Aaron Backlin FL694 - Fall 2013 Analysis B Writeup

1.

a. This analysis took place in a Spanish Two-A (1st Trimester) class during 3rd

Period. This class was selected due to the large proportion of male students (11/18) which is very much an oddity in the FL classroom. The class is approaching midterm and has finished supplemental and review concepts, has acclimated to the routines of the class, and will be introduced to the preterit past tense of Spanish in today's lesson. The students are high school sophomores and juniors who have previously taken one full year (2 of 3 trimesters) of Spanish One. To date, the class has demonstrated a shaky command of rudimentary language abilities, and has therefore needed a great deal more supplemental assistance than past classes. One of the juniors has not been in class since the second trimester of her freshman year. b. The class today is a representative class beginning a new concept. As such, I am looking with specific interest at student engagement at the starting point of introductory activities. The concepts themselves (see below) are the starting point of new information (as opposed to supplementing and expanding on concepts from the previous year) for Spanish Two, and I believe that the data collected will be of great use. c. We will be introducing new vocabulary, conducting a refereed spontaneous discussion in small groups, presenting a new grammar concept in the preterit (-ar regular verbs today), and then working in small groups/individually for comprehension check

and homework. The goal of the lesson is to improve awareness of the preterit and use new vocabulary to express thoughts on topic (travel) in the context of past experiences. d. To address the specific requirements of the observation, I have mounted a camera (through no small effort!) to the projector screen at the front of my room in a manner that is not obvious. I am hoping that most students won't notice that I am recording them. I have also constructed and printed out documents to use to keep track of the various running records required. I have tested the focus and arrangement of the camera, and I believe that it will accurately capture students as they work on the day's activities.

2.

See attached.

3.

See attached. In comparing the post-analysis and the evaluation with the

recording, I see again that a recording can often times be insufficient to truly gather data on the goings-ons of any particular classroom or lesson. The reason in this case is that the camera mounting point, intended to monitor students' faces and engagement, is insufficient to gauge the true engagement of a classroom in a 1:1 environment. Had I realized this, I would have mounted a second camera at the back of the room which I could then use to monitor student computer screens for on-task behavior. As it is, I was unable to gain a full picture of student engagement from the tape, needing instead to rely on my recollections of student engagement and any random little signals I gave the camera when I was in the back of the room walking during the lecture portion of the lesson.

4.

This observation, as I had hoped, revealed some very useful pieces of

information. As our district experiments with the 1:1 computer initiative for students, some of the shortcomings of the program are laid bare in the video. While an indispensable resource for dissemination and gathering of information, the computer also presents a challenge to student self-control in that there tends to be a high level of distraction during work times. This caused me to reconsider some of my practices regarding initial discussion/presentation of topics to classes. In the past, I made the lecture notes available in advance on the website for the class so that students could follow along and annotate them as they might need. As the computer offers an unfortunate distraction to the students, I may alter this practice and post the notes after the discussion to avoid unnecessary distractions. However, there are still a number of students who do use the resource appropriately and do not allow themselves to get distracted, and I wonder if delaying the posting might be unfair to students who are working as expected. I noticed that students were much more attentive to the video supplements (we refer to these as the "professional actors") in the presentation of vocabulary then they were to me as we practiced pronunciation. However, students were very interested in discussion of cognates and word histories, so I may try to build more on those concepts in our treatment of vocabulary. During the presentation/lecture over the preterit past, students were by and large attentive, but then again, I had some difficulty quantifying that as the camera was not placed to show the screens of the students. I can say from my own recollection that during the lecture portion students were generally on task, though during the embedded concept checks (small practice activities), there were quite a lot of Google

Chat windows popping up and email being checked. However, this makes me wonder if we, as instructors are truly any better or less distracted? We all have some degree of "multitasking" behavior in our lives, I wonder if this might simply be a part of the technological reality in which we find ourselves. The presentation I used to introduce the new vocabulary and the -ar preterit regular endings/concept are an ongoing project and are tweaked every year for the last seven years. As such, I am fairly certain that they are working well to anticipate student confusions and curiosities. I do occasionally change wording and phrases to maintain cultural relevance (Psy was so last year...) but other than that, the basic bones have been getting the results I've been looking for in the past few years. As this was an introductory lesson, there wasn't a great deal of creation of new products, but more of a mastery and conceptual awareness check. Probably the biggest surprise of this analysis was the realization that high- and low-achieving students both waste time in different ways, but that upon reflection, time spent off-task is time spent off-task whether or not the student has a "good" reason. This led me to reconsider some of my practices in assigning homework, though I arrived at a point of frustration (details to follow).

