Field Observation 4: Escape the Yellow Wallpaper

Last week, our field experience came in the form of planning and setting up our very own Escape Room based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Our “students” were peers at Stony Brook, but they gave us an idea of how a real English class would respond to such a lesson; we even had an example of a student who was not engaged, and found that they all did things we didn’t expect. As we watched a livestream from the other room, we learned a lot about the value of such a lesson and what needs to be fixed for the future. We also experienced how applicable and beneficial backward design is, even when creating something that wasn’t a traditional lesson plan. 

It’s very difficult to predict how your students will react to certain things. When planning this, I thought about how the narrator first examined the patterns in the wallpaper and didn’t start to rip it off until the end of the story, so I didn’t expect that their first instinct would be to immediately rip all of the wallpaper off and crumple it up. To me, this shows that not only should teachers have contingency plans, but we should accept that things won’t always go as we plan (or even backup plan) and that we have to go with the flow. There were other ways for the participants to find the clues that were written on the wallpaper, so it didn’t derail everything.

However, they still were unable to figure out the puzzle that I had created, and this to me was a big lesson on background knowledge. I had gotten the idea for my puzzle from reading A Series of Unfortunate Events as a kid, where word replacement is a code used to significant effect in the story. Had I been faced with this puzzle, I would have known how to solve it because of my background knowledge, and I assumed that participants of the room would be able to as well. But my students didn’t have the same background knowledge that I did, so they didn’t know what to do with my puzzle. Had I been more aware and not assumed that they would know the same things I did, I could have made the puzzle more accessible. 

The students were not able to solve the escape room, because in our planning we had underestimated the difficulty of our puzzles. Perhaps this problem could have been avoided if we had tested the puzzles more carefully, or started our planning earlier. However, I feel the lessons we learned from doing this initial lesson will help me plan a more accessible room if I ever do this again.

That being said, Dr. Galante pointed out that this was much more valuable to the planners than to the participants, and to that I have to agree. My classmates and I know The Yellow Wallpaper backwards and forwards from reading and rereading to come up with puzzles and details to incorporate. If I were to use this type of activity with a future class (which I would like to!), I would have the students themselves plan the escape room instead of me coming up with it and having them solve it. I think this would get students really engaged with the text and would prompt analysis that they wouldn’t even realize they were doing. 

Field Observation 3

One day, the 9th graders worked on how to construct a good response to literature with evidence. The teacher asked them to consider what components a good response consists of, then wrote a central idea on the board from The Old Man and the Sea (a novel I personally have no intention of teaching): “Santiago’s respect for nature.” He asked what made evidence appropriate: students came up with “relevant” and “specific.” Students then worked in pairs to go through a designated set of pages and pull quotes that would support that central idea. These quotes would later be used in a writing assignment, which students would already be prepared for with their collection of text evidence. By breaking it down into steps, the teacher is helping students master the skill of finding and citing evidence from the text to ultimately produce stronger writing. 

While I was there, he also showed me the assignment from the day before, in which groups of students had drawn the titular old man on poster paper and labeled all of the injuries and pains he had sustained, including the page number that they found each detail on. This assignment not only required students to go back and do a close read (using citations, once again), but it helped them to visualize the protagonist and the physical hardships he endured throughout the story. Most of the pictures were glorified stick figures but the level of artistic skill wasn’t what mattered, and while I wasn’t there to witness it, I have to imagine the kids had fun with it.

The next time I came back, he had students taking a writing multiple choice section from a practice SAT, then told me he would use these scores to put them in groups for a project. However, after the first 15 or so questions, he had them working in pairs to complete the rest, so I’m unsure how it was an accurate measure of individual achievement levels. The project had a list of grammatical topics, of which each group would tackle a different one. The groups were to do research and become experts on their topic, then create a 30 minute lesson (not presentation), with materials, to teach their topic to the rest of the class. About one group per week would do these presentations for the next 11 weeks. While I like the idea of students becoming experts on a topic and then actively teaching it to their peers, the fact that they are teaching and watching full grammar lessons is unfortunate. Furthermore, I first assumed his achievement grouping would be heterogeneous, so stronger students could help struggling students, but he told me they would be grouped with students who scored similarly to themselves, with the lower achieving groups taking on the easier topics (such as nouns/adjectives, verbs/adverbs, pronouns) and the higher achieving groups taking on the more challenging topics (commas, semi colons, usage errors). I don’t think I approve of this method, as it sets lower expectations for certain students. I certainly hope students aren’t aware that they are in a lower achieving group. 

