Video Selfie Reflection - Jessica Barwick

I was initially nervous about not only being filmed, but about having to reflect on it afterward.  As someone who generally does not like to be on camera, I knew I would be overly critical of myself.  Of course, there are the initial thoughts of "Wow, I didn't realize I sounded so country" and "What was up with my hair that day?"  But within the first minute I quickly learned to tune that out and focus on what mattered.  The "Video Selfie Module" recommended setting a goal before watching your video, and my goal was to focus on student engagement.  So, I decided to pay close attention to what the children were doing/saying in my video rather than what I was doing.  I chose four pieces of evidence from the video that I felt were the most important in determining engagement and informing future instruction and reflected on those.

The project I am currently in the middle of is not the one I wrote this summer, but one on westward expansion.  I was so excited about PBL after our course that I wanted to try it out in an earlier unit before attacking it with my immigration unit.  Of course, it has taken longer than I anticipated, and we are still working on it.  But it has been a great learning experience for me and the students, and I feel more prepared to do my immigration project next month.  The general gist is that the students are divided into "families" that are traveling west by covered wagon.  They are writing personal journals about their travels from their point of view (mama, papa, son, daughter) that describe their journey and the obstacles they must encounter.  Their group culminating project is a skit about one of their travel days, and they must include handmade props and costumes.  The day that we filmed, I decided to let it be "Family Choice" on what they wanted to work on.

First, I gave students time to talk with their families about what they felt they needed to work on that day.  I said that I was going to give them two minutes, but my first observation in my video was that students were on task for the two minutes, but then conversation died down some after that time.  I wanted to check in with all groups before beginning work time to make sure every group had a goal, but I spent the entire first two minutes (and possibly more) with one group who is struggling to work together and make goals.  The rest of the class was ready to move on, but I wasn't, so the planning time dragged on for another three minutes.  While it doesn't seem like that much, it was a time waster to those groups that were ready and could have led to behavior issues.  Those students that were finished were no longer engaged in the project.  In the future, I need to check in with more productive groups first and then let them move on, and I also need to set a timer for myself to keep us on track.

Next, I noticed that when I announced work time, most of the groups wanted the materials that I had brought and they all went to this one area of the classroom where I kept them.  This was kind of wild with so many students in one place, and fortunately, nobody was bumped or pushed that could have caused an issue.  I did see in the video that I didn't realize at the time, that the "pushier" kids took all the materials before the quieter ones had a chance to get any.  I need to let one group at a time come look at materials and get something - that will cut down on traffic and allow each group to get at least one item to use for their skits.

One of my groups decided to work on their journals instead of their skits, which was a wise choice in my opinion, but once the other groups began creating props, it became loud and distracting to the group writing.  This was something I saw during filming, but it was confirmed on the video.  I talked to the group to let them know they could change their activity if they wanted to because I would rather them be engaged with props than with nothing at all.  Since then, I have designated specific journal writing tine each day that is quiet and focused on writing so that everyone can concentrate, then give helpful feedback to each other.

Finally, where I saw the least student engagement was in one particular group.  I allowed students to choose their own groups in the beginning of the project so that they would be excited about working with their teammates, but the students in one of the groups were more or less leftover once others had chosen their groups.  They are not well-suited to work together, not because they don't get along, but because all three of them are easily distracted and tough to stay focused in class.  I knew during the class that they were not engaged, and I tried to help them, but to the detriment of the other kids.  After watching the video, I realized I spent even more time than I thought trying to redirect or focus them.  Also, the video shows that, at least during the entire 12 minutes of filming, this particular group accomplished nothing.  The video showed them playing with pencils, pencil sharpeners, staplers, each other, flipping notebooks, etc.  In the future, I need to monitor groups more closely, possibly reserving the right to change up groups as I see fit or letting students make requests of teammates that I then form into groups that I know will work well together.  Unfortunately, because this one group is off task, everyone loses out on some valuable instruction time with me!

Like I mentioned earlier, there were some things I saw in the video that confirmed what I already knew, but it certainly highlighted some new areas of improvement for me to further student engagement with this project and others in the future.  I can see how this video selfie strategy could be helpful not only to teachers, but to students as well!