Observation B Specific Questions a. To begin with, mounting the camera in an inconspicuous location with a good

vantage on student faces was surprisingly difficult. My room is a cracker box so finding a good place to set up a camera was no small task. Eventually this was accomplished

with the cunning use of duct tape and magnets (which, thankfully, did not erase the memory in my camera). Students are generally alert and attentive, another benefit of choosing a class later in the morning. Student voices are at appropriate levels and even sidebar conversations were generally on the topic of our discussions today. There were the typical looks of consternation and confusion, but there were likewise faces of understanding and "aha!" moments, which is always good to see. It was very interesting to see the video perspective on students, as I only have one set of eyes, I can't always see what everyone is doing at all times. As far as how I determined they were engaged, I combined the camera footage of their faces and activities, my own recollections, and the products of the day's activities. As mentioned previously, the camera placement made it impossible to use the video to view student screens, and were I to conduct the analysis again, I would place a second camera in the back of the room to better assess this. I was very grateful for the camera footage for our "Five Minute Chat" as I am usually wandering all over the room talking to small groups of students and can't actually see what other students are doing, having instead to rely on my peripheral hearing (or as the students call it my English Radar). Having the video with audio allowed me to see the very positive strides our intentional expository speaking activities are taking. I saw students helping one another with vocabulary and grammar whether I was there or not. In fact, some of the students seem to rather prefer it when I'm not there to barge in on their conversations! b. Considering turn-taking as I continue to internalize the material from Cazden, I

have found that a more specialized focus on discourse has yielded some positive results.

While this day's lesson was introductory and as such more dominated by my involvement than usual, I still made the extra effort to allow students to "take the floor" as it were and let the conversation be as organic as possible. With the time constraints we face in the classroom, the conversation can't always be as organic as we may like it to be, but even so, with a bit of additional focus and effort on the part of the educator, it can almost always be more so if it is allowed to be so. One way in which I noticed conversations of a more appreciably organic nature was in the inter-student conversations that took place during the partner/small group work time. Students were processing what they had learned during the presentation and rephrasing it in their own words, conceptualizing it on their own terms. While this can certainly be dangerous if their own words and terms are a bit off, this is a refreshing thing to see, because I often learn better ways to explain difficult concepts by asking students to explain in their own words. Likewise, I always try to program in question and answer time during presentations, and I have been seeking to be less concerned with the clock and schedule and more concerned with the quality of the conversation. To that end, and for instance, the discussion switched direction in the middle of the conversation when a student brought up the difference between "t" and "Ud." forms and was curious as to why the "Ud." form shared the third person. Instead of rushing through and pushing the question aside, I made the effort to ask questions and bring students into the conversation as we discussed (briefly I must admit) the manner of address to royalty, the royal history of Spain, and the metamorphosis of the vuestras mercedes greeting. The students were very interested in this, and when I transitioned back into the matter at hand by discussing briefly why some Hispanic boys refer to one

another as "ese," they were likewise intrigued. This ate a few minutes of time, but it deepened the students' involvement and also added to the intrinsic concept that language is a product of culture, not the other way around. What is "authentic" discourse in foreign language classrooms? I would imagine that much of what we are doing in our 5/10/15 minute daily chats (extemporaneous speech and conversation) would go a long way toward that end, inasmuch as we are making use of the target language exclusively to arrive at a point of understanding. However, in studying Spanish as an area of focus and looking into its component grammatical structures, its linguistic nuances, and its culture, we also can have authentic conversations, even if they are not in the target language. To me, authenticity of discourse is marked by the willing and eager participation of all parties involved. That is to say, discourse in my classroom in any language is authentic when my students are intentionally pursuing the discourse without force, threat, or fear of reprisal. The discourse is organic, free-flowing, and toward the end of furthering understanding. That is my take on it, at the very least. c. The students I selected from this group to monitor individually were two boys:

DG, a high-achieving student, and DJ, a low-achieving student. I selected both of these gentlemen because upon conversing with them it is very obvious that both are possessed of a keen intellect and a genuine interest in learning about foreign language and culture. However the similarities end there. DG is the stereotypical overachiever, obsessed with his GPA and involved in as many extracurricular and volunteer opportunities he can fit into his already ridiculously over-packed schedule. DJ, on the other hand, is the stereotypical slacker; he is intelligent but unwilling to demonstrate it, preferring to coast

