The high school in which I chose to complete my observation in was paramount high

school. I contacted a friend of mine who had and asked him If he could get me a

visitors pass and he told me that was fine as long as I let the office know five days in

advance. I was able to secure an appointment and arrived at scheduled time. The

School is on a fairly busy street and is fenced off from the outside. I pulled into the

staff parking lot and had to check in with security at the front of the school. I was

issued a visitors pass. After visiting the schools website I had learned based on their

School Accountability Report Card that Paramount high school is a public school in

Paramount California of 4,794 students. The school has a 19.5% English learner rate

and 10.3% rate of students with disabilities. The school is predominately Latino

with African American being the second highest ethnicity. The Demographics are as
displayed below:

This class is a structured English immersion 9-10th grade biology class with

a high percentage of English learners. The class must be taught in English and is not

a bilingual class.

The classroom environment is very nice, clean. It is a biology classroom with

equipped with lab tables, sinks, microscopes, many power outlets, and nice

informative decorative posters with students work on the wall.

 The students are all of color, mainly Hispanic a few Asians, the teacher is

white and very nice. The teacher informs me the lesson will include visuals with

drawing and Interactive component with real light microscopes and that he usually

holds this lesson much earlier in the year yet due to the nature of resources and the

content focus of his specific student group he had decided to include it later in the

year. The content goals are to teach the students the parts of the light microscope,

the functions of the light microscope and to operate light microscope by making

adjustments and preparing slides etc. The teacher walks around classroom during

microscope PowerPoint lecture keeping the kids engaged and helping them interact

with the real microscopes at their tables. Students are using the microscope, a

power point visual along with a fill in the blank worksheet combined into a

scaffolding approach in order to facilitate long-term memorization of the different

parts and functions of the microscope. The teacher is making sure to move around

the classroom-keeping students engaged and facilitating learning through direction.

When students get distracted he simply calls their name and directs them back to

the lecture and continues. Students are engaged, filling out their fill in the blank

worksheets and using their microscopes to learn “The parts of the light microscope”.

After explaining all parts of the light microscope with the aid of a PowerPoint visual

and real light microscopes at each table (in groups of four) and a fill in the blank

visual worksheet, the teacher asks students to take two minutes and discuss the

different parts of the light microscope with their immediate partners which adds a

verbal classroom interactive component to the lesson.

 Afterwards the teacher quizzes students by calling them specifically by name

individually to answer questions but overall this is a classroom activity. The

teacher is selecting a ranging group in the class in order to gauge and facilitate

overall and individual understanding. The teacher continues to cover ground within

the classroom and amongst the students in order to include them while he speaks

and gives direction.

The students have now turned their fill in the blank worksheets and are

taking notes on how to calculate the different magnification powers of the objective

lenses on the light microscopes. Using PowerPoint the teacher gives instruction and

examples through PowerPoint on how to multiply the different magnification

powers on the objective lenses of the light microscope.

The teacher motivates waning students by telling them after the next two

slides of notes they will be able to look a specimens through the microscope. This

revelation gets the students energized as some of them use this elevated energy as

an opportunity to protest the overall length of the lecture so far, many however,

display through their body language, that they are eager to continue on and get to

the part of lesson where they will be able to look at slides through their

microscopes. As students continue to lobby him in a somewhat whiney manner he

jokingly compares them with infants and the kids respond positively laughter and

get back to work. The teacher concludes the lecture with the differences between

wet mount slides vs. prepared slides.

Students will now practice mounting slides to the microscopes they

immediately disperse to their lab tables and he verbally gives them directions on
how to mount the slides then the students will draw different specimens from their

slides. For the microscope practicum portion of the lesson the students chose three

prepared slides and made drawings of their specimens on all three-magnification

levels. Students were also again tasked with calculating power for each objective as

a sort of rote approach to learning the different magnification levels. After the

prepared slide portion of the practicum the students were tasked with preparing a

wet mount slide with matter from the various fish aquariums within the classroom.

After which, they drew their specimen on all three objective magnifications. The

directions were given on power point and the students worked in groups of four at

lab tables. The students prepared their wet slides from aquarium water at specific

lab station with the assistance of the teacher two groups at a time, the rest of the

students continue to work at their lab station till in is their turn to create their wet

mount with the help of the teacher. After all groups had prepared their wet mount

slide the teacher continued to walk around to assist and gauge their learning

through questioning. The student’s demeanor suggests a healthy amount of

enthusiasm as they are engaged while using the microscope and filling in their

worksheets. Periodically the teacher needs to rein students in as they are distracted

by the interactive element of the assignment that allows them to move around

before and during instruction. He brings them back to focus by simply reminding

them that they are wasting everyone’s time and they respond by quickly getting

back to focus. The assignment continues…

 Teacher walks around to every station and gives instruction, there are seven

stations each with four students. The teacher assesses the student’s ability to focus

microscopes and he assists them when necessary.

