Classroom Ethnography, Part the forth

School was cancelled on Friday, as it was all over, so I had no chance to attend classes then. On Wednesday, I attended, even though I was still overcoming sickness. I didn't talk much, and ate many, many cough drops. I felt worse at the end of the day than I had at the beginning.

In class on Wednesday, Ms. Beale had the class "report out" on a small group discussion on In the Time of the Butterflies that they had done in the previous class periods. The questions were composed in order to guide students towards making inferences in the text. Ms. Beale began the activity by giving directions: speak clearly, listen, take notes on new ideas, etc.

During the activity, each group stood, in turn, faced the rest of the group, read their question they had been assigned from the handout (linked from a screenshot above), and then detailed their answer using in-text examples of events, plot recitation and citations. The other students did not comment or add any questions. Very few students wrote any notes, and one is even doing math homework instead. It is obvious to me from my observations that students did not value this activity all that highly beyond their personal performance, which Ms. Beale will grade them on.

Ms. Beale does comment on every presentation, modeling an emotional response to the text, potential themes and messages in the text, and correcting misconceptions. She often says "The really interesting part is..." or "What I noticed was...".

While students were composing the answers to this discussion on Monday, I noticed that students tended to compose their claim beforehand, and then look for evidence to support it. I noticed this with the AP students as well while they were working on a synthethis AP style question. This "inside out" method seems to be time consuming and difficult, especially when the evidence does not bear out the original conclusion.

Aside: Students, just now (I'm writing this from Ms. Beale's room), were talking about the book before Ms. Beale passed out the 3rd and final multiple choice comprehension test. One student asked the others "Are Maria Teresa and Mate the same person?" and another answered, "Yeah, it's like Trujillo and El Jefe." To which, another student responded, "Wait, they are the same person?"

Obviously, there are reader misconceptions that are happening in this text. While, on one hand, I'm glad that the students are addressing them themselves, I'm concerned that these misconceptions about these main characters aren't being fully resolved earlier. The last student confessed to me, after I had explained how "jefe" means "boss" in Spanish, that he might have compared and contrasted El Jefe and Trujillo! This could have been a joke, but since Ms. Beale's class seems to consist of a lot a worktime and little class discussion, I wonder if there are other misconceptions that are not being addressed.