Cody Hopkins
edTPA Task 2 Commentary
November 24, 2014
Cody, when you do this for real make sure you use the template from the edTPA
manual. You need to have the prompts and outline numbering in the commentary.
Learning Environment
The thing to keep in mind while teaching high school students is that,
amongst various other reasons, they are there because they have to be. The decision
to walk through those doors every morning needs to be supplemented with fun and
engaging work environments. In order to do this, teachers must engage with their
students in more ways than course material. Learning can be impacted in a positive
way by creating an atmosphere of respect and developing a warm and responsive
rapport with students. Although this sort of atmosphere should be (and was)
portrayed to your students in nearly every interaction, there were specific times
through out the video that demonstrated this relationship particularly well.
At the very beginning of the first video, I act as a friendly mediator to a $1 bet
between students A and J. After hearing both of their sides, my answer and
explanation to their question proved A to be a winner. Although gambling is against
classroom policy (and state law)I'm not sure how Pearson would react to your
"sanctioning" something that you state is illegal but I'd stay away from this sort of
thing in the real edTPA., this sort of friendly student-student as well as studentteacher interaction is common and welcome. Chemistry is a challenging subject and
students are often encouraged to challenge the perspectives of others.
In the second video portion at time 4:50, I am engaged in a conversation with
a student discussing the higher quantum mechanical workings of chemistry. Dylan
(why do you use a name here and letters everywhere else?) explains to me that the
co-teacher in the room explained a rule that the periodic table to him regarding the
valence electrons of the 11th column of the periodic table. He admitted that even
though he understood the rule, he was not sure why it existed in the first place. Your
question here was "do you understand that." This is a simple yes/no type question.
He does go on to explain but maybe a better question would be "What do you
understand about . . . .?" At that point, I let him know that when it comes to that area
of chemistry there are things that I didn’t even fully understand. good vulnerability
The questions he was asking were not even answered to me until my second
semester of physical chemistry when I was in my last year of obtaining my
undergraduates degree in chemistry. The tricky thing about chemistry is that if you
keep on asking “why,” eventually you’ll be led so far down the rabbit hole that only
quantum theory and pages of calculations will be able to give you some gross
approximation. This is a hard thing to tell a student—especially one so thirsty for
information—but sometimes it’s the only answer you can give in the time you’re
permitted.
Finally, also in part 2 of the video clips, at time 7:08 I have a very brief
conversation with a student about Spanish class. She simply says “No me gusta.”
This, I translated out loud and took five seconds to tell her a little bit about myself
and my past high school experience. Although a small gesture, I think taking small
amounts of time away from instruction in lou of building relationships is a
worthwhile use of time.
Engaging Students & Deepening Learning
The whole idea behind inquiry-based instruction is to provide students with
just enough information to be able to ask themselves the right kind of questions and
move forward with material. Likewise, when they are asking me questions, it is an
important teaching strategy to leave them breadcrumbs that lead them to the
answer they are looking for rather than taking them directly to the answer. As a
former student and educator, I have to respect the process of learning in this way.
Allowing students to support their claim with reasoning is a great way to
evaluate their grasp of a concept. At the very beginning of the second video, student
A reasons to both myself and student J how many shells (or levels, as he calls them)
are found for the Bohr model of any given atom. He claims that the atom silver has 5
shells, and his reasoning is that the number is determined solely by the number on
the very outside of the periodic table.
The “breadcrumb” teaching method occurs several times throughout the
video set. The first occurs in the first video at 30 seconds. During the entire
interaction with student N, he and I go back and forth asking and answering each
other questions. The progress of the learning and effectiveness of the questioning
was affirmed by his eventual grasp of the concept by 6:00. These scaffolding
questions were also employed at 6:35 and continue to the end of the clip. When the
right questions are asked, students are allowed to evaluate their own
interpretations of the data they’re analyzing. These three sentences take in 6.5
minutes of video. You need to be more specific in your analysis by giving the actual
questions and responses that make your point. You don't need to give them all but
use a couple key examples. Remember the rubric asks for evidence where you
support the student in constructing a scientific argument about the filling of shells
by an elements electrons by referring to data (in this case the periodic table). Then
you need to talk about all of this in your commentary.
