U-Rating Hearing: Advisor's Statement Re Observation 2/16/2007

ADVISOR: Please refer to the Observation of FEBRUARY 16 2007 by ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL Z.

In the middle of the preobservation conference, there was a bomb threat necessitating the evacuation of the building. Ms MORIAH had given Mr. Z the lesson plans of the week. To her knowledge the lessons including the objectives were approved by Mr. Z.

Mr. Z states that when he entered the room the students were sitting passively.

Ms. MORIAH was reviewing what she had done during the last lesson. During that lesson she had introduced the project template and they practiced using it. She modeled its use by demonstrating one of the experiments in the Idea Fair.

The statement that the students were sitting passively is vague and lacking in specificity. No mention was made of who those students were. How do we know they were passive? No criteria inidicating what determines passivity on the part of the students was established.

Mr. Z criticized the group work segment. All of the students were to fill in a project template using one of the experiments that they had done. This was a higher order thinking assignment. Students were engaged in analyzing past projects in order to find the variables. Pairs worked together in order to indentify the variables.

NOTE FROM MORIAH:

I wrote detailed response to this observation and posted it on Untamed Teacher under the title "Third UNsatisfactory Observation" on Saturday, August 18, 2007.