Reflections on fieldwork

A sampling of thoughts at the end of the day.

November 27, 2023
Today I carried out the first part of 12.6.  We had just one student presentation per period, which largely went off without a hitch, although for some reason one student in one period gave the presentation 0's across the board.  I left a note about this to my mentor teacher and will have to talk to him tomorrow about whether to count that score.  The lecture went about as they usually do, except that we had some students talking more than usual after lunch, to the point that after I had gotten the class under control, we had to skip the short video on the Russian Revolution.

The webquest turned out to be the real wild card across the three classes.  In first period I spent most of my time refocusing students who were chatting about unrelated things.  I wonder whether all students are being truthful when they claim their Chromebooks' batteries are dead, since there was a surprisingly large number.  My mentor teacher has told them in the past that one of their responsibilities is to charge up their Chromebooks before coming to school, and the knot of students around the power hub was particularly talkative.

In second period a weakness in the directions came up, which is that I wrote the directions for mapping out the final battles of World War I with the assumption that students would understand how to find information quickly on Wikipedia and what the phrase "mark the location  ...  on the map" means.  I spent second period circulating and demonstrating to students individually how to look up things up.

I thought I had learned my lesson for third period, and opened the page on the Battle of Waterloo on the Promethean board for demonstration purposes.  This didn't go as planned either.  To begin with, many students had difficulty understanding how to get to Wikipedia in the first place or how to look up pages when they were there.  Their frustration and my having to go back and re-demonstrate resulted in the explanation taking up the entire remaining 20 minutes of third period.

Reflection for the day:  I assume too much about what websites students are familiar with and how they go about finding information.  I may need to ask them directly how they do it.  I will definitely have to spell out directions more in future rather than assuming we're on the same page.

November 15, 2023
Today we did a short skit, "If WWI Was a Food Fight."  I've had to think a lot about it before I understood what didn't go right.

To begin with, when doing theater, even if only a little impromptu skit like this, I should take into account whether students are eager or reluctant to take part and whether they'll readily follow direction or want to do their own thing.  In second period, few students want to take part at all.  They did as directed, but didn't do so readily.  In third period, there were plenty of eager students, but several of them began arguing over parts.  I was already feeling slightly apprehensive about picking certain students and I think that apprehension was borne out.  So, for instance, I assigned one student to play Russia and he wanted to instead play Britain so he could do his Cockney accent.  I gave him a role because I'd denied him one in the last read-along and didn't want to make him feel like he was being shut out of everything, but I insisted he stick to the role I gave him.  It's hard because I don't think students are ready to learn if they're feeling put-upon.

Second, I didn't explore enough what it really meant to say that World War I was like a food fight.  We should have gone into why the directions included things like Italy suddenly rubbing pudding in Austria's hair or the United States jumping in at the end and pretending to have won all by him/herself.  There were many teachable moments I missed in this activity.

Third:  I am not a theatrical person.

Reflection:  Every learning activity needs to put its purpose at the forefront.  We never do things for kicks; we need to juice activities for what they're worth when it comes to students learning from them.

October 31, 2023
Finally carried out the flash debate today.  As planned, first I gave a speech talking about watching the Iraq War begin before my eyes just when I was old enough to vote, enlist or be drafted, and the importance of basing decisions on facts, voting, and making your voice heard.  Then I distributed the Yes/No cards and the sheets asking students to list three reasons for or against the U.S. declaring war on Spain in 1898, judge whether they were strong or weak reasons, and decide whether the declaration of war was justified.  I showed one last video talking about the theories on the USS Maine explosion, and while it was playing I circulated and made sure everyone understood the sheet and was filling it in.  Then the lights came back on.

Every student in every class did as directed and held up a Yes or No card.  That was satisfactory.  Next, I asked if anyone wanted to explain their choice.

In first period, a handful of students volunteered to talk.  There was an interesting bit of back-and-forth, with one student saying that since the U.S. sincerely believed Spain was responsible for the battleship's destruction, it made sense at the time to declare war.

In second period, I could get very little out of the students.  I think my attempt at a total participation technique did get a few more talking than would otherwise have been the case, but it still amounted to very few.  I then invited them to simply share what they'd written down.  No one wanted to.  I tried calling on them individually, and looking at what they'd written and found that some of them who had appeared to be filling in sheets during the video had only partially filled them in or had written only a few words (not even always enough to make sense as such).  It left me feeling like I was putting them on the spot.

Reflection for the day:  With all my students, but second period especially, if I'm going to use TPTs, they can't be ones that require speaking aloud.