Motivation, Engagement, and Classroom Management

An Evaluation of Cooperating Teacher for Clinical Observations
November 12, 2015

Period 1: 8^th grade Honors Math, Daren Lentz

During this class, Lentz played an “Extra credit game” with the students. The game involved basic arithmetic where three dice would be rolled and then the team would have to create a combination of those numbers using operations such as add, subtract, multiply, divide, square, etc.. I’m not entirely sure what goal was trying to be achieved by this game besides helping students improve their mental arithmetic. After the game, Lentz went over one example with his students. He let the students work on the question for a minute or two, but finished it with a large class discussion to make sure the students understood it correctly.

The last fifteen minutes of the class, the students worked on homework either with their neighbors or individually.

Period 2: 8^th grade Regular Math, Daren Lentz

Lentz also started this class with an “extra credit game.” This game involved rolling a die as well and filling in the spaces of a tic-tac-toe board with the numbers that were rolled. Different combinations of numbers had different values of points.  I think the objective of this game also was to help students work on mental arithmetic.  Then for the rest of the class period, Lentz had the students working on a work-sheet that they had been working on previously as groups or individually.

Comments:

It’s hard to define one specific type of learning activity that Lentz used in class. It seemed to be that multiple types were integrated into one class period. The great advantage about that is that the advantages of the different types of learning activities used are all present.  For example, in the honors class, the students spent some time in a large class question-discussion session, and the advantage was that they could get questions answered definitely by the teacher and make sure they are on the right track to solving the problems they’re working on.  Then when they move to the cooperative-learning session where they worked on the homework together in groups, they have the opportunity to discuss the problems with their peers and improve their understanding by explaining and verbalizing what they are doing.

In the Regular class, there wasn’t really a question-discussion session, since the game wasn’t really a discussion. But it was mostly a cooperative-learning session as they worked on the worksheet with their peers.  I think this was advantageous because students could work on problems at their own pace and explain things to each other.  Also, at this point, there were several preservice teachers in the classroom who could walk around and help students with specific problems. I also think it was advantageous because students were engaged in their work.  From what I could tell, the students stayed on-task pretty consistently with only minor distractions. This is much harder to accomplish with a large group presentation.

In general, I would say Lentz’s classes were mostly cooperative-learning sessions, and I have always found it to be very advantageous to do this type of learning activity for the reasons I have described already.

I think the disadvantage to this though, is that sometimes students still aren’t exactly sure what they are supposed to be doing and leads them to off-task behaviors. Also, if all of us preservice teachers hadn’t been there, it would’ve been harder for Lentz to be able to answer all of the questions that students had as they worked problems.  Whereas in a large group presentation, he could have addressed some of those questions in class so that all of the students could get help on the question. 

Another disadvantage could be that students would not learn the basic ideas of concepts because they would not have been explained to them (which is what I would assume would happen in a large-group presentation.) But, from what I have observed, Lentz uses different learning-activities almost every day, and he incorporates large-group presentations and question-discussion sessions depending on what goal he has for the students that day.  So ultimately, I think the best thing to do, would be to define your objective and determine the best learning-activity or combination of learning-activities to achieve that objective.  

Alternate Activity:

8^th grade Honors:

Instead of playing the extra credit game, I would engage my students in a cooperative-group learning activity as follows:

First thirty minutes of class: Put students into groups of four (or three if needed) and have them work on this task sheet

After students finish the group-work task sheet, I would initiate a full class discussion to see what people discovered. Be sure to lead students to the idea that they can break down an irregular prism into multiple regular prisms to find the volume.

After only 5 or so minutes of discussion, I’d let the students work on their homework either individually or in with peers. Their homework has more examples of this same material. At this point I would be sure to wander and answer students’ questions.