Saturday, March 22, 2008

U-rating Hearing: Advisor's Statement Re: Observation #4

ADVISOR: Please refer to the Observation of May 29, 2006 by ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL X

Recommendations: bullet #1 “During the lesson when you stated, ‘How can a brain cell live w/o oxygen?", you answered the question without giving students the opportunity to respond. This demonstrates that student needed prior knowledge and proper wait time.”

This was an Honors class. Students did not mind being asked questions that they could not immediately answser. It did not make the students feel frustrated or disrespected. It simply made them feel challenged to find the answer. Some of the students attended weekly biology classes at Long Island City High School, and they did have prior knowledge that Ms. Moriah thought they might be able to share with the class.

Looking at the 4th bullet: “Assignment seemed easy to some students” because they figured out how to use the textbook and the fact sheet.

Some groups finished before others. Ms. Moriah had not expected anyone to finish in 15 minutes. She expected them to take this time to familiarize themselves with the information and model. The real problem solving would take place the next day.

Ms Moriah is criticized for not going over the findings. The problem is that after 15 minutes one group had the answer and the other groups were still searching for the answer. She preferred to wait until the next period to address the findings of all the groups. To do so otherwise would have been to rush most of the students through the challenge and not allow the time to think it through.

NOTE FROM MORIAH: I responded in detail to this observation on Untamed Teacher in the post titled "Uninformed and Inflexible", dated August 29, 2007

1 comment:

JUSTICE not "just us" said...

Did you have a pre-observation conference for this lesson?

None of this makes sense to me. The criticisms of the adminstration I mean!