Observations on Classroom Teaching

Just yesterday, I was observing a class with English Learners…

When the teacher asked her next question, I whispered to her, “Ask your students to pair share first before you select a student to respond.”

She turned to the class and said, “Students explain to your neighbor the difference between superlative and comparative.”

 Wow! The change in the class was dramatic.  All of a sudden, all the students were energized and interacting academically…listening, speaking, and thinking. 

 She went on to call on three random non-volunteers…but, the the amazing thing was that every single student in the class answered the question during the pair share!

When I train teachers how to enhance initial, whole class instruction I always tell them to use pair shares.  It immediately improves student interaction, student engagement, student learning, and ultimately student achievement.

This week I taught three sample lessons at an elementary school: 5th grade, Inferences; 3rd grade, Main Idea and Supporting Details in Expository text; and kindergarten, Words beginning with the “S” sound. After finishing each of the lessons, I had teachers come up to me and say various positive comments such as: “This was the most helpful example of Explicit Direct Instruction practices I have ever seen. I wish I could observe more.”

Another teacher in 5th grade said to me, “I now know how to TAPPLE [a DataWORKS Checking for Understanding strategy] effectively and to include cognitive strategies so students remember.”

When I walked out of the third grade class, several students walked past me saying, “Mr. Federico, that was a fun class. I never learned so much.” Other students said that “we were so busy that we didn’t have time to be bored.” One student asked me if I could come back and teach again because “I asked a lot of good questions”.

One teacher told me that when I randomly selected an English Learner student to answer a question, she was amazed that he answered his first ever question in English.  Previously, he was so shy that he only whispered his answers in Spanish to the aide.  When he was selected a second time, he also answered correctly in English.

I went to Strathmore Elementary School to observe teachers teach research-based Explicit Direct Instruction lessons. The lessons were outstanding. All teachers were implementing, and the lessons included lots of student engagement, checking for Understanding, and student interaction. I sat in the back of the classroom with the school administrators pointing out the strategies the teachers were using and where to mark them on our observation form. The administrators said that due to our whispering DURING the lessons while filling out the forms I had taken their understanding of Explicit Direct Instruction to a new level. They stated that it was very important to discuss the practices while they were happening rather than to discuss them after the lesson is over.

I went to a school to provide classroom coaching for teachers in implementing Explicit Direct Instruction. One of the teachers was sick so I had an unscheduled hour. I asked the school’s academic coach to accompany me on some unannounced 5 minute walkthroughs. We were surprised to see almost no implementation of instructional practices from recent staff development during the unannounced observations. This underscores the difficulty implementing research based practices in the classroom. Some teachers are able to use the practices when scheduled for observations but are not using them when no one is watching. One of the hard things about school reform is changing adult behavior.

I observed an elementary school lesson. During feedback after the lesson, I told the teacher that she needed more student interaction including interspersing more Checking for Understanding questions and pair shares between students. The principal, who accompanied me, said that the teacher had talked for 24 minutes before asking a Checking for Understanding question. Good lessons have lots of student-to-teacher and student-to-student interaction. I have measured teachers that average a student interaction every minute. During a lesson I taught recently, I had teachers count the number of student interactions I used. I had 57 student interactions during a 35 minute lesson. With a high number of student interactions, discipline problems evaporate, students are more engaged, pay attention more, and learn more.