Field Observation 2

In my second and third observation, I’ve noticed that one area my cooperating teacher is consistent in is using group work: nearly every period I’ve seen has used some sort of small group discussion or turn-and-talk. This turns out to be effective in getting all the students in the class to participate. As they work, my teacher always circulates the room and checks in with the groups, offering input and nudging discussion along when necessary. I did notice one missed opportunity, however: when working on beginning an argument essay for the short story The Lady or the Tiger?, as the whole class briefly discussed the assignment and how to include a rebuttal for the other side of the argument, one girl asked “can we talk to someone who has the opposite stance as us to give us ideas?” To his credit, he says “sure! Who thinks it’s the lady? Why?” and did the same for the tiger, getting some student input. This may have been a chance to deviate from the plan and pair students off so they could have this discussion with each other. One issue however was that about 90 % or more were arguing for the same side, the tiger, so some students would have to argue for a side that wasn’t their own—which would be beneficial, actually! But I have to wonder if it’s good to use an argument essay that most of the class argues the same side for. Perhaps it would be better to choose something more controversial?

With several of the classes working on essays, I got a good look at my teacher’s “non-negotiables.” Students had a list in their binder of these non-negotiables, including improper capitalization, lacking end punctuation, contractions, “things” “stuff” “a lot” and other such terms, first person pronouns, second person pronouns, improperly titling, improperly quoting & citing, “this shows”, and a few other such examples. The top of the document says “these rules are non negotiable and if you break any of them you may be asked to rewrite the paper.” Personally, I hate the way this is presented. He told students that the purpose is to help them avoid making fixable mistakes, but to me it places a higher priority on grammar than on the content of the paper. I do like the idea of providing students with a “cheat sheet” of grammar rules, such as showing them how to properly integrate quotes into a sentence, but it shouldn’t be presented as a “non-negotiable.”

Going back to the positives, I’ve noticed that when one student has a question, this teacher will clarify the answer for the entire class, often providing examples to make sure everyone is clear on it. For example, while they were all working on their individual writing, one student asked about integrating quotes, and after answering it to the individual student, he addressed the entire class to make sure everyone heard his response. The next day I was in his room, he did a quick mini lesson on integrating quotes for all of his classes, using examples to make sure students understood the difference between putting the words from the text into their own sentences and dropping in, as he calls it, a “quote bomb.” By the end of the mini lesson, students seemed to have a better understanding of how to do it. The best way to follow this up would have been to do an exit ticket with students demonstrating that they can do it, but they ran out of time.

Reflection 1

Yesterday was my first day of observation this semester, where I got to see two 11R classes, two 9H classes, and a 10H class (all with the same teacher). There was quite a lot that I admired about this teacher and the classroom atmosphere he fostered. As students walked into the classroom, he had music playing on the SmartBoard, which he also turned on again later when they did group work. He greeted them, chatted with them, joked with them. His general demeanor was always positive, and he frequently showed students that he respected and appreciated them. The students, in turn, respected him and were fairly active participants. 

All 5 classes, regardless of grade, began with the same Vocab Word of the Day and 5 minute mini-mini lesson on the word and grammar. He stated that he felt it was better to do a bit of grammar each day so that they wouldn’t have to do entire full-period lessons on it. I don’t support drilling vocabulary (he did mention vocab quizzes) but I actually appreciated the brief touching on grammar. I have been told at length that we should not teach grammar, and while I agree that full lessons on it and/or drills, dittos, quizzes, and the like should definitely be avoided, I think his few minutes of grammar had value and he went about it the right way. Rather than just telling students what a compound sentence was, he helped them understand why they’re important to use in writing. 

For the 11th graders, the central focus of the lesson was exposition. He drew a plot diagram on the board, something all of them had seen before, and asked them to tell him what it was and what the components were, then zeroed in on exposition and talked about the kinds of elements that are introduced in exposition. I appreciated that he did this all based on student answers and wrote it all on the board as they went, rather than just putting up a powerpoint slide with a dictionary definition of exposition. He then demonstrated exposition by diving into the first few pages of Lord of the Flies, which they read together and discussed. 

The 9th and 10th grade classes had similar lesson structures: both centered on discussion and analysis of a short story (The Cask of Amontillado and A Jury of Her Peers, respectively) that students had already finished reading and annotating, and both involved small group discussion. The groups were formed primarily by counting off, but he did something interesting in the 10th grade class: he asked for students to raise their hands if they felt they had a strong understanding of the plot of the story, and 5 students slowly raised their hands. He then asked if those students would be willing to serve as discussion leaders of groups, and they agreed; he then assigned each of them to a different group. In doing this, he made sure each group had at least one student who had a strong grasp on the story and could help facilitate the discussion and explain any misconceptions with their peers. I felt these lessons were effective in getting all students to be active participants in discussion, and students in all three classes went beyond the discussion prompts to talk about the texts in details. Their annotations seemed well done and well used, and they were already in the habit of supporting their answers with details from the text. The teacher was always sure to celebrate insightful responses and frequently commented on their good thoughts. Overall, I felt that these classes served as successful models of collaborative analytic discussion.