Task Orientation of Students

Time	Students on Task
12:05	10
12:10	10
12:15	11
12:20	13
12:25	14
12:30	12
12:35	14

Using the information in your table, answer the following questions: 

a. How many students were in the class? 

A total of 16 students attended class the day I did my observation.

b. How many students started work at the beginning of the lesson? What is the percentage? 

10 students were working at the beginning of class. That is 62.5%.

c. How long did it take before everyone was at least prepared to work? 

At no point was everyone prepared to work. One student was on his cell phone during the entire class time.

d. At their most attentive time, how many students were working as the teacher wanted them to? What is the percentage? 

At best, there were 14 students working as the teacher wanted them to. That is 87.5%.

e. At their least attentive time, how many students were working as the teacher wanted them to? What is the percentage? 

At worst, there were 10 students working as the instructor intended them to. That is 62.5%.

Analyze the data in terms of the following: 

a. The variety of behaviors exhibited; 

There were 2 students who were working on a test from the previous day. They were on task the entire class time. When students were on task they would be taking notes, listening to the lecture, or asking questions. Nearly all the students who were off task were on their phone when they were off task. Occasionally some students would start talking to each other during the lesson. 

b. The relationship between the behaviors and the different phases of the lesson;

During the introduction to the topic most students were off task. As the teacher moved into the main part of the lecture students became more interested. The number of interested students remained mostly stable until the end of class.

c. The relationship between the behaviors and the tasks, learning environment, and discourse; 

The beginning of class is when the students were most off task. We had just returned from a fire drill so I think made the students particularly distracted. The lesson involved a totally new subject (as I mentioned earlier, there had been a chapter test the previous day). As the teacher began discussing the major ideas of the lesson (that we can use triangles to determine the sum of the interior angles for any polygon) students became interested and were at least listening to the lecture even if they weren't taking notes.

d. Any other interesting relationships you notice

While I didn't notice any particularly interesting relationships within the data, I did gain insight by recording the data. I was honestly surprised to see that at all times over 50% of the class was engaged. When I have taught the class it honestly felt like everyone was off task. There were also particular students who I felt were never paying attention based on their homework and quiz scores. Yet when I spent the entire class watching, I discovered they were paying attention and even taking notes for the entirety of the lesson. I plan on spending several of my observation days in the future repeating this assignment to see if this day was just a fluke or if they really have been working harder than I've given them credit for. 

Use your responses to the questions above to also respond to the following question: 

Based on your observation and analysis, how are you thinking about students’ on and off-task behavior and what are some strategies you will do to encourage on-task behavior will help you achieve your goals? 

For the most part I come to the conclusion that many before me have come to. Cell phones have become a big problem. While I'm not saying students would be on task all the time if they didn't have cell phones, having a device that constantly distracts you and gives you more off task things to do is not helpful. I think in my own classroom I need to place particular focus on enforcing the cell phone policy. This is something my CT is not great at and I really think it hinders his teaching. 

As far as encouraging on task behavior, I think the best thing you can do is be engaging. 14 out of 16 students were engaged when the teacher was discussing an interesting topic. I think the best thing I can do is keep the passion up and try to make every topic interesting for my students. Hopefully, if there's an interesting show happening in front of them, they'll at least look up and watch.