Tutoring Reflection 2, 2-24
Greetings,
Again I went into Mrs. Smith’s 8th grade Algebra class. Today Mr. Johnson*, the intern teacher, was in charge of the class as he had students correct homework and then assigned a new homework. The students were allowed to work in pairs, as I walked around the room to answer any questions. Although I was not able to construct any meaningful dialog between the students and me, I do have some comments on time management in the class.
When class began, Mr. Johnson told the students to get their homework from yesterday out and he proceeded to go around the classroom and sign each student’s homework with the number of problems completed. He then went through the answers orally, answering the student’s questions as they came up. By the end the process took 30-35 minutes, more than half of the time allotted for the class. Mr. Johnson also had many discipline problems, even going so far as to kick one student out of class for a short time.
This method, obviously, seems to be problematic at best, but there must be some logic behind it. First, this allows the student to check his or her work and get immediate feedback. This is also good to make students mindful of their mistakes, as they are allowed to use their notes on the tests. Second, this method of orally checking the work keeps a majority of the students engaged with the material. The discipline problems were only focused on a few students.
There are problems however. First off, there were a few students who seemed to drift off, or even go so far to go to sleep. I would suppose, from speaking with a few students, that the reason they drifted off is the lack of homework completed. I would suppose that if Mr. Johnson gave those students who did not complete the homework a problem that they were required to answer aloud, the students would be more active in the class.
Secondly, it took a majority of the class period. Although I accept the defense that there really was no major idea being taught today, I would hope that it could be done more quickly if there was another concept to be taught that day. I would suggest that either the homework be handed in for correction by the teacher, or a quicker way be devised. Since I am not a major proponent of the teacher correcting homework when the students will gain from it more if they corrected it themselves, I would suggest that another way be found. I would suggest that each student be assigned a problem to answer aloud in the proper place. This would integrate the students more fully into the correction process, and the answers would come more quickly. Then I would suggest that Mr. Johnson answer any questions and then move on.
Perhaps I am still impressed by my own algebra teacher’s method of managing this routine. This might blind me of other bonuses that might be evident to Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Smith. But, overall, I would still be in support of my Algebra teacher’s method.
*Name has been changed
February 27th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
[...] This comment is in response to Chris Bauer’s teaching reflection #2. I am impressed that you took what we read in the Weinstein chapter and applied it to your tutoring situation. One thing I like to think about when I am observing someone else teach is what is going through their minds when they teach. Obviously, no teacher goes up to the front of the class expecting their lesson to bore the students to death and cause them to misbehave. It is good that your critique of the student teacher included strategies that you would use, or things that you have seen previous teachers do, but I guess I would urge you not to be too hard on the student teacher, because it takes experience to be able to command a classroom. I liked your suggestions for other ways that the class could have been run more effectively, but I think that when we student teach it will be a humbling experience for all of us. If I were in your situation, I would think of questions to ask the student teacher, such as, “what did you wish to accomplish during this lesson? Do you think you accomplished it? What things would you like to change for next time?” I think we might be surprised by his/her answers. We can also apply these questions to our own teaching, which is ultimately the most important experience for ourselves. Sorry if this came off preachy, I just think that perhaps what you see is not necessarily the result the teacher wanted, and perhaps watching a novice teacher’s mistakes will help us prevent some of our own. [...]