Video Reflection of Active and Passive Transport: the Play
The following is a reflection on an analysis of the videotaping of the play.
Journal 8: Video Analysis of 11/29/12
For the video analysis I chose to analyze one of the first times that I was teaching in my advanced biology class. This particular lesson was divided up into 2 parts: in the first part, I was lecturing on passive and active transport, as a review of what we had done before and an introduction to the new material for the day. I was standing at the SmartBoard, drawing out what I was teaching them about. In
this part of the video, I sound really confident, I have a tall posture, and at the beginning, most of the students are paying attention, and facing me. However, towards the end of the lecture period, I notice that more and more students have their heads on their desks, and I’m losing their attention. During this particular part of the class, I would not want to be a student. It seems like they’re bored even though I’m trying to make this review interesting for them. However, looking at the timing of this, I’m not surprised. As I was giving the lecture, it felt like I was only talking for about 5 minutes, but as I was watching this, I realized that the entire lecture took in all about 20 minutes. No wonder the students were beginning to fall asleep. I think if I were to do this gain, next time, I would create some Oxford Notes worksheet to go along with it so that they could take notes as I’m talking, or I would have them draw what I was drawing on the board in their notes. This way I think it would be harder for students to zone out.
The second part of class did perk up a bit. I had about half of the students out of their seats and acting out active transport in the cell, and the other half were sitting in their seats watching. At the beginning of this part of class, it seemed like everyone was focused on me—both the people standing up and the ones sitting down. I was sounding very confident in what I was doing, and the students looked intrigued as I was moving everyone around each other. However, I noticed that while I seemed very intentional in what I’m doing, it didn’t seem like the students understood why I was moving them the way I was moving them. All in all, it just seemed a bit disorganized from an outsider’s perspective.
Everything completely falls apart right around minute 6:00 on the file 390. At this point, I was trying to get the students to re-enact the active transport demonstration we just went over, but as I was moving people around, I noticed on the tape that one of the girls in my demonstration motioned putting a gun to her head, as in she’s bored, the group of boys to the left began fooling around, people in the class began chattering, and other people in the audience start falling asleep. However, I’m completely unaware of this in the moment—I’m still focused on getting the students to move the way I want them to. So, all at once, I thought everything was going smoothly, when in reality I don’t think anyone was getting much out of my activity. Therefore, I don’t think very much learning was going on because the students in the audience weren’t paying attention, and the students in the play were all goofing off. In addition, I don’t think I would
have wanted to be a student in this moment, for though it may have been entertaining to watch, it was very confusing and disorganized.
Reflecting back though, I think that one of the main issues was that people didn’t know what role they were playing and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do within that role. Next time, I would have all of the different roles wear different colored shirts, and I would have them re-read their role sheets before coming to the front of the classroom. I also think the other issue was that I had everyone come up at once. If I instead had a few students come up at a time, maybe they would understand where they were supposed to be more, and then maybe the play would hang together more coherently. All in all, I’m not going to give up on this lesson, but I do think the execution of it needs to be better, and I’m going to try to tweak it for next year.
Journal 8: Video Analysis of 11/29/12
For the video analysis I chose to analyze one of the first times that I was teaching in my advanced biology class. This particular lesson was divided up into 2 parts: in the first part, I was lecturing on passive and active transport, as a review of what we had done before and an introduction to the new material for the day. I was standing at the SmartBoard, drawing out what I was teaching them about. In
this part of the video, I sound really confident, I have a tall posture, and at the beginning, most of the students are paying attention, and facing me. However, towards the end of the lecture period, I notice that more and more students have their heads on their desks, and I’m losing their attention. During this particular part of the class, I would not want to be a student. It seems like they’re bored even though I’m trying to make this review interesting for them. However, looking at the timing of this, I’m not surprised. As I was giving the lecture, it felt like I was only talking for about 5 minutes, but as I was watching this, I realized that the entire lecture took in all about 20 minutes. No wonder the students were beginning to fall asleep. I think if I were to do this gain, next time, I would create some Oxford Notes worksheet to go along with it so that they could take notes as I’m talking, or I would have them draw what I was drawing on the board in their notes. This way I think it would be harder for students to zone out.
The second part of class did perk up a bit. I had about half of the students out of their seats and acting out active transport in the cell, and the other half were sitting in their seats watching. At the beginning of this part of class, it seemed like everyone was focused on me—both the people standing up and the ones sitting down. I was sounding very confident in what I was doing, and the students looked intrigued as I was moving everyone around each other. However, I noticed that while I seemed very intentional in what I’m doing, it didn’t seem like the students understood why I was moving them the way I was moving them. All in all, it just seemed a bit disorganized from an outsider’s perspective.
Everything completely falls apart right around minute 6:00 on the file 390. At this point, I was trying to get the students to re-enact the active transport demonstration we just went over, but as I was moving people around, I noticed on the tape that one of the girls in my demonstration motioned putting a gun to her head, as in she’s bored, the group of boys to the left began fooling around, people in the class began chattering, and other people in the audience start falling asleep. However, I’m completely unaware of this in the moment—I’m still focused on getting the students to move the way I want them to. So, all at once, I thought everything was going smoothly, when in reality I don’t think anyone was getting much out of my activity. Therefore, I don’t think very much learning was going on because the students in the audience weren’t paying attention, and the students in the play were all goofing off. In addition, I don’t think I would
have wanted to be a student in this moment, for though it may have been entertaining to watch, it was very confusing and disorganized.
Reflecting back though, I think that one of the main issues was that people didn’t know what role they were playing and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do within that role. Next time, I would have all of the different roles wear different colored shirts, and I would have them re-read their role sheets before coming to the front of the classroom. I also think the other issue was that I had everyone come up at once. If I instead had a few students come up at a time, maybe they would understand where they were supposed to be more, and then maybe the play would hang together more coherently. All in all, I’m not going to give up on this lesson, but I do think the execution of it needs to be better, and I’m going to try to tweak it for next year.