lessons and discuss our classrooms.

Occasionally, our instructional coaches will come to these meetings, but their involvement is

limited.

12: How often are you evaluated, and what measurement tool is used by the administration for

determining your teaching performance?

We have formal observations using the Nevada Educator Performance Framework (NEPF)

standards each year. Here's a link to the full rubric. Officially, first-year teachers have 3 formal

observations, second-year teachers get 2, and all teachers get at least 1. However, in practice, all

teachers get at least 3, and our administrators use data from all of them to create our evaluations

at the end of the year. The evaluation (different from the observation) includes our student

learning goals (SLGs) and professional practice goals (PPGs) that we set at the beginning of the

year. Basically, if we hit the NEPF standards and indicators, if our students show significant

learning progress, and if we demonstrate growth in our practice, our evaluations are positive. Our

administrators work with us to make sure we hit these standards and goals, though, so it's not

exactly like an assessment.

13: What consequences are there if your evaluation is not favorable?

If a teacher fails to meet expectations, they can be put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)

where they have to submit lesson plans to their administrators and the instructional coaches
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ahead of time. Their lessons are also routinely monitored by those same people, and they receive

feedback and areas of focus to improve on. In a worst-case scenario, a teacher can be asked not

to return the following year, though I have never personally seen anyone who has been forced

out of a job.

14: What surprised you most about teaching as a profession?

The day-to-day teaching work. As I mentioned earlier, content is easy. Anybody with experience

in a subject can list the content that students need to know. As an English teacher, I can tell

students what to read, give them vocabulary lists, and provide them with a guide on the rules of

grammar and punctuation, but that's not what teaching is about. Before I became a teacher,

though, that's what I thought it was: give students stuff, explain it well, and they will learn it.

Instead, the vast majority of my time is spent convincing young people to do something they

don't want to do. In many ways, it's like being a parent. Unfortunately, in the education classes

that I've taken, this doesn't come across very well.