Observation B

1. Classroom Overview

The Learning Situation

This recording will take place at Crowley Ninth Grade Campus in Crowley, TX. Students in the class

are in their first Spanish class (though some have taken an exploratory language class in which they were

introduced to some Spanish). Though, students’ proficiency levels vary as there are some with a bit of

Spanish exposure and some with almost no exposure. I have a native speaker in all of my classes except this

one. All students are in the ninth grade (14-15 years old). This particular class is the first class of the morning

and is particularly small compared to my other sections of the same course. The class will last 56 minutes, but

that includes 6-10 minutes for school-wide announcements. The students have responded fairly well overall to

the course. For sure, all students in the class are in the Novice range on the ACTFL proficiency scale, most of

which fall within Novice-Low, with none being higher than Novice-Mid. The recording of this class session

takes place on the first day of the ninth week of the school year. This week is the third week in the unit titled

“¿Qué es un heroe?”. Therefore, students are accustomed to classroom procedures, etc. This learning

session follows the 5E learning model, per requirements of my campus administration. 5E is a lesson cycle

that follows the steps Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration, and Evaluation (For more details,

please see the Midwestern State University 5E Learning Cycle page

Class Session Objective

In this class session, the official objectives are stated in terms of what a student can say that they can

do with the language. They are “I can understand some basic personal information found in short readings.”

and “I can describe someone else’s age, personality, and physical characteristics”. Today and tomorrow

students are being assessed in the presentational mode of communication. The goal is to have students

create a short comic. similar to one that we will read in class. After reading the comic and answering some

essential questions, the class will make a short comic together to demonstrate the process. While the

interpretive mode is not being assessed today, it is essential to the presentational portion of the assignment

since students need to understand the comic in order to be able to create a similar one. Students will be

expected to have a set of questions answered regarding their comic along with some of the text written in

Spanish. The next day, students will finish creating their comic and turn it in.

While this is not considered a true assessment grade, this is the first time they will be expected to

produce something using presentational communication. Although my plan at the beginning of the year was to

attempt to assess each mode of communication every unit/grading period, I have found that it would be too

burdensome to do so. Instead, I plan to make interpretive assessments regular and alternate between

interpersonal and presentational from unit to unit. This activity is leading up to students creating a short book

describing themselves and their heroes that will be for the presentational assessment grade. I feel that this

activity will give students a bit of practice with the process before actually doing the book.

Outline of Class Activities

1. Entrada - Students enter the class every day and begin working on the Entrada or bellwork. Today, I

am introducing them to this short comic and worksheet (created by Zachary Jones). While they will

primarily be focusing on reading and understanding, I will change a few of the questions to better match

the curriculum covered thus far that students can more easily answer. They will answer the questions:

a. ¿Cómo es tu monstruo?

b. ¿De dónde es?

c. ¿Qué le gusta?

d. ¿Qué come (eat)?

Mi monstruo come…

2. After the Entrada, the class will break into groups to discuss what makes the comic funny (or

supposedly funny). Students will be asked to use the following when sharing.

a. Es cómica porque…

b. Es irónica porque…

c. Al monstruo le gusta…

3. As a whole, students will share the observations they had. Then, we will briefly discuss the type of

irony that appears in the comic (a topic being covered in their English classes currently).

4. As a class, we will create a comic that incorporates our monsters and a piece of irony.

5. Students will then begin to write a brief summary of their scene in English. They should finish this

before leaving. Students will complete their short comic strip the next class period.

Statement of Plan to Address Observation Requirements

For this observation I plan to have two specific tables in closer focus. In the last observation I noticed

that one table is by far more willing to self-initiate while the other is not. I plan to use one student from each

group as a point for comparison during this observation. While observing, I also hope to zoom in on my tablet

video while observing the video to isolate the recording of just those students when evaluating their Time on

Task. One thing I am interested in is if I should consider speaking in English in terms of making meaning from

an interpretation as part “reading” or using the language. To me, English can be helpful in interpretive

situations as a way to ensure that they truly understand, especially as Novice-Low language learners. I might

also time this if students are discussing the meaning in English to have as a separate number. I will use the

timer on my phone to keep track of time on task.

