Checking for Understanding: April 23, 2013

I had some trouble observing for checking for understanding today.  The class schedule was a little off, because the students go to science on Tuesdays and Fridays, which shortens their math class.  During math, the students were reviewing for MCA's.  This was the first lesson I observed.  The second lesson I observed was reading, which was a lesson on inference, yet the teacher only focused on questioning.  For this lesson, another teacher comes into the room to help out.  As I observed fro checking for understanding, I didn't see a lot of it throughout the lessons.  Here is what I saw overall:
Walking around and observing: the teacher checked to make sure her students were one task throughout the lessons, especially when there was a worksheet or notes to be written.  During math, she mostly stays at the front of the room though, available to about six students.
Calling on students who aren't raising their hands: the effect of this was that the student would usually get embarrassed and scramble.  It often got them back on task for at least a few minutes.  Most of the students took a long time to figure out the answer but got it eventually.  The teacher moved on when the student responded correctly, or sometimes would give a small reprimand for being off-task, then would move on.
Group answers/calling out: this totally depended on participation.  There were times when students just looked bored and tired and didn't participate even though I highly suspect they knew the material.  At other times, they were all responding.  If I were teaching, I would think most of my students didn't understand something when the participation is down.  The teacher didn't have any responses to this today.
Faking an incorrect answer: the kids responded to this right away, showing that they did understand.  They corrected her and she had a student explain why.  I think this was a good way to get a reaction out of the kids to see if they knew what they answer should be.

Closing Assessments: For math, there wasn't really a closing assessment for this lesson.  The teacher collected the homework, however everyone did it together in class guided by the teacher.  I think this lesson was a little strange in terms of assessment, because of the MCA review.  If I had taught it, I think I would have created another review or set of questions to be done on the board together (or promethean if I had one) and then given them either the worksheet they did or an exit slip.  I would have switched it so the main focus of the lesson wasn't the practice test questions they were doing, but the material they were going over.  For the reading lesson I watched, the students shared the questions they were writing while reading at the end of the lesson.  Only a few students shared.  I did like this, however I might have done either a partner share with it so all kids could share something.  Alternatively, I might have had them write their question down on an exit slip, collect them all, then read off questions as the start of the transition (when you hear your question, go get your backpack).  It was also a little hard to fully analyze the closing assessment because I was thinking of the objectives of the lesson.


Question of the Day: Today I asked what else the teachers do to prepare the kids for MCA's or other big testing days.  The students did their review today, and had a packet over the weekend for homework that was a mock test.  They also had homework due tomorrow that was another practice test.  They take a practice test in January, which only five of the 20 students met standards.  The school also follows a curriculum that starts preparation three weeks before the test.  The mental math or math review at the beginning of the lesson is devoted to MCA review.  Unfortunately, the coordinator in the school didn't give teachers that memo or let them know, so that wasn't done this year.

Tomorrow I will: Observe instructional strategies, and choose case study students.