Entry #8

I felt the videos showed many good teaching strategies for all students, not just ELLs. 

You could tell the teacher knows the content very well and is comfortable with the students.  She has obviously worked on creating a rapport with students and students feel comfortable in the class as well.  I saw many of the teaching strategies from this week’s readings present in these videos.  

The teacher set and reviewed learning objectives.  Objectives were written on the board and the teacher pointed to the words as she read them.  She also reviewed past learnings of reading strategies as a way to prime the students for the day’s lesson.  It was evident through the discussion and the Diary Board that these reading strategies had been explicitly taught and will continue to be reviewed and used throughout the year.  The teacher also used non-linguistic representations (pictures and drawings) to represent key vocabulary words the students needed to know.  I also liked the way she used synonyms to relate the new words to students.  She modeled her own thinking to show students that reading isn’t just about decoding words; it’s about making meaning from the words.  

The video concentrated a lot more on what the teacher was doing and less on what the students were doing.  I saw some student talk, but would have liked to see a lot more student talk (maybe it was in the lesson, just not in the video?).  The objectives were set, but there wasn’t evidence in the video of what the students would have to do to show they had met the objective.  I did like when the students were given a chance to share “the birthday song” from their own culture.  I think this honored and validated their native culture. 

I did have a few questions about the learning environment.  The room and equipment did seem a bit dated, although I don’t know how old the video is.  Not many schools use overhead projectors anymore; however it wasn’t too long ago they were the newest form of technology.  I would hope that technology and equipment is equitable within a school, so every student can benefit from their use and not just a few students.  

Overall, I saw many great learning strategies being used by both the teacher and the students.  I would have liked to have seen more student talk and more opportunities for cooperative learning.  I realize the lesson in the video was the beginning of a longer unit of study on the novel.  I hope students get more chances to talk and discuss their learnings as well as opportunities to summarize their readings.   Units of study are so involved and are spread over many weeks, that it is very difficult to see all that goes on in short videos.  I know there were many aspects of this unit that were not shown that demonstrate other aspects of great learning opportunities.