Jonathan Paul Loomis

March 16, 1999

Independent Study: Education

Mona Wineburg

This was the first Monday of my spring break and I decided to take the morning to finish up some errands before going in to Hyde for the day, so when I arrived the students were just getting ready for lunch and recess. I had planned it this way so that, because I had already eaten, I would get a chance to be on the playground to observe the younger grades at play. They are usually on recess while the fifth graders are at lunch and vis-à-vis.

My good friend Melissa Ching (who I believe is also doing an independent study at Hyde) works with the second-third split class and we often discuss our students together at night, so I wanted to actually get a chance to observe her students first hand. Unfortunately, due to the limited period of time I was able to spend with them, I don't think I was able to do much more than reinforce my predisposition towards most of them. The children Melissa most often brings up as her class's problem children were indeed the most obviously troublesome, and likewise her so-called "good children" seemed more than likable. I hate to judge students I don't really know just by a half-hour observation, but at least I will have a better understanding of who her students are when she talks about them.

When my students came out for their recess I wandered over to the basketball game to see what might happen. On this particular day they told me that I wasn't allowed to play because I was too tall, but that I was supposed to be the referee, which suited me just as well. Another one of the supervisors was called upon to a timekeeper and call out increments of five minutes each. At first I though this was going to be the duration of the games which struck me as weird because most of the time the games last the entire thirty minutes. However, I soon realized that they had decided to split the group in half and rotate in every five minutes so that the court would not be so crowded with players. Frankly, I was amazed. This was a brilliant example of my students, the leaders of the playground at least, thinking ahead and sharing so as to maximize everyone's enjoyment. I was a bit skeptical that they best players were going to make sure that they always stayed in and only the other students rotated out, but when the appointed time came they too took their place on the sidelines. They kept this up the entire recess.

One of my students in particular impressed me during this episode. He has always been one of the class leaders, although he struggles some academically. At recess, however, he dominates the games both socially and athletically. His domination has generally been an acceptable dynamic because his hegemonic power brought some stability to whatever they were doing. If they was a dispute he would step in to solve it to keep the game going and the other students accepted his authority, even if it seemed as if he was being selfish or one-sided. Based on my view of the events I believe that it was this particular student's idea to rotate players. This makes me tremendously happy because it demonstrates a strong step for him in improving his pro-social behavior. In the past I have often felt that he thought only of himself when playing, and he on one occasion told me "no one here can compete with me at basketball." At one point during the game he was driving down the court and, instead of taking a difficult shot himself as I have often see him do, he passed the ball to one of our classes social outcasts who made an easy shot. I congratulated him soundly for his "great pass" and he seemed pleased. I truly hope that he is developing a sense of being a team player because if he is he will be a wonderful person to have in middle school. I want to watch him for more examples of this and encourage it at every turn.

After recess we set to work on math. The class had been doing work on the equality of fractions the week before with Sarah Moffit, who was basing her teaching mostly on hands on fraction charts. Sarah was ill this particular Monday and Mary Ann expressed a desire to "really get down to business" on the fractions. I interpreted this to mean that there would be no more fooling around with crayons and charts, but that she would do a more teacher directed instruction of the material. This struck me as all right because it would work well as a wrap up, the students already having done the more cognitive work with Sarah.

I wandered the room observing and working one-on-one for most of the lecture while Mary Ann worked with them as a group. Towards the end of the allotted time for math I noticed that they were having a hard time applying the abstract concept of 1/2 = 2/4 towards something concrete. In a sense, they were capable of thinking about such a concept, but not yet able to use it, a good example of students on the edge between being concrete operational and formal operational thinkers. To rectify this problem I interceded in the lesson and had the class count the number of students in the room, which as I had already determined was the handy total of twenty. Then, using that as a base to work from I asked them to give me the number of students sitting at one particular table, four. I then demonstrated how this could be turned into the fraction 4/20, and then 2/10, and finally 1/5. I noted a marked change in the way many of the students seemed to be interacting with the material once I had created a concrete example for them to visualize.

Upon reflection I think that if I had to teach this lesson from the beginning I would start with this concrete task, perhaps by having the students spread around the room and then form groups of equal numbers. Then, because they know how to make such teams already it would be a bridge by which I could guide them towards realizing that they teams they made represented fractions of a whole. I this way I think I would start with the concrete operations which they have already mastered and move scaffold them to the formal operations which are more difficult. Only then would I introduce charts and written numbers.

After math we did a very enjoyable science project. The basic objective was to demonstrate to the students how difficult it is to clean up an oil spill. Each table was given some bowls of water with bits of plastic glitter/confetti to simulate plants and animals and then cooking oil was added to the bowls. The groups had a small sponge, some paper towel, and a spoon with which to try to separate the oil out of the water. Mary Ann had a hectic time with this experiment because she wants them to be a little bit more quiet and organized than I see the need for. At first I just observed they various ways they went about getting the oil out, mostly a direct attack method. Later on in the project I stopped at the tables one by one and asked some probing questions like "Where is most of the oil, on the top or bottom of the water?" Only a few of the students really paid any attention to these questions and rethought their strategies. One of our very restless children did ended up being the object of a fair amount of praise from me because he concentrated and really worked at coming up with a way to remove the oil while leaving as much water as possible. Although I only asked my questions intuitively at the time I believe now I was looking for the students to demonstrate decentration.