Eighth-grade FOSS geology classroom observation and teaching methods

Education -- Classroom Observation

This classroom observation project took place in the 8th Grade Science class consisting of 25 students at the ____ School in ____. The teacher was the only adult present besides the observer; the observer watched passively and did not interact with the students in order not to influence or change the interactions observed. The observer sat in the back of the class and the teacher simply announced her presence by explaining to the class that someone would be watching to see how well the teacher was performing.

Classroom Management and Teaching Style

The teacher had previously introduced the class to a commercially produced learning system called the Full Option Science System (FOSS) and the beginning of the class was devoted to helping students set up the FOSS lesson module about geological erosion. The students assembled themselves into five working groups each consisting of five students. The instructor indicated privately to the observer that she had previously assigned the specific makeup of the working groups (and their relative location in the room) to separate students who were more prone to distraction in one another's presence. She also considered other factors such as helpfulness, cooperation, and personal rapport in assigning the working groups and she advised that the composition of the groups remained consistent for each separate lesson throughout the term.

The teacher's teaching style was designed to incorporate the active-inquiry concept promoted by the FOSS system and materials. Specifically, each learning module consisted of a brief lecture during which the teacher did not provide substantive information about the topic. Instead, she used that time to explain the questions that students wee expected to investigate using the FOSS materials. She explained that the natural processes of geological erosion could be effectively duplicated and modeled accurately enough on a small scale to learn about geological erosion in the real world on the large scale. She explained that following the directions for examining the effects of different variables (i.e. material composition, slope angle of natural deposits, and the amount of water fall, etc.) would enable students to draw conclusions and answer quiz questions about geological erosion.

Takeaway

The primary takeaway was that the active inquiry process seems to engage student interest much more than the traditional passive lecture approach. The secondary takeaway was the apparent value of using teacher-selected working group composition to increase cooperation and decrease distraction and disruption that can occur with random group assignment or group selection based on student preference.