Group observation findings by Claudia. I think we all did our best in our write ups. I will be commenting in this blog about what I noticed about some of the write up and what I would have said to you if I was Marilyn Havlik, and this was what you presented me with in the post-conference. So far I only had a chance to read through the first 44 pages of the 102 pages in the document. I was impressed with many of them in terms of how some decided to include things that I did not. For example observer # 6 was more clear in the summary of the observation, this style identifies with my style of summarizing things. Observer # 4 I liked how this observer described what the teacher was wearing (white lab coat), I thought that was important because not many science teachers wear a lab coat in a simulated activity. Another thing, some of you mentioned the mating activity and how the teacher instructed students to mate, just as a thought you might want to mention that it was a simulated mating activity and that it would be done through the use of index cards placed on the gene pool (Just for clarification to readers that might not know what the lesson entailed). Observer #2 way too brief on your complete and accurate summary of the lesson. Also, how can you make the claim that effective teachers vary questioning techniques when in your evidence you say that out of 16 questions you observed 12 that were low level. Which ones were the low level and where is the data to see how many times I asked the same questions? I did not see it on the observation data- you just say that the questions asked were questions such as who, what, where, when, why, and is type of questions, well as the teacher I will ask show me how many times I asked this type of question? Observer #4 you could have strengthen your evidence by stating in your observation of the lesson what gender was the student who asked the question - because you said "a student then asked is this survival of the fetus?" Observer #5 made the claim that effective teachers ask questions in order for students to gain knowledge {according to whom?}
Then in your evidence for this claim you say that teacher asked four questions and then after each mating activity her questions were directed to males and females and she wasn't favoring any particular group of students. First if you are going to make this claim that effective teachers ask questions in order to gain knowledge the evidence must be related to how or what did you observed that showed that the questions gave knowledge- such as the students responded appropriately or something to that extend. Then you follow that evidence up with she did not favor males over females- I did not see any data in the summary of the observation that would support that. I actually found that Marilyn Havlik directed questions to boys by their names. Hence, I did find that most of us agreed on the fact that we will use a non-directive approach for this teacher. Also some of the claims seemed to correlate among us. One more thing- this question is actually directed for Mike, I noticed in some that people wrote what type of approach they will use with this teacher in the pre-observation conference with out having yet observed her. Is an observer able to tell from the pre-observation conference what type of approach they would take? Please elaborate or direct me to where I can find the answer?
[to all, have a great summer]