Derrick Smith
EDUG-507
Clinical Observations
Professor Zbeeb
I completed my clinical observations over a two day period at CarlSandburgHigh School. The high school is predominately white and located in an upper middle class suburb, Orland Park. In my two days at Sandburg I observed a senior honors English class, and an Advanced Placement economics class.
Clinical One
In my first observation hours I analyzed the problem solving techniques exhibited by the teacher. With observing an English class it is a little more difficult to explicitly see problem solving techniques in the classroom. Ill-defined problems are more prevalent in an English classroom. Since most problems are ill-defined there is not always an explicit problem solving procedure that can be followed by both teachers and students. In the first class I observed, the teacher was presenting the class with a Shakespeare assignment. The students were to work in groups for the assignment and they needed to analyze and perform a scene from a Shakespeare play to the class. The teachers explanation of the assignment provided an example of the problem solving process the students need to undergo to successfully complete the assignment. The process was not as detailed as one a math teacher might give on how to successfully factor and equation, but the problem solving method used by the teacher was appropriate for the content. The teacher spoke of how the students need to analyze their scene first and pick out what themes and messages they believed were important. Second, the teacher talked about the learning of lines for the scene. He mentioned that was important to know what themes the groups were going to try and present because the presented themes will influence how the lines will be said. Finally, the teacher explained how modest costumes and props could be used to bring the scene to life. I thought the three-step problem solving method used by the teacher was extremely effective. The students were presented with an open-ended assignment, but the teacher was still able to provide a problem solving model for the students. The teacher showed the students the exact sequence of thinking the students should use. While the teacher provided a problem solving model for students, the students were still given freedom to interpret and express the content of the assignment.
Clinical Two
I observed the components of clinical hour two most vividly in my second day of observation. In my second day observing the honors English class I observed a teacher relating class content to the lives of students. The class was given a handout of a poem by Robert Herick. The poem “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” was written in 1648 and comments on the importance of “making the most” of time in your life. The poem was read out loud by the teacher to the class. The teacher needed to explain the alternate definition of “virgin” for the students. The teacher then directly related the themes of the poem to the students. The teacher talked of setting dreams and goals for yourself and making the most of everything you do. Since the class is comprised of all seniors, the themes of the poem were very relevant. The students are upper level students so all of them are going to college, and they also are about to leave behind many of their friends as they leave for school. The themes of the poem helped remind students to value their final few months in high school and with their friends. The teacher perfectly incorporated the real life issues of students to the content of the class. The students were taught the skills of close reading and analysis to pull out the themes of the poem. Then the students were able to relate that same content and themes to their own lives.
Clinical Three and Clinical Five
Since the English class I observed did not have a lot of material presented in lecture form, I decided to complete my third hour of observation in the Advanced Placement economics class. During the hour I observed the class was learning about productivity and profit curves. The teacher presented a detailed lecture through a PowerPoint Presentation. The lecture had examples of content and also ways to assess students learning while they were learning the material. When the teacher checked for student understanding he did not simply ask questions that required one word answers. The teacher provided hypothetical situations to students, and then called on one student to see their answer. By presenting hypothetical situations, the teacher was able to see if students were able to apply the information from the lecture. After the first hypothetical was given, the teacher called on several students who didn’t exhibit enough understanding of the concepts. The teacher then went back and elaborated on the concepts again. Another hypothetical situation was given to the students, and this time the students exhibited a better understanding. The teacher was able to assess the students and himself at the same time. He wanted to how well both him and the students performed in the class that day. I thought this was valuable because not all teachers perform both self and student evaluations in the class. The teacher also checked for understanding at the end of the lecture. He asked the students to put in their own words the definitions of some of the concepts addressed in the lecture. I thought this was effective because the students were forced to think about the material they were presented. They weren’t able to just go back and copy down a definition. They had to formulate their own definition. This will increase student retention and understanding of the concepts.
I thought that some of the examples of what the teacher did in the classroom fit perfectly into the requirements for clinical five. The way the teacher conducted the lesson exemplified several remembering and encoding techniques. The teacher asking the students to put the definition in their own words helped encode the information for them. The visual representations given through the PowerPoint presentation were examples of imagery and could have helped “dual-code” the information for the students. The teacher also used cues that would be present at encoding and present at retrieval. The teacher also provided examples questions from previous A.P. economics tests to check for student understanding. This is a perfect example of what the clinical question was asking. By showing students direct questions from A.P. tests they are learning from information that will be asked of them when they are trying to retrieve it on the A.P. exam. I would say that this teacher was conscious of the context of remembering throughout the lesson. He was trying to continually check for student understanding, and also give students the necessary tools to be able to retrieve that information when called upon.
Clinical Four
For my fourth hour of observation I was able to see a teacher using models that related information learned earlier in the class to current classroom content. The class was working on a group project that involved making a videotape. The school has a large amount of video equipment for the students to use. The students were to work in groups of 4-6 students and make their own videotape or story. The story in the tapes would be made from taking characters out of books previously read in the course. Some of the works the students could choose from were The Great Gatsby, The Awakening, and All the Kings Men. The students were to take these character and act out a story on videotape that reflected some of the pervasive themes seen in the books they have read in the class. I was able to view some of these tapes and I thought the students did an unbelievable job. One group took characters from all of the books and modeled their play off of the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and did a lot of their filming at the FieldMuseum in Chicago. Another group modeled their play off of a VH1 television show about the lavish life of celebrities. I thought the project showed an awareness by the teacher of what knowledge the students in the class had. The teacher understood what topics and themes had been covered in the class coursework. He was aware of what the students were exposed to, and he was able to let the students show what they knew through a fun group project. The project was open-ended enough for students to use their creativity. I was not present when the teacher explained the assignment, but I was able to view their assignment handout. The teacher listed themes from the books to consider while the students were thinking of how to construct their performance. I thought this was a nice way to tie problem solving information already known for the students to the task at hand. By writing down a couple suggestions of themes, the students were more easily able to recall those themes and apply them to the current assignment. Overall, the assignment was a nice way to tie together a large amount of information learned from earlier in the class. The assignment was a great example of a teacher bringing a large portion of the class content together