A Camera on a Case Study Student

As one of my goals, I had said I wanted to video the class so that I could get a baseline of how the behavior in the class was, and then I could compare that to a future video after I had implemented some of my strategies.

So for my phonics lesson on Friday, I videoed my students. I made sure that they did not realize that the camera was on by setting it up in the morning to charge, and telling them to ignore it because it was charging (which first thing in the morning it was). After computer time (which precedes Phonics on Fridays) I had them count to 1,115 from 1,110 before coming in (which gave me enough time to press start).

The unfortunate thing is that I had hoped that I had set up the camera in a place where I could catch both of my case study students in action, but instead I got a really good view of one of them, and their seat partner, but not the other student and not the rest of the class because the camera was too low.

But what I did observe about that student was very interesting, and has given me enough to go off of for him, and I will have to record my other case study student at another time.

First, right when he walked into the room, he was trying to be good. He sat in chair check (proper chair position), folded his hands and waited for directions. He was even pretty good when I asked them to take out their white boards. But at this point, many students said they had lost their markers, and I had to go to our reserved markers and start passing them out.

This was the first moment where he started acting badly. He started playing with his white board and marker, making a ramp with his board and rolling his marker down it because he was bored, and was not given another direction yet. This leads to goal number 1.

Goal 1- Find an activity that is always available to all students whenever I have to stop the lesson for a minute (phone call, talk to another teacher, student, find a paper etc.) and instruct students that any time that I am not teaching they can and should be doing this activity.

I get the marker situation resolved, and I start the lesson. I remind all the students about white board rules, and then I ask them to write the root word of various words that have suffixes added.

My case study student starts well enough, as in he is focused and participating when I give the first direction. Unfortunately, he writes the suffix instead of the root word. He was confident in his answer, but another student tells him that he is wrong, he starts erasing it to fix it, but by that time I had given the correct answer, and you can see he is frustrated that he was not able to answer the question.

But he pulls himself back together, and starts writing the next one... very slowly... he doesn't get it up in time before the answer again. I lose another little chunk of his attention, but he is still participating.

This time he writes it, gets it up on time, but I don't give feedback on his board, and he is frustrated again. He writes the last few halfheartedly, but I think it was a big place where I lost his trust, and thus his attention.

Goal 2- Don't allow students to become frustrated in this way by me not allowing them time to participate.
I am not sure how I can rectify this problem though because there simply isn't time for me to allow for every child to get their boards up before moving on at the pace that some are currently writing at. Possibly I could ensure all students get a chance to have their boards up if I encouraged everyone to write quickly in some way... possibly points for table with all member's boards up first?

At this point, I tell the class that we aren't going to be writing on our white boards for our next activity, but instead using the boards to answer questions that have only two answers by showing the brown side for one answer and the white side of the board for the other.

Because of the previous problems that this case study student has already experienced, by this time he totally checks out. He took out his crayons, and starts playing with the box, the crayons, the white board, etc. To make matters worse, his seat partner is not answering the questions with her white board either, she is writing on her white board with her marker in her mouth. He thinks that this is a brilliant idea, and decides to join her. After a little bit, they both switch to just writing on their white boards with their hands again.

Goal 3- Change the seating chart so that students who get distracted easily are not sitting next to each other (this is always a goal, but apparently the current seat partner was not a good choice).

At this point, I catch them not joining us, and since I gave a rule about not writing anything extra on their boards or it would be a tally, they both receive tallies at this point.

This refocuses her (the seat partner), but he has chosen to pout because he got in trouble and he just sits there with his head in his arms for a bit, before I notice his lack of participation, and tell him that if he doesn't participate, he will be getting another tally. He decides to just barely hold up his board to answer the questions.

By the end of the lesson, he has decided to stop pouting, and has gone back to playing with his crayons again instead of participating.

Goal 4- Spot check the "problem students" frequently throughout the lesson to make sure that they don't waste most of the lesson by playing with things like this student did. Also, take away things that are distracting, in this case, the crayons.

In summary,
My case study student started showing problem behaviors when:
-direction wasn't given after he had gotten his supplies ready
-he wasn't able to keep up with lesson
-we changed to an activity where he could not write with his marker
-his partner distracted him
-after he was punished
-he had given up on the lesson

My goals to rectify the above problems:

Goal 1- Find an activity that is always available to all students whenever I have to stop the lesson for a minute (phone call, talk to another teacher, student, find a paper etc.) and instruct students that any time that I am not teaching they can and should be doing this activity.

Goal 2- Don't allow students to become frustrated in this way by me not allowing them to participate.
I am not sure how I can rectify this problem though because there simply isn't time for me to allow for every child to get their boards up before moving on at the pace that some are currently writing at. Possibly I could ensure all students get a chance to have their boards up if I encouraged everyone to write quickly in some way... possibly points for table with all member's boards up first?

Goal 3- Change the seating chart so that students who get distracted easily are not sitting next to each other (this is always a goal, but apparently the current seat partner was not a good choice).

Goal 4- Spot check the "problem students" frequently throughout the lesson to make sure that they don't waste most of the lesson by playing with things like this student did. Also, take away things that are distracting, in this case, the crayons.