Video+Critique

=Video Critique= Kerri Hinson TCH501 February 27, 2012 Instruction Video Critique __http://www.edutopia.org/math-social-activity-cooperative -learning-video__ This video showed a teacher’s techniques for teaching Math in a fifth grade classroom. The teacher focused much of his time and attention on creating a classroom environment in which students felt comfortable and confident sharing their thoughts and answers. He did this through providing “Private Think Time” for the student to get their thoughts together before discussion. He also made the students confident by pairing students so that they have partners with whom to discuss answers before sharing. When a student is at a lower ability level, pairing them with a slightly higher ability student can give confidence and make them feel “safer” in sharing their ideas. One last thing the teacher did was that when conversation was going on in the fishbowl activity, he did not interrupt the conversation to guide discussion. He simply allowed the students to find their way to the correct answers. The students in this classroom had phenomenal behavior on the video due to a classroom work agreement that they had created by visualizing a “great classroom” and then recording behaviors that they felt were important. This gave the students ownership of the expectations and made them more apt to follow them.
 * Strengths/Compliments:**

According to our text, classrooms should have a handful of general rules for classroom behavior. This classroom had several very specific items mentioned in the classroom working agreement that does not cover all possible behaviors. Another thing I noticed was during the fishbowl activity/conversation. There didn’t seem to be accountability for students who were outside the fishbowl doing the observing. In my classroom, I could easily see losing student engagement quickly for this kind of activity and wonder if there was any accountability for those that were not inside. I saw a few students holding clipboards while most did not and question whether some were completing expectations by filling out an organizer or taking notes while some did not.
 * Weaknesses/Suggestions:**

This strategy for teaching Math socially is one that can be applied at any grade level for any content area. This would fit in well to the gradual release model when students are to work in small groups to practice material that has been modeled for the class. Also, the structure and specific expectations give students excellent practice for working collaboratively for projects, assignments, or class activities. A few things that have been pushed in my district is that of writing across the content areas and while these students are having a lot of good discussion, they are not recording anything and therefore risk losing the information or ideas if they don’t get it down on paper to be able to look back and review it. Also, without accountability for the expectations, you will have some students lose interest or have a low participation level if they are not concerned about what is going on with the discussion or if they do not learn that way.
 * Summary/Conclusion:**