Video Analysis

In this video I observed a male math teacher, Mr. Ormsby, and his class for one class
period. There are 36 students enrolled in this eighth grade math class. The students are arranged
in groups of three and four with their desks in clumps and facing one another. The teacher has
the students get out pieces of paper as he passes out a packet that the students are to complete
that day. The lesson is a review of material already taught, and is focusing on linear equations.
The clear learning goal would be graphing linear equations. Before releasing the students to
work, Mr. Ormsby quickly reviews the two ways that he taught how to graph equations. He
explains that one student in each group is to graph the lines, while the other students are
instructed to create tables of points to plot. Throughout the video, the students asked many
questions and the teacher had to consistently redirect the class to clarify instructions or
procedures. At the end of the class, the teacher had the class complete a quick write about what
they had learned. There was not enough time given to complete this quick write and the students
did not end up turning it in.
As I make sense of what I observed in this video and try to make meaning of the evidence
I found, it is hard to say that a lot of development and learning occurred that would help the
students progress towards the learning goal. To begin, the way that the students were grouped
and assigned work to complete was not efficient in getting them to work together. For example,
Mr. Ormsby passed out the packets and explicitly tells his students that only one of them is to
complete the graph, but the others need to check the work. It is evident in the video that the
workload of this assignment is being placed onto one students shoulders while many of the
others in the groups seemed to check out and not help as they were expected to. Due to the fact
that only one student actually had to go through the motions of graphing, the other three students

in the group were not receiving the adequate practice of this skill and therefore not progressing
towards development of the learning goal. In addition, the students seemed to rely very heavily
on Mr. Ormsby. He seemed to have a major concern for the students getting the correct answer,
and a lack of concern for the students discovering how to get to the right answer. This concern
for getting the right answer caused Mr. Ormsby to scaffold his students EXTREMELY heavily
and much more than needed. Every time the students call him over to their group, even for a
minor question, he will check their work and automatically tell them where they went wrong,
and what they should have done differently. His helpful hints are actually simply telling
students the correct answers. I observed the students clearly recognizing his tendency to give
answers and watched their hands shoot up at the slightest question because they know that it will
lead to answers from their teacher. There was no perseverance from the students, no higher level
thinking, and no deeper understanding of the concepts being practiced due to Mr. Ormsbys
approach of helping the students get the right answer.
After observing the evidence I collected from watching this video and making sense of
what I saw, there are many changes that I would say need to be made in order for the students to
more effectively develop towards the learning goal of graphing linear equations. The one thing I
would keep the same is the fact that the students are working in groups. If done appropriately,
this is a great way for the students to build collaboration skills. What I would change however, is
that I would give the students each a job so that the work wasnt being completed all by one
student. The jobs would all depend on one another so that the students were forced to work
together and collaborate in order to reach their end goals. Another thing I would change is the
questioning techniques that the teacher used. At no point did I observe Mr. Ormsby use
appropriate questioning strategies in order to guide his students thinking, rather than explicitly

tell them how to think. He tended to ask questions and immediately answer them himself- telling
the students exactly what to do. I would change this by asking questions that got the students to
think deeper and talk to their peers, as well as give my students time to answer the questions I
asked. Without hearing their answers and their input, I am not assessing their progress toward
reaching the learning goals and therefore have no further information if they need to be
scaffolded more, or are understanding the learning goal. In addition, this tendency to overscaffold the students prevents them from having the opportunity to make discoveries, which will
impact them much greater in the long run.