Kendall Shultz

UTL640 Professor Haug

Observation #3 Your CTs Methods

What concepts or skills are being developed?

I only went to my campus one time this week, and I taught my first two lessons during two of
the class periods, and my CT taught my lesson in the other period. Even though this was my
lesson that I observed, the concept/skill was still developed by my CT/his English team. In
this lesson, students are being asked to reinterpret the themes of the story Beowulf into a
modern day form. This focuses on developing students creativity, understanding of themes,
understanding of story elements, as well as teamwork skills (they worked in groups of 3-4).
The actual form that this took was a movie treatment, which is a document that is essentially
a written pitch/synopsis of the movie that they are thinking about.

How is student progress toward these concepts or skills evaluated or assessed? (Formally
or informally)
Student progress towards these skills was assessed differently by my CT than the method I
used in my first teach. In my original plan, I intended student groups to come up with two or
three ideas that they might want to use, and then have them write a very brief few sentences
giving a beginning, middle, and end to the story for each, and then turn those brief synopses.
However, none of the groups of students in my first lesson generated more than one idea, so
when my CT taught the lesson, he decided instead to have each group think of one idea, and
then have them write a logline (something that was mentioned in the criteria for a movie
treatment on the website I was referencing, but that I was not using) for their idea. Each
group had to write a brief summary that was designed to give a reader a 1-2 sentence
description of what the movie is about (basically what you would read about a movie on a
TV guide description). In regards to more informal assessments, he did more checking for
understanding by asking them if they understood and knew where he was coming from more
frequently than I did during my teach. I ended up adopting his assignment in place of my
own when I taught in the subsequent period.

What motivational techniques are seen?

The corresponding teacher motivates the students by addressing them as adults and by
generally having high expectations of their behavior. At one point he asked, Can someone
summarize for me what has happened in the story so far, and nobody in the class offered an
answer. When he asked why nobody was answering, one student said, Because this is hard
to read. Immediately, my CT responded by saying, Oh, come on. This is not hard to read.
Dont give me that. He then proceeded to read the first couple of paragraphs to the class,
and asked, somewhat rhetorically, Was that hard to read? I suppose this was one of his

ways to encourage the students, as it shows that he has expectations that they are able to
easily digest this text, but he also seemed a bit upset at the notion of it being hard to read
when it had been translated into a modern English version for them already. Other than this,
there didnt seem to be any motivational techniques aside from reminding the students of the
due date.

How is technology used?

My CT has mentioned on multiple occasions how important he sees technology as being in

the classroom based on how central it is in the kids everyday lives. He had all of the students
in the class take out their iPads (since each of them have an iPad at Westlake), and he also
taught them using a projector that displayed his computer screen onto the whiteboard. This
projector was also equipped with an interface that allows the user to actually tap on the
projected image in order to point and click. In other words, it essentially turned his laptop
into a giant touchscreen computer.

How are print materials used?

Even though this was my lesson, my CT adapted it to his own needs in a couple of ways.
First, to begin the lesson, he had all of the students get out the literature books from
underneath their desks and turn to Beowulf in order to get them all on the same page and
ready to look up any specific things from the story if needed. He also had them pull out an
entry document to the entire project that he had given them a couple of weeks ago as a
reference and to remind them of the purpose and scope of the project. This was a useful tool
for the students to have since it was a way to easily reference and bring up past lessons and
discussions about this project, so I ended up having the students get this paper out when I
taught the lesson for a second time.