2. Recounting/Video Review

Video Review Class Recounting

For transcribed student-teacher interactions, FS and MS are Female Student and Male Student, respectively and T is for Teacher.

Class started with me requesting that students “Lean la tira.” and “Look for words you know and words that look similar to words in English to help you understand.” After about 2 minutes, I requested that students “Hablan de la tira.” During this time I was taking attendance and getting paper together to hand out later in class. I also set a timer to remind me to start a new recording.

During the discussion another student walked in late, distracting another student to talk about something unrelated to what we are doing. I stopped them and ask them to get back on task. One student was separated from the others, so I went and helped her discuss to be sure she understood. During this time, I allowed students to speak in English to express what they understood. This also allowed them to be in the ZPD as they were discussing to gain more insight if the need it. I heard lots of good discussion about what happened. However, in one or two situations only a couple of people spoke. It may have been better to assign something for everyone to answer. End of discussion time as small groups and on to class discussion.

T: Es comico, si o no?

MS : Si T: What’s trying to be funny? MS : The monster is shy. That’s not really funny. T: What does le gustan mean? MS & FS- He likes

T: If a monster like something - we don’ t think of a monster as being romantically involved, we think about what they want to eat. Now, what would make that funny?

MS: That he’s not eating her. T: What is this heart for?

FS: He likes her! T: Good! What is ironia?

MS: I dunno. T: Que tipos de ironia hay?

MS: Situational T: Situacional

At the beginning of class, students came in as usual and began working on their entrada. During this time, students simply read the comic and tried to understand it. I noticed some students not on task during this time and redirected them. I also took attendance and set a timer so I could start a new recording. My tablet stops recording at about 33 minutes. So I had to start one video and start a new at about that time.

Some things become evident very early on in this class. I consider them my “guinea pigs” since they are my first class of the day and I have to work out the kinks with them. With this lesson, I quickly realized that we had not spent enough time seeing gustar. It has not been in our curriculum yet, but they have seen it. For my next classes, I included the meaning for this phrase and it seemed to ease a lot of the issues. Students were able to pick up on the textual meaning, but had problems with the subtext. Most of them seemed to have trouble with understanding why it should be funny, but not with understand what it was saying. I wonder if this has to do with the capacity of the working memory when their attention is on making meaning of the text.

I forgot to give students the phrase beginnings during the discussion phase of this activity, so students were unable to do a whole lot of TL use during this phase. However as previously noted, the students in this class are pretty good about using the TL in when at all possible. So, they did a good job staying in the TL for a fair amount of time. Nonetheless, they were asked to think about what irony existed in the comic as well as how that could be comical. During this time, there were also a couple of students who were attempting to work on math homework they had has to ask to put away so that their focus was on what we were doing.

After a couple of minutes of discussion, the class shared about what the groups discessed. Surprisingly, some of the students that I noted held back in the last observation did not hold back as much in this lesson. I was sure to give them the floor when they requested it and praised or affirmed their response before moving

MS: Verbal (English) T: Verbal (Spanish) MS: Dramatic

T: Dramatica

Students participated in describing each type of irony as review to what they are learning in their English classes and talked about the focus for today’s class.

T: What kind of irony is in the story? No response. MS: Hay dos. T: Que es el objetivo?

FS - Students will read and draw a comic. I can tell someone else’s age, describe their personality and physical characteristics. MS (Simultaneously) YES!!! Excited about drawing a comic.

One interesting point here is that two students very quickly grasped the meaning of le gustan (probably from previous experience), but other students did not know, nor did they after discussing as a class. This becomes evident later as I am walking around the class helping students with the activity at hand. I then passed out the handouts with guiding questions for students to complete that would lead them to creating their own comic.

Just before answering questions about their own monsters, my projector kept popping up with a message on the screen that impeded us from being able to see the comic on the screen. Luckily, I had printed a few copies that I was able to give to each table.

“Por favor, responde en tu papel, Como es tu monstruo? Como fue mi monstruo?

MS: Como se dice lazy?

T: Es parte de tu vocabulario

T: to a male student: Como es tu monstruo, <student name>?

MS - I’m thinking

T: (to group) ok numero dos...De donde es el monstruo? Que significa?