to a B/C grade when he is easily capable of a higher mark. In all honesty, DJ reminds me very much of me in high school, another reason that I selected him for this portion of the analysis. As mentioned previously in this analysis, our school district has implemented a 1:1 laptop program, which basically means that every student grade 5-12 has a personal laptop that they use for their classes. I find that utilizing technology makes the FL enterprise significantly more tenable, and as such I use it rather a lot more than most of my colleagues. That being said, for this video, we can indeed see the faces of the students, as well as the back side of their laptops. It isn't possible to see whether or not they are on task on the front side of the laptops, so I was forced to rely somewhat on my own recollections. All told, DG was on task for 70.6% of the 60 minute class, with DJ on task for 56.23% of the class time, though with a most pronounced asterisk because I know for a fact that he was not on task during as much of the individual and group work as it looks like in the video. However, as I cannot prove that, the figure stands. Part of the class was devoted to fixing some technological issues with our learning management system, Canvas, which had been on the fritz. The Spanish department was making use of this system until it crashed, and students required some assistance putting things back together after it was fixed. This took about 7 minutes of the class time that day. As both DG and DJ are technophiles, they were interested in the layout of the revised system, but both caught on quickly, and their standard divide became obvious, as DG continued listening to make sure he understood what he thought

he did, and DJ listened for two minutes to get the general gist of the matter and then began exploring it on his own. For both students, during the final segment of the class, the full group and individual work time was not used to its maximum potential, which I found to be interesting, though upon reflection unsurprising. DG did not use the time to its full potential because he finished the material early and then began working on work for another class while also helping his group answer questions on the concept work for my class. DJ did not use the time to its full potential because he knows that I grade this sort of work on completion, and just wrote down random information and goofed off on his computer. When I did ask him about the concepts, he was able to accurately reconstruct what we talked about and demonstrated an awareness of the concept, but that has been problematic for him in the past (as I also pointed out to him) due to the fact that his conceptual awareness tends to fade quickly without the reinforcement that the activities I provide to him offer. One thing I did notice is that the students spend a lot of time listening during this sort of lesson. While this is to a certain degree inevitable during instruction on new concepts, I was under the impression that I had varied the class sufficiently to avoid cerebral shutdown (aural poisoning?). This is another thing that I might look into in the future - perhaps even move the 5 Minute Chat to a more central point in time to break tings up? However, there was also a good amount of speaking on the part of both boys, which is great to see. Writing and reading are almost always reserved for later in the units as students become acclimated to the new vocabulary and become more proficient

in the grammatical concepts we are discussing. It should be pointed out that our department values meaning over perfection in our oral interactions - we do focus more on grammar within our reading/writing work, but our main focus is the conveyance of meaning when speaking. This is not to say that we do not make corrections (subject of upcoming analysis), but rather that these are generally minor and non-confrontational. This scheme has produced good results for us so far, we are continuing to track the data. Encouraging time on task, then, is of great importance to me, personally, as a teacher. However, I do wonder as to what the northern boundary of time on task might realistically be. Is it reasonable to expect all students to be on-task all of the time? (Are we, as instructors?) It seems that in a dynamic classroom environment full of transitions, some time will inevitably be lost, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing. It seems to me that maximizing the quality of the engagement when on task is almost of more importance than the quantity of on-task behavior. While it should certainly be the goal of any instructor to make the most of the time that he or she has, the level of engagement will depend on the activity and the day. The most unexpected aspect of this analysis was that the higher-achieving students and the lower-achieving students, no matter the cause of their level of achievement, do not make use of the entirety of the classtime. The higher-achieving students will finish quickly/early and the lower-achieving students will simply cease to participate at some level. If the top student's time on task reflected only 70% of classtime and one of the lowest students in the class had 56% time on task, I'm not honestly sure if that should be something to celebrate or something to fret. As I said earlier, I do think that the time on task will inevitably vary with the task itself, and so perhaps if I were to

do a similar analysis on another task on another day, the results would be significantly different. In all, I may go back later and do a comparison to a mid-level student to see what his/her time on task looks like. Given the results of the other two students, I might presume that the mid-level students will have the highest percentage of time on task of the lot, as they will understand, but not completely, and so will work through the material with the same urgency as the high-achieving student, but without as much of the inherent ability, they will take more time. It's a thought, anyway. However, and as a final thought, I do make every effort to avoid assigning things simply to occupy time. I realize that this is certainly not what is intended in the time-on-task discussion, but some instructors might seek to bolster their time on task "performance" by simply assigning more work. I try to assign only what is useful and what needs to be done - nothing more and nothing less. If some students wind up with extra time because they are more capable or because they have made the choice to close down shop, I feel that I owe it to them to honor their decision making at some level - to let them reap the spoils of their decisions. However, this is beyond the scope of the present endeavor and perhaps a good topic for future consideration.