Field Blog Posts

Key Takeaways from the Field

Throughout my observation, I was really curious about how the online learning setting was working for the teacher and students. Students cannot be legally required to keep their cameras on, and so the accountability for paying attention and being present seems very low. My teacher combatted this by using popsicle sticks with student names on them to ask questions, making sure that students couldn't get through a class without answering or participating. She also used tech tools such as PearDeck to ask questions, so she could see how many students had answered. 

She also transcended the virtual gap by providing space for students who are struggling to stay on the video chat after the other students had gone, and would sometimes ask them to stay in the call until they had finished a particular assignment in case they had any questions. This seemed to be a very effective method for encouraging students to get work done.

I think my teacher struck a very effective balance between compassion and authority, which is something I would like to mimic. She started off class by asking student about their weekends, current events, or school happenings, and then would schedule one-on-ones with students who needed more support to both affirm and push them to succeed. It's a tough line to walk, particularly when you don't know your students very well and have never met them in person, but I was impressed with how much she knew about them and was able to get commitments from them to finish late work, or show up to class on time. The compassion reflected a very important component of that persuasiveness.

Cognitive Learning Strategies & Bloom's

During the weeks of observation, I was surprised at how "simple" the content was for students. It was a reminder to me that Earth & Environmental Science is offered to students just entering high school, who need a lot more guidance and support than older high school students, and that this mode of learning has been a struggle for students and teachers alike to adjust to. My teacher had to redesign her entire course, and was still in that process each week, and was only given 45 minutes of instruction time by the new schedule compared to the usual hour and a half. 

While finding the simplicity a bit disappointing, at first I didn't see that there were several cognitive learning strategies and Bloom's levels coming into play. The most widely used strategy was certainly repetition, repetition, repetition. However, each exercise employing repetition would add some layer of complexity. For example, she would often begin the lesson by asking students to simply define words from the previous class. Then, she would use pear decks to ask students to identify different principles in action. Later, she would provide a project where the students would have to apply some aspect of the content in a hands-on learning lab, such as doing a soil test or rock collection at home. 

This represents a transition from remembering (defining) to understanding (identifying examples) to applying (performing a lab). To engage higher level skills, she would sometimes pose questions to the entire class such as asking them to generate examples or make a prediction, but wouldn't put the burden on an individual student. 

There were other cognitive learning strategies employed as well, such as making predictions, connecting to real-world examples (making meaning), and reflecting on prior knowledge. I think overall I observed that it is very hard to move students up the Bloom levels and employ certain cognitive learning strategies when you don't have the ability to tell whether they're listening, or the time to dive deeper. In the face of these limitations, my teacher did a very good job of using technology to help bridge those gaps, get some immediate feedback on their understanding, and trying to engage them through projects and hands on learning. 

Student-Centered Instruction & Scaffolding

The school district set forth the decision to take each hour and a half class, and break it into 45 minutes of teacher-led instruction vis google classrooms, and 45 minutes of time for independent work where the teacher is available for questions. This is an interesting format, and took away a good amount of teacher agency and flexibility in lesson planning. However, it seemed to be an overall effective format that required teachers to come up with more student-centered activities to guide the second half of class. Of course having the teacher not be present doesn't mean the activities provided will be student-centered, but it does mean that no one ends up with an hour and a half lecture every day.

My teacher came up with some pretty fun activities to guide student learning, including a series of web quests. Similar to scavenger hunts, these web quests take students through a series of website and ask them to find certain pieces of a "puzzle" that might include finding a definition, answering a question based on a video, recreating a drawing, or some other task. While this doesn't meet all the goals of student centered learning (there's not much choice or leadership for the students), it at least puts students in a more active role of discovery. 

This class format also forces a certain degree of scaffolding- the students have the teacher actively available for half the class, and then she is only available when requested for the second half. My teacher would take advantage of this by using the first half to go through lecture, then guided activities, and by the end of the first half try to have students able to answer questions and complete a virtual activity as a class without much intervention. For the second half, activities were scaffolded to start with more guidance and clear instructions, such as the web quests, and then to move towards projects and quizzes that required more independence. While it at first seemed like a clear divide between teacher-centric/high support and student-centric/low support, there was a lot more nuance to the implementation.