MS - Where are you from?

T: Where are you from?

MS - Where is the monster from?

on. The students were quickly able to spot the irony, identify its type and talk about what made it funny (to some anyways).

After that students began creating their own “monstruos” by answering questions (noted in the first section) that were similar to the questions posed during the bellwork. As an example, the class created a monster and me drawing the scenarios that we created as a class. Students enjoyed this as they got to make the story together (and make fun of my drawings). We took votes on whose suggestion was incorporated into the story. After the example had been done together, we decided on a monster who would be rejected because of his looks who was really romantic at heart; a sort of Beauty and the Beast story.

After the example was done, students spent the remainder of class planning out their own by writing a short description of the images they would draw and beginning to write the text for their comic. The students had many interesting twists to what we read with their monsters, including a monster from the bushes who was extremely helpful and caring that brings flowers to people and a monster from the sewer that eats shoes ( not sure of any irony on that one.) About half way through this time, students were stopped for the announcements for just a minute or so. Students got to work right after the announcements ended without any reminder from me.

Class ended with a reminder from me. First, that if they weren’t good artists that they should bring magazines or printed out clip art to help them create their comic (as a precaution, I will have some of my own printed out for them.). The bell rang shortly thereafter.

T: Si

Students continued in this same manner figuring out what each of the questions meant, answering the questions about the monster in the comic we read, and then answering the questions about the monsters that they created. When students would get into answering questions about their monster, they would ask several questions about how to say different things in Spanish.

Interestingly, I think I may have seen something that spurred students using much more of the TL than I expected. When I was attempting to elicit student questions, instead of saying “Does anyone have a question?” I would say something like “Como se dice?” or “Que significa…?”. I think that this led students to see my expectation of how they should ask me questions. After several questions of como se dice, I permitted to use their ipads for looking up words in the dictionary, but would often check their work to see that what they were putting was correct.

After all of the questions, we created a comic together by first describing what was going to happen in our comic and then me (attempting) drawing it. During this time, I asked a lot of binary questions to give them options. Students responded well to the questions and were able in most situations to answer the questions when presented. I now notice that very few were actually paying attention to me drawing this comic out on the board when I was drawing. In retrospect, this may have been a step I could have skipped. I was sure to tell students “No soy artista.” I am not grading on your ability to draw here, but rather your inclusion of Spanish to tell the brief story.

As we progressed in creating the story together, class was interrupted when someone brought me something. To be honest, I do not remember what it was, but it only took a few seconds and we got right back into creating out comic. Just as we finished the class comic, the announcements began. They ended with about 10 minutes for students to begin their drawings and finish class. As they were doing that, I was

going around making sure that they understood what they were doing and I spent most of that time helping a few students in the same area. Unfortunately, I could not hear all of my interactions with the students because it was fairly far from the camera and we were speaking softly.

3. Reflection of Classroom Activities and Differences in Recounting and Observation

With this observation, I did not complete my recounting as quickly after the class period as I

did on the first observation. That being said, my memory was probably hazier and I was not able to

recall as many details. I found this observation to be especially enlightening compared to my memory

of the events of class. Earlier I had journaled about the progress this class has made in their use of

the TL when interacting in class on a day-to-day basis, but I think when I was watching this class, I

noticed for the first time an antecedent to this occurring in a class session. After I had posed

questions in terms of what they should say rather than saying are there any questions, I quickly got

many students with questions. I think that the effect was similar to the effect of giving students binary

options when showing their understanding of something we are reading or listening to. That was very

interesting to see and I definitely would not have recalled that as I do not have the capacity to pay

such close attention to the sheer number of types of questions asking while I am attending to so

many facets of student learning while there.

Another interesting point I noticed is which students were really on task. Having to take the

time to view individual students forced me to pay closer attention the first time when watching this for

the more general questions. I can tell you who is paying close attention to what we are doing and

who is simply going through the motions and not thinking about what is going on.

