observation

Wow, it has been a month since I have done this. I got a chance to visit Mr. Escue's Russian History class on a day that he was giving a test. Most might think this would be a bad day to observe because he is not teaching that day, but this was no ordinary test. I can only think of a few sentences that Rob said during the entire test but there was a lot of interesting information that was being presented. He used a fishbowl to assess the students learning and all the students were involved in the conversation the entire time. They rotated in and out of the middle sharing their thoughts, listening and debating ideas. All the students came prepared with written notes for the class and you could tell that they all had put some work into preparing their responses. This was a great way to get the students talking and sharing ideas and I am sure that all of them would prefer to be tested like this all the time. Talking with Rob, he said that this format has brought up some new and interesting ideas from students that he has not heard before. It was very impressive to see the fishbowl in action and how smoothly it ran in Rob's class.