Romeo and Bloggiet

While I've still been having some difficulties in getting my actual observation started, I did have another opportunity last week to sub in an English Inclusion classroom where I could watch the lesson that the other teacher had prepared. I spent 6th and 7th period with her and her classes, both 9th grade regents level. Both classes worked on the same thing, with no variation between the two.

The groups were reading Romeo and Juliet, picking up from where they left off the day before with Act 1 Scene 2. And if you asked me to predict, according to the concept of Backwards Design, what the teacher had in mind as the mastery goals for students, I would say she didn't have any in mind. But if I had to come up with one, it seemed the goal was for students to walk out with a basic understanding of the events that take place in scenes 1 and 2, and little else beyond that. The way she achieved this goal was by reading scene 2 aloud from where they had left off, then evaluating students via a review sheet of short (short) answer and fill-in questions about both scenes. Students could work in pairs or groups, and went back in their texts to find the answers and fill them in; if they didn't finish in class, they could do it for homework over the upcoming winter break.

There were about 20 questions on this review sheet, and the majority of them were right-there questions that they could find right in the text: questions such as "Which character is known as the peacekeeper? (Benvolio)" or "Who breaks up the fight between the two families? (The Prince)" and "How many times has he broken up fights between them recently? (Three times)" and so on. There was the occasional question that required a bit more thought, such as "How do the citizens of Verona feel about the two families? Why?" but for the most part, they were first level recall-based questions which required only one or several word answers. Most of the students in the class were working on it, though some simply asked their friends ("what'd you get for number 3? what'd you get for number 4?") and some didn't bother, saving it for homework--but those who were working received little to no help from the teacher, who left the room for 10 minutes during the first period (reminder that I'm a sub, so this is allowed) and sat at the computer throughout the second one. Still, those who were working were coming up with generally correct answers, so there's that.

Perhaps more disappointing was the read aloud which preceded the worksheet. Shakespeare is notoriously difficult, especially for 9th graders, so it makes sense that the teacher stopped students in their reading every few lines to clarify what they had just read--however, rather than asking students for their interpretation, or showing them how they could decode his dialogue on their own, or even asking them to tell her what the definition is as listed on the lefthand page, she simply told students as if she were their personal translation device. They had no opportunity to try and figure out what the characters were saying; the teacher simply spelled it out for them. And on the very few occasions that she did ask a question, they were the types of questions Christenbury and Lindblom tell us to avoid in chapter 9 of Making the Journey. When Capulet handed his servant a list of invitees to his party and the servant complained in a fairly roundabout way that the list was useless to him because he couldn't read, rather than asking something like "What problem does the servant have here?" the teacher gave the yes/no and leading question of "...So does the servant know how to read?" which led students in both periods to come to the obvious answer of "no," rather than actually coming up with the content of that question themselves and learning how to decode Shakespearean language.

So if the goal was for students to gain a basic grasp of what took place in those two scenes, I suppose they did, for the most part. But if she had any deeper goals, I would say it's unlikely they were achieved.