The students receive positive feedback when they do something well, “good job”,

“great”, are heard and when they are incorrect they teacher simply provides

correction and directs them back on course.

Overall the students are heavily engaged in the assignment as they are all

focused on their microscopes and drawing their pictures accordingly. Sporadically, I

hear snippets of Spanish break out from different areas of the room as kids just

want to get a quick word in with one another about something they have thought of

or has distracted them from outside of the assignment. As the bell approaches the

teacher instructs students to clean up and he continues to make sure he covers

ground within the classroom in order to engage all students and keep them present.

When the teacher asks students to “stop” doing something like touching the

microscopes at an inappropriate time they respond positively to him and

demonstrate that there is a positive teacher student rapport. They display a high

level of conditioning as displayed by their overall classroom behavior and demeanor

that seem to stem from expectation their prior courses and the previous direction of

their teacher for whom they have known for a total of eight monts. In regards to

when they are supposed to listen and how they come together in groups when it is

time to work. They drill it well. They are conditioned to respond to the teacher

asking for there attention and providing certain direction throughout class. He also
asks if they have worked with microscopes before some claim they had early as

sixth grade.

At the very end the teacher takes the few minutes to quiz the students on parts of

the microscope as an entire group by telling all students to point the part he verbally

states aloud. The groups of four at their tables all participate and effectively point to

the stated parts of the light microscope. The teacher also takes time to share

personal stories of his own learning and the students respond positively. Judging by

the quality of the student’s drawings as I walked around it was obvious that they not

only engaged in their assignment but they understood the function of and how to

use the light microscopes. I am still however interested in their ability to correctly

label each part of the microscope and correctly calculate the different objective

magnifications. The functional learning through interaction component of the

assignment has proven to be effective. Have language barriers that would produce a

challenge for students to be able to correctly provide written labels for each part of

the microscope be overcome is question that I had had initially but upon reviewing

their test scores I would have to say the overall approach was significantly effective

for most of the students in the class with the exception of a few outliers. Students

quizzed on light microscope parts with 25 being the highest score, a high percentage

of students scored a 20 or above with very few outliers scoring between 10-19 and

one student who is reported to be extremely disinterested and frequently absent

scored a nine. It is possible these few outliers may need further assessment of their

strengths, weaknesses and learning styles. The student who scored a nine may need

attention to his individual circumstance a possible method for understanding his

unusually low score. Overall, I would conclude that the scores data and observable

learning suggest that the multi approach scaffolding strategies method of teaching

the microscope were indeed effective for the overall majority of students in his

classroom.

The next lecture is in Biology medicine and health. The content goals are to facilitate

learning through quiz corrections and Help students to find claims and support

them with facts using a current event assignment. The quiz corrections were for half

a point better on their original score for each correction they successfully complete.

The current event assignment was on the Zika virus and was meant to promote

constructivist thinking. The students are eager to help teacher pass back work and

begin the assignment. The teacher encourages students to think for themselves

before they depend on her for answers. Students, in a relaxed environment,

continue to make corrections for their quiz by consulting their notes and other

material he had previously presented. The teacher walks around answering

questions and continues to encourage them to figure the corrections out for

themselves. At a certain point, the teacher instructs that there should be less noise,

the kids respond, the noise level reduces. Their restlessness appears to derive from

them struggling with the material they failed to get correct on their initial quiz. After

they are finished with their quiz correction, the teacher passes out the current event

article. For the current event article the students are tasked with reading,

annotating, and answer questions. These directions are displayed through

PowerPoint and verbally instructed by the teacher. The students are also told that

they must find claims and to support their evidence as this helps with what they’re
tasked with in their English class and during standard testing. In another lesson

titled student-engineering activity students were shown a BASE -jumping video. The

BASE jump took place off of the tallest building in the world in Dubai and was shown

as a way to promote interest and motivation in the assignment. Students were then

given materials that consisted of, straws, plates, paper clips, twist ties and a golf ball.

Students were tasked with working within their groups of four to construct the

largest structure possible, using only the given materials that would stand-alone and

support the golf ball. Energetic music was also played in order to keep students

energized and engaged in the activity. A few students report the music is a bother at

the start of the lesson although at the half point they are all completely engaged in

the activity. Most students are actively engaged cooperating to maneuver the

different parts into a functional structure. They are having fun as evidenced by their

energy levels and displays of positive emotion e.g. smiling, laughing, and clapping.

The teacher continues to offer positive reinforcement as the lecture concludes and

students leave for the day. Their demeanor suggests positivity.

“Learning is generally defined as relatively permanent changes in behavior,

skills, knowledge, or attitudes resulting from identifiable psychological or social

experiences” (Seifert, 2009), and I would argue that a high level of individual and

group learning had taken place in each lesson and their respective individual parts.

Students not only displayed observable learning by showing the ability to fully

operate a microscope and successfully complete their given assignment, but they

also showed learning based on the numerical value of their test results.