Photo courtesy The Library of Congress
On January 19th, 2009 the sophomore class of XXXXXXX High School were asked to partake in a discussion about community service in response to a brief video featuring President Obama talking about the importance of Martin Luther King , Jr. Day and what it ought to be—a day of community service. The following is an analysis of the attempted discussion , with the intent to utilize the data to improve discussion within the classroom. Throughout the analysis I will refer to myself as “the teacher” in an attempt to distance myself and remain as objective as possible.
Physical Setting
The classroom is fairly large approximately 60’ x 30’. The door to the room is in the middle of the west wall, effectively splitting the room in two. The teacher’s desk is opposite the door facing out from the east wall. The south wall is covered by a white board and the north wall contains two closets in each corner separated by a row of computers. The students sit at an assortment of two-person tables. The tables are aligned in three rows on the south side of the room and two rows on the north side of the room; each side is facing towards the center of the room, where a natural isle has been created, between the door and the teacher’s desk. While the room is fairly large, the tables do not accommodate a circular layout. The room is painted white with blue trim after the school colors. On the three walls not covered by the white board are large posters created by the students that display the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens” created by Steven Covey. Posters of the Six Traits of writing and the unit learning goals are the only other decorations on the wall.
Clear Purposes for Discussion
The discussion was part of a larger unit on the “American Dream”. The students were provided learning goals at the beginning of the unit, they are on display and referred to daily. The three learning goals for the unit are:
- I will understand the concept of the “American Dream” during the Harlem Renaissance and Post World War II eras in relation to race, culture, and prejudice, and I will be able to make connections with my life and dreams.
- I will be able to read text like the author intended it to be read. I will pay close attention to punctuation, dialogue, and sentence rhythm so I can read with proper intonation, pace, and emphasis.
- I will be able to take a critical stance and express judgments of people or things according to certain standards or values and express my understanding through a multi-genre presentation.
Prior to the discussion these goals were not mentioned. The students were in a routine of watching a short video clip and doing a written response to the video. The teacher referred to this, “We will be responding to this, like we have with the other videos. Please look at the question at the bottom of your page that goes along with video number two”. No other link was provided prior to the discussion.
Teacher Caring/Affect/Interest/ Enthusiasm
The teacher positioned himself near the door of the room. This placed him between the North half of the room and the south half of the room and allowed eye contact between both halves of the room as well as effectively placing him at the center of attention. The teacher smiled six times, twice in response to his own comments and four times in response to student comments. He held his arms across his chest for thirty seconds near the end of the discussion. This was most likely due to comfort than a barrier act. The majority of the discussion (nine out of 13 minutes) the teacher held his hands clasped behind his back. This posture was typically assumed while listening to student response or while walking amongst the students to observe written responses. The rest of the time the teacher used his arms to point and to gesture while talking or questioning. Three times the teacher walked with his hand in the air, which is the class signal to cease talking and bring eyes back to the teacher. This was used when students broke out into table talk that was off topic. The teacher shared personal experiences, “I was part of a group that was able to feed twenty-five-thousand people for a day…” and “I know a pastor who always brightens up a room…”. The teacher also joked with the class, by taking a student’s misbehavior as an example of selfishness that brings a class down. The teacher was familiar enough with the student to be able to bring laughter to the class. The teacher did not use any physical contact, such as a pat on the shoulder, to display approval.
Discussion Support Activities
Prior to the discussion the students were given a response question, “Have you ever participated in any community service? Why did do it and do you think it was important? Why or why not?” They were then shown a video about the purpose of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that discussed the importance of community service as an additional prompt to their writing. After the video the students were asked to do a three minute free-write in response to the question. After the free-write the discussion began.
Questioning Strategies
The attempted discussion lasted thirteen minutes. The teacher asked 16 questions during the duration. Sixteen students were in the class for the discussion. There were eight female students, all white and eight male students, one black and one Hispanic. There were twenty-three student responses to the questions. Seven out of the sixteen students did not respond—five males and two females. There were nine male responses to fourteen female responses. There were twenty-three responses from white students and zero responses from the non-white students. During the discussion the teacher called on three students by name, all three were female. Two were asked a direct question, the third name was used to specify a student, “What can you do to make Riki’s day better?” The questions the teacher asked were split, eight higher level thinking questions and eight lower level thinking questions. The teacher repeated the question one time; it was the only time a response to a question took longer than one second (2 seconds). The pattern of responses was almost entirely teacher-student-teacher-student. Twice there were multiple shout-outs, but the students did not respond to each other. The teacher spoke for five minutes and forty-five seconds of the thirteen minute discussion.
Assessment of Student Learning from Discussion
The students did two raise of hands surveys during the discussion, but they only were knowledge level questions and had little to do with the actual learning goal. A multi-genre presentation was implied in the learning goal where students were expected to draw upon their portfolios that contained their written responses.
Discussion Management
Every two minutes during the discussion (including the video and free-write) a snap-shot of on-task versus off-task students was taken. Only ten of the sixteen students could be observed from the camera angle. A total of eight assessments per student were taken for a total of eighty total assessments. Fifty, on-task assessments were identified and thirty off-task assessments were identified. An off-task assessment was given if the student did not have eye contact with the speaker. Three females were observed to be on-task one-hundred percent of the time. One male was observed to be off-task one-hundred percent of the time and one female was observed to be off-task seven out of eight times, all other students had a mixture of off-task versus off-task assessments. It should be noted that the two students that were off-task almost the entire conversation sat next to each other at the table farthest from the teacher, while the three that were on-task were seated closest to the teacher. Twice during the discussion the students were off-topic and the teacher brought the student back on topic by raising his hand and waiting for attention. The discussion fizzled out when students were unable to be drawn back into it through the raising of hands. One student was sent into the hallway for a hall conference. A lecture on behavior and wasting time ended the discussion and transitioned into the next part of class, which was reading from a play.
Assessment of data
The very first glaring concern for me is that nearly half of the students did not participate, seven out of sixteen students. The teacher failed to notice this issue during the discussion and never attempted to call on the students or seek input from those students. I see this as a major concern, as it does not send the message that everyone is encouraged to speak. It also concerns me, because of the seven students that did not respond four of those students are at-risk of failing the class. Another concern is that the two minority students were in the group that did not respond. One of the main learning goals was to address prejudice and racism in our society. Three of the students in the class are openly racist and have had to be sent from the class because of racist remarks. This most likely had an important effect on the non-white students’ sense of safety and comfort in responding to the discussion. The teacher and co-teachers in the class have a zero tolerance policy on racist comments; however it has not been enough to alleviate that concern. Perhaps, as the class moves into a new subject the students that are uncomfortable can be brought back into the discussion and feel more comfortable. The teacher would best help improve the level of participation by creating a planned system of calling on each students, whether it be by a seating chart, name chart, or by something similar to the reverse spiral technique mentioned in class.
The second concern I have is that the teacher talked for nearly six of the thirteen minutes and basically led the discussion in a question-response format. There wasn’t any student-student response. I think this could be improved if the teacher began with the a higher level question that was the learning goal and then was willing to wait longer for student response and encouraged student follow up. From this data, the teacher followed each student response with a new question, instead of seeking additional input, lower level questions that help students lead up to a higher level response should only be used if the students are unable to address the higher level question adequately after a reasonable number of attempts and time.
Finally, I believe that the teacher better improve the discussion by having several strategies for encouraging response when students are struggling, such as pausing the discussion to write out responses, and meta-discussions about the discussion in order to receive feedback on why a discussion is not working, perhaps the students will have insights that data cannot predict.
Mr. Pippenger 