Date: Thursday, 10th of November, 2016
Unit: Assignment #5
Lesson: Peer response, looking closely at peer’s presentations for Assignment #5, especially looking at the visual construction of the work
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Observing Stacy’s classroom was extremely helpful to me, as not only was her class in the computer lab in Maple Willow-Larch but it was also a Tuesday-Thursday class and in the mid-afternoon. That is to say, it’s on the same days and roughly the same time of where I’ll be teaching for next semester, so seeing how somebody else handled it was very interesting. Furthermore, it was peer review day for Assignment #5, which was going to be due the coming Tuesday. I’ve always managed to avoid having peer review days fall on my Monday lab day. However, next semester I may not be as fortunate, so seeing how Stacy worked with the extremely odd space she was in gave me valuable insights as well. The group peer review focused entirely on the visual aspect of Assignment #5, rather than the written aspect. At first, I had thought that choosing to focus entirely on that one aspect of it would leave the class running out of things to do eventually, but I saw that through clever use of materials that energy can be kept high throughout a class.
Because of the bizarre shape of her classroom (it being like an H with Stacy being stuck in the middle), Stacy left most of the talking up to her students. I think that was a good move, even if the class period wasn’t being centered around peer review. From my observations, all of the students could see her very easily, but he couldn’t see them. An interesting dilemma to be in, but, again, by directing class attention towards other students rather than the professor, I think the room was used to its fullest potential.
During the bulk of the class when Stacy’s students were working on their pieces for Assignment #5, she decided to distribute cardboard posterboards to the class to facilitate peer discussion and review.
I thought what Stacy did with the boards and the way she shuffled the class around as per their focus while reviewing was very impressive. The boards were simple tryptic posterboards with terms taped onto them that served as talking points and guides for the students looking at them. There were two of each board, four boards in total, and one was positioned at each corner of the room. After around six minutes, half of the students from one group would rotate clockwise and the other half would go counterclockwise, essentially splitting the groups in half and getting the students into new groups. This ensured that the students would either be looking at familiar terms/talking points with a new group or they were with their original group looking at new terms. I thought this shuffling was incredibly smart, as it used the odd room shape to the class’ advantage and kept the terms in close proximity to the group. Contrast that with my usual peer response sessions where my students work in smaller groups and have guiding questions up on the board. I think Stacy’s section definitely capitalizes more efficiently on students guiding their own discussion. They can form their own contained cloisters where their interpretation and discussion prevails rather than making them have to defer to the professor’s mindset all the time. Not to totally ravage my own style, though— I think my method works well for my cramped classroom and shorter class time. Still, keeping an eye on the future, I think Stacy managed to pull the whole thing together really well.
That being said, I was surprised at how seriously her students seemed to take the assignment. Though she did migrate around the room to listen in on group discussion, Stacie almost never inserted herself into the conversation or asked questions of the group (though, this is a good time to bring up that Stacy did leave some fundamental/guiding questions in her Powerpoint for students to refer to as they worked). And yet, the students, despite their groups being large and their discussions happening largely on their own terms, were, for the most part (this coming on the heels of the Election Day didn’t really help matters) on task and having very good conversations. Perhaps because the students constructed the poster boards and filled it with their own terms, they were more likely to participate. I saw a similar thing happen in Assignment #4 where my students used many of the artistic terms we created as a class. Perhaps that extra element of self-determination is key in getting students to take control of their own conversations— as the vocabulary their using is integrated into their minds already, as it’s (at least partially) of their own creation. Needless to say, that was a great addition to make the student’s learning and assignments more in their hands.