Another effective method to engage student learning is to link new concepts
with both prior academic learning and personal experience. In the first video clip at
time 9:40, I try and relate chemistry to addition and subtraction. In my own
experience, I know how difficult it can be for students to grasp the concept of
negative numbers and their manipulation on other numbers. But by breaking down
the language (i.e. “If I give you more electrons, you become more negative) is much
like adding a negative number in arithmetic. In order to engage prior learning, you
should bring out that this is like math when you are adding two negatives. To
another student, when describing the interaction between atoms engaged in ionic
bond, I asked him to tell me what he knew about magnets and how they interact.
Once he explained that all he knew was that opposites attracted I explained that that
was exactly what was happening at the molecular level. This is a great prior learning
example! When in the presence of one another, some atoms become negative and
some positive. This charge difference is what forms the bond.
Analyzing Data
One pattern I’ve observed as an educator is students who are trying to
succeed want few things more than they want a step by step pattern or formula to
help them solve any problem they might come across. This, I find, is an especially
frustrating desire in the subject in chemistry. I believe that is because students see
all of the calculations being done in this class and want it to be as straight forward as
their math classes. Unfortunately, chemistry most sciences, are applied math and
these step-by-step solutions almost always contain factors making each problem
unique.
The key rubric question is how do you facilitate students' analysis of the data
based on scientific inquiry? This activity was not heavily data influenced but you
could have used oxidation states as data. However to be clear you should have
talked about the data somewhere in the commentary. For this lesson, we’re dealing
with the Bohr model—a rough representation of electron behavior about a
positively charged nucleus of an atom. At time 4:25 student D calls me over to
discuss, like so many others before him, the Bohr Model for silver. During their
instruction and practice, students were taught that when electrons fill into these
models, they fill in the order of 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s. However, when I
asked D to show me his model for Ag, he showed me a correct model that did not
follow this form. If it did not follow this form, how is the model "correct".He had
related the oxidation state of the atom (+1) to the number of valence electrons that
should be found on Ag and compared that data against the typical form of atomic
electron configurations. The discussion (you need to relay the key components of
the discussion in the commentary) eventually came to the frustrating that there are
some exceptions to the previously taught rule. This commentary does not really get
beyond level 2 in rubric 8. It is important to give specific examples in the
commentary where you are eliciting student's responses
Analyzing Teacher Effectiveness
Electron configuration is an essential concept in the field of chemistry.
Unfortunately, it tends to be very abstract. Right, for the "real" edTPA you should
choose a lab with "real" data. Anything dealing with quantum mechanics or
electronegativity (let alone both) is hard to put your hands on. Unfortunately, I took
that difficulty to mean, “Can not be done” and resorted to using white board
drawings and paper assignments. According to Steven Mintz, “Students learn best
when learning is active: When they are mentally involved, when they engage in
hands-on activities, when they are involved in a process of inquiry, discovery,
investigation, and interpretation” (2014). Having done this unit again, I would have
employed more hands on learning activities to demonstrate the relationships and
attractions protons and electrons share using anything from magnets to having
students hold hands. Another aspect of this active learning is to help students make
connections with content material and everyday phenomena. This gives the
students a chance to demonstrate their own understanding of why what they are
learning is actually important.
Additionally, many improvements could have been made with student
interaction. Specifically, the group work could have been more focused and
organized and in one-on-one discussion more time for student response should
have been given. According to Ivanna Thrower, both of these qualities are essential
in promoting positive student-teacher interactions (2009).
As you can see through out the video, the students are organized into
different table groups. Although, once the assignment task had been given, there
was a large mix of students working either alone or together. Utilizing group work
would have been an improvement of the lesson. Assigning group packets and/or
roles would have been one way to facilitate this change.
Finally, another change that could have been made to overall interactions
with students would have been to allow them more time to respond to questions.
After reviewing the material, I think it came down to not enough direct instruction
at the beginning so students didn’t have enough knowledge to build off of. Because
of this, I think I felt rushed to explain content that they were missing. No mention of
individuals in this part of the commentary. See rubric 10 level 4. In order to get to
this level you also need to deal with individual learners in this portion of the
commentary.
References:
Mints, S. Active Learning. Retrieved From
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/tat/pdfs/active%20learning.pdf
Thrower, I. M. (2009). What ISSIOP? SIOP is good teaching PLUS + purposeful
teaching of the languagenecessary for ELLs to understand content. Retrieved from
http://www.international.ucla.edu/media/files/SIOPModel.pdf?AspxAutoDetectCo
okieSupport=1