4. Reflection of Student Engagement, Interactions, and Time on Task, Student-Teacher

Student Engagement

After completing this lesson, I thought and believed that almost all of the students enjoyed and

were engaged in what we were doing. However, after watching the video I found that more students

than expected were not engaged during parts of the activities. I do recognize that my last two

activities were in general longer than they should have been due to student’s attention span at their

age. However, I can probably attribute some of this to students not being interested in the

assignment. I note this through the way students looked and acted. There were very few facial

expression that showed excitement for of displeasure for what we were doing. That tells me that

students were in general feeling no different about what was going on in class that day. Some were

eager to participate, but that was normal behavior for the students that were.

Interactions and Turn-taking

When I was looking at who initiated speaking turns in class, it seems that most of the time it is pretty

balanced and dependent upon student preference, rather than mine in most situations. I seem to accept a

student speaking without being called upon when I ask general questions aloud to the class and even respond

in kind when something is said that needs to be responded to. The few times that I did initiate students’ turn to

speak it was done by hand-raising. The main situation where this occurred was when students were

answering the questions about their monsters and needed help understanding or in knowing how to say a

word. I think that since I expected that students would all ask a question, I modeled how I wanted students to

ask their questions by raising my hand. That then signaled to students how I wanted them to get my attention

so they could speak. Another observation I made is that when speaking as a class and my eyes go around the

room making eye contact with students, I wonder if the students assume that I am speaking to them since eye

contact has been made and thus attempt to initiate (or feel that it has been initiated by me) and offer a

comment or answer. That could be where the common student adage “Don’t make eye contact with the

teacher.” comes from. The topics of conversation were for the large part chosen by me and coincided with the

classroom objectives. Although on one occasion a student called to my attention the message that popped up

on the projector. Other than that I did not find any instances of students bringing up other topics.

I think that authentic discourse in a foreign language classroom can be defined in various ways,

depending on the level of the class. As already noted in my comments upon viewing the video, I am not sure

that using English in class when attempting to understand and assessing for understanding is necessarily a

bad approach. Not that it should be used in all situations, but it can be a tool among many. So then I would

say that authentic discourse is discourse that brings meaning into focus about an authentic text and that

learners express themselves as completely as they can in the TL and extend their comprehension through the

use of the native language.

Time on Task

At the end of this observation the chart is attached that includes the two students that I

observed for Time on Task (or language use time). From here on out I will refer to language use time

instead of Time on Task since I think that in some situations Time on Task can be misleading as it

can refer to students doing what they are supposed to be doing, but they may not be using the TL.

I have two initial observations about the time that I calculated the two students’ language use

time. First of all, by the nature of the activities as I had designed them, the last section of class did

not provide students for much opportunity to be in the TL since they were simply organizing their

thoughts about what was going to happen in their comic. They TL use ability is not to a point yet

where they would be able to brainstorm in such a way. Second, these two students are at different

performance levels but student 2 was distracted by so many unrelated things that it is hard to

compare even their abilities.

Nonetheless, from this observation I quickly was able to see an average language use time for

these two students and that probably represent a relatively accurate picture for this class of students.

I think what surprised me most was the causes for students not using the TL. I expected most

students that were not using the TL to be like student 2. That is, engaged in other activities

throughout the class (working on homework from another class, copying text from another student’s

text to “keep up” with what we were doing, and looking at parts of his iPad case). But from my

observations I can definitely say that these students were for the large part very engaged in what we

were doing. Student 1 is a student I would characterize as very highly engaged and represents the

higher end of the spectrum for this class. Knowing that, I would say his language use number is

relatively low (especially compared to ACTFL’s 90% rule). Though, he was on task. The limitations

for his language use time do not come in form of his inability, but rather the lack of opportunities.

That to me was very eye opening. I can see very clearly that even though I am providing some

opportunities for students to use the TL, I need to provide far more than I already am.

Time has been cut out of this that was part of the school announcements.

Activity Activity Time

Student 1 Engagement

Student 1 % Student 2 Engagement

Student 2 %

Entrada 1:55 1:55 100% 1:00 54%

Group Discussion (in English interpreting meaning)

1:45 :55 52% :30 29%

Class Discussion 5:46 3:25 59% :25 7%

Answer Guiding Questions

18:24 7:54 43% 3:15 18%

Creating Comic Description (writing in English)

20:04 :28 2.3% :03 .02%

Totals 47:54 14:37 31% 5:13 11%