Classroom Ethnography, Part the fifth

One classroom policy/actitity I want to examine a little more closely is the class scribe. Each day, a student is assigned the responsibilty to track what happened in class for those who were absent. What work was collected and assigned, what handouts were received, and what was actually done. Viewed as a whole, it is an interesting window into how students view the class, at least in terms of filling out the sheet on the left.

The scribe sheets are consolidated in a clipboard, so all students have access to every agenda and class day from the beginning of the trimester. Every scribe, without fail, copies the agenda that Ms. Beale writes on the board. Every scribe, without fail, lists the handouts received and the work assigned, if any. Varience only really intrudes when students "List completely and sequentially WHAT WE DID TODAY".

Some students simply recreated the Agenda in their own words, for example, on the first day, a student writes "We filled out ID cards with parents names and then we discussed class expectations and had the room tour. The scribe calendar was passed around for everybody to sign. We wrote our journals on the importance of certain values." When the agenda listed 1. ID card 2. syllabus/room tour 3. scribe 4. journal. Many students described activites by simply saying that they did them, instead of describing them, for example "Notes on run-on sentences --what it is and how to correct it."

Some students wrote little or nothing. A lot of the scribe sheets are missing, or incomplete. Ms. Beale grades the sheets occaisionally for completion, and gives the students opportunities to make up the work on another day for half credit. Still, many days are not covered, and some days are somehow covered twice, which is either a confusion in schedules, or students trying to "pull one over" on Ms. Beale.

A few students, however, took it upon themselves to write more. One student expanded the note-taking acronym SKRAWL. One student included a diagram of how to annotate and reasons why Ms. Beale uses exit slips. One student listed and defined the vocab words assigned in class.

So, the question I have to ask is: Is this a valuable task? I assume that this was originally started in order to enable absent students to have some autonomy in regard to catching up to the class, and also to save the teacher some trouble in getting the students caught up. But the perfunctary, and sometimes completely neglected, descriptions probably cause more questions than answers. Of course, those times the student goes beyond in their descriptions are extremely helpful. And there is a certain value in having students track what the class is actually doing. This can be a form of informal assessment as well, as if the student is unable to communicate what they did, then they probably didn't understand what they did.

I am going to continue to use this activity next tri, but I am going to veiw it with a critical eye. I may have to keep a constant watch on who has the Scribe responsibilty, in order to assure that it gets done. And that, in the end, will not be worth my time.