Evaluation for class of world history

  Well, I have to admit that it does is the most wonderful world history class I have experienced, I was totally impressed by this class, teacher and students.

  Just as you wrote on the syllabus, she is a very strong teacher with 7 higher ratings, and no lower ratings.

  At very beginning of the class, she told students the class objective clearly and concisely that they need to make observations and inference about Russian Peter Empire in specific aspects by using primary sources and other documents, and they also need to make a conclusion of group observations on sheet paper and present it in the end of class. Then, she asked students a question about soap stone for review although I don’t know what it is. Without any break, she told students it was the time to begin and they have 18-20 minutes to observe and share in group. Well, a really wonderful beginning and class structure she had done. I have to give her 5 points on rating of 1.

  And I also give her 5 points on rating of 3 because she had established the purpose of lesson and previewed the organization of lesson and concluded the lesson in the end, she also had a concise communication with students and logical sequencing and segmenting. Additionally, she demonstrated the students’ performance expectations and provided all essential information for observation without any irrelevant, confusing or nonessential information.

  Actually, she did so good on rating of 4 as well. The lesson started promptly and the lesson’s structure is coherent with a beginning, middle, end, and time for reflection. As you can see, her teaching pace was brisk and she provided many opportunities for individual students who progressed at different learning rates when they were in group learning.

  When she communicated with group students who were in observing progress, she asked them some purposeful and coherent questions from social impact to clothes of Peter Empire and came back and checked how was it going after brief group discussing. Students in group were enough positive to answer her questions and she also encouraged them to go ahead for observing and exploring. She also collected feedback from students and gave it back to them frequently in group working. So I think she also did well on academic feedback and questioning.

  Absolutely, she had a wise knowledge of lesson content and students so she performed excellent when she answered students’ questions and communicated with them authentically. And what’s more, she also did well on problem solving and thinking because in the end you can see, each group presented their conclusion of observations and inference successfully, distributed and shared their thinking on special aspects of Peter Empire excellently.

  I know students in video were all enjoying the class she taught and that class was the perfect student-center class I have experienced till now.

Reflection of Today’s Classroom on Jan. 9^th

  At the beginning, I have to tell you that I’m completely impressed about the American teachers’ teaching and their love to students.

  As I told you before, Chinese classes are teacher-center, that is, most Chinese teachers are giving lectures in class and they are leaders of class which means students cannot interrupt teaching without permission or speak out their thinking immediately because teachers think that the progress of class plan and the rate of teaching will be influenced obviously. So students who have problem in listening and understanding cannot send feedback to teacher immediately.

  In many educators’ view, communication is the most fundamental parts of teaching that ideas of creation can be inspired and teacher can easily monitor students’ learning progress in the process of communication. I agree with this point completely but you know, there are almost 50 students in a classroom in most Chinese schools, so it’s impossible to let these students speak out their thinking and problems in limited teaching time. As well, teachers cannot divide students into different groups because many students are lazy and private so they won’t accountable to the group work, they just concern about their own work.

  The intrinsic characteristic of education is love, so teachers need to love their students first so that they can devote all themselves to students to help them learning better. I know Chinese teachers love their students in heart like American teachers, but in some reason they don’t have much chance to express it because some students will feel unfair if they cannot feel teachers’ love but others can.

  I saw teachers in video always liked walking around the group table and communicate with students about some topics or provide necessary guidance when some students get into trouble, but in China, teachers are usually stand beside the platform where is in the front of classroom because they think walking around the students will make them feel nervous and distract their attention.

  Now the flipped classroom is hot in China and many schools are planning to start it as trial. But in my view, I think it’s hard to do that like American school. Anyway, there are much more students in China than America.

Evaluation for 6^th Grade Lesson

  I watched this lesson video with Angela and we also had a discussion of it together and evaluated it by giving it points in 12 aspects.

  The objective of this lesson is making connections from text in order to make inferences, and we could see the teacher in video did very well on teaching students how to do that and think deeper in 1 hour and 20 minutes.

  At the beginning of the class, the teacher told students to do some regular pre-reading for 5 minutes focusing on the little story about La and blue creature at school gate. And then the teacher asked students some questions that what they would do if they were La in that situation. After a brief communication, the class begin, that is, students need to do some inference from this story.

  So you can see, the teacher had drawn students’ attraction and induced their curiosity successfully. And what’s more, this story elicited a variety of students’ thinking because each student may be missed by their parents someday if something happened to their parents suddenly so that they have to wait for parents at the school gate in night alone. Although the teacher didn’t arrange many different activities to help students think except group work and just used white board for teaching, I have to give her 5 points on activities and materials because she performed perfectly. But Angela thinks that the teacher should use multimedia for teaching and arrange some interesting role-play games for students to help them understand the story and think deeply because these students are in 6 grade, multimedia and games can hold their attraction consistently, so she gives the teacher 3 points.

  For grouping students, Angela gives her 1 point and I give her 3 points. Angela said that the teacher just divided students into different groups without gender and capability consideration so that some students may feel not so good when they are in group working. Well, I agree with her in this point but I guess the teacher is so similar with these students so she doesn’t need to do that in limited teaching time. And I think students are all clear about what they need do after the teacher’s explanation so they are accountable for their group work. Anyway, she did not so bad so I give her 3 points here.

  In order to help students to make connections from the text so that they can make inference easily, the teacher divided the main objective into three sub-objectives, that is, the text evidence, questions students asked to themselves and connection finding and inference making. And she took almost 20 minutes to demonstrate it to students by implementing different strategies and ask one or two students to talk about their finding so that they can make sense about it and make connections and inference themselves.

  In the process of group working, the teacher always walked around the group table and sat down with students to ask some questions about the discussing process and provided some necessary guidance for students who did not so good in finding connections and encourage them to go ahead to explode the answer. As we could see, students all sent positive feedback to teacher and did excellent in answering questions.

  So we all think she could get 5 points in standards and objectives, presenting instructional content, lesson structure and pacing, questioning, academic feedback, teacher content knowledge and teacher knowledge of students.

  But the pity is that the teacher did not so good in problem solving and thinking. We didn’t get clear about students’ finished work and students didn’t speak out their deeper thinking about the La’s story with blue creature in terms of their own experience. So we give her 3 points here.

  Of course, she is a strong and powerful teacher who has done a perfect job on teaching making connections and inference for students. I got a lot from her teaching.