Observations #5 and #6

These two observations were for Junior Level Dual Credit Pre-Calculus at Transmountain

Early College High School. These two class periods consisted of a combination of instruction

and group collaboration. Giving students opportunities to reinforce a concept by working

together to solve a problem and explaining the steps to getting the answer. While at the same

time Mr. Villareal, the teacher, is walking around checking that students understood and stayed

on task. Implementing two of the three tasks of the Fundamental Five by Mike Laird and Sean

Cain, which were Small Group, Purposeful Talk and Power Zone. This let students expand their

knowledge on the concept, while Mr. Villareal was able to access every student in the class. The

activities and accessibility to every student was made possible by the classroom organization of

grouping students in four. Thus, if a student had a doubt, they had the choice of asking their

peers or Mr. Villareal, clearing up any confusion. This also exemplifies Vygotsky’s theory by

“learning from others” with students explaining to each other their way of solving the problem.

Both periods followed the same patterns of instructions. Staring with Mr. Villareal

introducing the topic, followed by him explaining and modeling a problem the students were

expected to solve. After he would give students the opportunity to solve one on there own then

confer with their group, while at the same time Mr. Villareal would walk around checking for

understanding. An interesting strategy he uses to pick students is by form of an inflated bouncy

ball, any student could throw the ball and the last student touched by the ball had to say what

they did to solve the problem. Occasionally, Mr. Villareal would reward a student because of the

answer he/she gave, again implementing another strategy from the Fundamental Five which was

Recognize and Reinforce.

 Both classes were focused and sort of fast paced, giving Mr. Villareal the ability to

introduce a new topic before the bell rang. The pacing of the class didn’t seem to affect the

students, due to the way the lesson was structured, which was instruction, group discussion,

review problem, and repeat 3 more times. So, the students had many opportunities to discuss

with their peers and ask questions. Because of all the group activities and classroom organization

students of all learning levels were able to be included in the group discussion of any problem

assigned.

Role technology played in this class was not much aside from the smart board. I did,

however, notice that the students had access to a highly advanced calculator the ti-nspire. Which

upon asking Mr. Villareal why the students didn’t use it much, he responded that he didn’t want

his students too dependent on calculators by doing simple calculations they can easily do by

hand. This all went back to the conversation of the Pros and Cons of having technology in the

class, while it has made instruction easier, it has the ability to also distract students from the

lesson itself.