Assignment: Case Study Scenarios

Each of the following scenarios presents a situation based on a real world teaching situation that you may encounter during your career as an educator. Please respond fully to four of the eight scenarios listed. Responses must be written in APA format, include critical thought, and address all aspects of the chosen scenarios. Students should include direct reference to the week's chapter as well as relevant personal and professional experiences where appropriate. Your finished paper must include a title page and reference page and 4 page paper.

1. Joanie is a 12th grade English teacher at Glenbrook South High School outside of Chicago. Her school serves an upper-middle class suburban population and her students are very focused on their studies. As a result, they are also very concerned about individual assignment grades. After three weeks spent reading Shakespeare's The Tempest, Joanie prepares an exam that will assess students' understanding of the major themes and literary devices used by Shakespeare throughout the test. She spends a weekend formulating 30 multiple choice questions and four short answer questions that she feels reflect the major focus points of the unit. On Monday, she reviews the information with her students and on Tuesday she gives the exam. Curious to see how her students did, she grades them later in the day and is shocked to find that nearly half of her students failed. Looking more specifically at the questions her students missed, she soon discovers that most students were unable to answer questions related to Shakespeare's biographical history and that many also misunderstood major parts of the plot. Discouraged, she decides she needs to come up with a plan for how to revisit the information and retest her students.

i. Suggest a three step plan that Joanie can use to identify the specific information students had trouble with, revisit those topics in class, and retest the information. How can she use the students that performed well on the test to help those who struggled? How can she stop students from being discouraged when they see a failing grade?

2. Andre is a social studies teacher at a high school near Boulder, CO. His students are currently studying the French revolution, and while he feels confident with the amount of time he has spent planning the unit and the progress so far, he finds that he routinely has 5-10 minutes left at the end of class where students are left without an activity. Rather than wasting that time, Andre wants to find and instructionally productive means of using it that will help him gauge student progress as they read through the textbook over the next three weeks. Each daily reading assignment covers five pages of the text book. The end unit assessment is a 50 question test that covers the entirety of the French Revolution.

i. Suggest an activity that Andre can do with this time that will act as a formative assessment to inform future class periods. Andre spends much of the class period lecturing, suggest a way that these final ten minutes of class can incorporate pairing or group work to engage students with each other.

3. Jeff teaches a middle school art class at Charlottesville Jr. High in Charlottesville, VA. His school serves a diverse population of students, and within his classroom he has students of varied ethnicities and abilities. Over the course of the year, his students will be completing a variety of projects in a number of different artistic disciplines. As the year nears an end, Jeff begins to develop a culminating project. He wants his students to look back on their work from the year and to consider their successes and failures. He also wants them to reflect on how they have grown and to think about how this year's work will develop them in the future.

i. Write a 7-10 sentence description of a final project that Jeff could ask his students to create. Write it as an instructor, in language that students would be able to understand. Be sure that the project meets all of Jeff's requirements.

4. Eileen teaches elementary school math at a small school near Burlington, Vermont. Most of her students come from wealthy families who live in suburban Burlington and who come to class very prepared skill-wise for the teaching that takes place in her classroom. As a final project, she wants each of her students to present one of the concepts from the term to the rest of the students. Within their presentation, she wants each student to define the concept, give an example of it, and present a real world situation where the concept would be useful. She also asks each student to speak for at least two minutes. When she assigns the presentation, she wants to be certain that students understand the requirements of the assignment and how specifically they will be assessed. She also wants parents involved throughout the entire process.

i. What are three specific resources that she should give to students in order to ensure they are prepared? As they present, how can Eileen be certain she is actually assessing what she claims to be? How can she offer students specific feedback on their presentations?

5. Kate teaches at a Kindergarten near Boston at a school that serves one corner of Boston's downtown population. Most of the students in her all day class are African-American and the school itself is located downtown and surrounded by the Boston cityscape. With Thanksgiving approaching, Kate wants to devote time in class to the history of Thanksgiving and how the holiday relates to American history. On one specific day of class, she decides to focus on the importance of the first meal. As one element of her instruction, she plans to teach students how to create turkeys using their hands.

i. Suggest an instructional sequence focused on the creation of hand turkeys that includes :pre-assessment, to gauge students initial knowledge; informal assessment, to check understanding while the work is being completed; and summative assessment, to check for understanding once the work is complete.

6. Megan teaches a sixth grade art class in a small school near Austin, TX. Most of her classes have 15-20 students of varied skill levels, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of access to computers and technology, but many live in homes where technology is not readily accessible. She wants to find a way to embrace the varied backgrounds of her students in a project, and begins planning a multimedia project that requires students to share a specific element of their culture with the class in a 2-3 minute presentation. While she wants every student to put in the same amount of work, she also wants to give students a choice of projects. In all cases, she wants all presentations to include a creative visual element of some kind, a short speech that details how this element of each student's culture has impacted them individually, and a brief history/timeline of the cultural element.

i. Suggest three specific choices that Megan can offer to the students that would include all three presentation requirements: a creative visual, a discussion of the element's importance, and a brief history/timeline. Consider options that focus on different skill sets: writing, visual arts, music, etc.

7. Shelby teaches 9th grade Social Studies at a small high school in the rural plains of Kansas. Most of her students are farm kids who will end up working their parents' farms for the duration of their time in Kansas. In order to make use of the abundant knowledge related to farming and farm equipment, Shelby decides to read Of Mice and Men with her students. Each day in class, she and her students read one chapter of the book and she wants to assign them evening homework that will follow up on the chapter. Once they are finished reading, they will be writing a five paragraph essay that focuses on one character from the book and how they change over the course of the text. For their final essay, students will be required to use quotes from the text as support for their paragraphs.

i. Suggest a nightly assignment that Shelby can give to her students that will reinforce the day's reading but also help them in preparing for the final essay. What can Shelby do on a daily basis to confirm that all students are keeping up with their homework? How might she enlist the help of parents in keeping students on track?

8. Kevin is a middle school U.S. History teacher in a suburban school near Philadelphia. Many of his students are children of Professors or other employees of nearby Penn University. As a result, many of his students have already been introduced to the many historic sights in and around Philadelphia. As a project to finish the quarter, Kevin wants to have each student visit a local historical landmark and teach the class about it. Before they present to the entire class, he wants to make sure that they are prepared and that they have a chance to practice their presentation. Specifically, he wants to make sure that all students are prepared to talk about the landmark's history, their experience visiting it, and that they sound professional and prepared. Unfortunately, he does not have class time to listen to every student in class to make sure they are prepared.

i. Suggest a way that Kevin can use the students in class to preview each speech and to check for the three specific elements he wants included (history, their experience, preparedness). Give detailed instructions for how Kevin can prepare his students and what resources he can use to ensure that all students are prepared before they give their final presentations.