How the Unit Worked

THE BEGINNING

While performing scenes engaged the students and made reading an active, "fun" process, Ms. Greenhow was not sure how to connect these performances to her curriculum and year-long goals. Intuitively she believed in performance-based learning, but it was not until she thought through the process of goal-setting and ongoing assessment that she was able to conceptualize how dramatic activities would connect with the "big picture" of students' learning. Ms. Greenhow felt that the Teaching for Understanding framework helped her organize her ideas about how performing scenes connected with her goals for students of reading and writing for meaning: "It especially helped me to discuss, actually 'explain' my unit to another teacher and talk through things…like she would ask me what was 'the generative topic' and I would tell her my understanding of the term…use examples from the Macbeth unit to demonstrate to her what I was talking about."

Also, breaking the unit down into a sequence of performances helped her design matching assessments, and thereby, moved students through the process of understanding, interpreting, and assessing their comprehension of subject matter. Although the language of TfU such as "throughlines" and "understanding performances" were unfamiliar at first, their meaning was "central" to Ms. Greenhow's idea of good teaching: "I think people are put off by the terminology at first until they realize that Teaching for Understanding is simply good teaching… 'Teaching' implies teaching for understanding but developing the terminology gives us a way to talk about and share our practice with others using a common structure."

OUR LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Because Ms. Greenhow's classroom was spatially limited, the students did most of their work in the high school auditorium or in the cafeteria when the auditorium was being used. She had to schedule these sessions in advance with the Principal's office and the custodial staff. Sometimes miscommunications resulted, and the class arrived at a locked auditorium or the "cage" that housed the lighting switches was locked. These delays were minimal but unsettling, and on such days, the students took longer in focusing on their work. The class met in Ms. Greenhow's room before going to the auditorium. By meeting in a smaller space first, Ms. Greenhow could spend the first 10-15 minutes clarifying the goals for that day, commenting on the previous day's work, providing additional instruction or demonstration as needed, and publicizing what she would be looking for in the groups on that day. With each new performance of understanding, Ms. Greenhow provided the students with handouts or notes from the overhead and a model from former students. She also had individual students demonstrate the concept, such as using voice to show emotion, in front of the whole class before moving into groupwork at the auditorium.

CHALLENGES

Groups at work

Usually, the students had questions about what was expected of them and by when. Ms. Greenhow reinforced the timeline by keeping the sequence of the unit written on a flip chart. Often, the deadlines had to be expanded because conflicts in scheduling rehearsal space and the absence of group members delayed the production process. Tardees and absences created one of the drawbacks in using groupwork for TfU. Another challenge to working in groups was that students, assigned to work with particular peers, did not trust those peers in some situations. Because this unit occurred at the beginning of the school year, students had to work through trust issues as they got to know one another. Some students did not want to work with classmates they did not know, and therefore, did not put forth their best effort. The way groups worked around reluctant individuals differed. Some "acting troupes" placed reluctant performers in minor roles and others encouraged them to "get over it" with humor and praise.

Supervision and Coaching

During rehearsal time, Ms. Greenhow circulated among the groups to coach the staging process and speak with individual actors about their technique. These observations and dialogues provided an opportunity to individualize instruction. In talking with each actor Ms. Greenhow could see how well he or she understood the reading and the genre. However, she found it difficult to keep all students on task during these circulations, especially, when less motivated students were working with peers who were not also friends. On the other hand, when less motivated, weaker students worked with their highly motivated peers who were also friends, all students got motivated. The weaker student responded to the encouragement and support of his fellow actor-friends more than he or she had responded to the teacher's instruction. For those students who had trouble staying on task without supervision, Ms. Greenhow set deadlines for that day, such as: "I'm coming over to your group in ten minutes and I'll be looking for ....." Such on the spot deadlines were important in keeping all groups moving forward. Because the students were completing assignments daily, the instructor and the students were required to perform ongoing assessment before they could move to the next task.

Thinking Through TfU

Constantly assessing students at each step of the performance process can be particularly demanding for the classroom teacher. Feedback on written work needs to be handed back in a timely manner before revisions can be done. Furthermore, jumping from group to group with a quick eye and a sharp ear, targeting potential problems, and asking focused questions to help students think through their actions, can be exhausting. Without clear goals, this ongoing push-pull between performance and assessment could cloud what it was students were learning. Ms. Greenhow found that the more students got lost in the details of the performance, the more she found herself thinking back through her unit goals, getting clearer about what she wanted students to understand, and reminding the students why they were doing the work. In this way, TfU helped her craft all the pieces into a cohesive hold that carried she and the students through the four weeks.

Challenges of Using Technologies

One of the main challenges of using a video recorder, stage equipment and the cable studio, was scheduling. At KPHS, the media center loans out camcorders to teachers, but they must sign up for the equipment at least one day in advance. Using the auditorium and cable studio also required advance notice. Therefore, Ms. Greenhow had to plan and coordinate auditorium, video recorder, and television use before the actual recording and viewing of a performance. On performance mornings she or one of the students brought equipment from the media center to the auditorium while the school's janitorial staff opened the auditorium, turned on stage lights, and locked the door behind the class. To facilitate taping the performances, Ms. Greenhow scheduled time with the assistant director of the cable studio (located in the high school), and he came to the auditorium at the arranged class times to film performances. When this experienced technician was not available, Ms. Greenhow asked students to set up the camera on the tripod and film their classmates. Generally, putting students in charge worked well but took slightly longer for the class to get going. Similarly, when reviewing students' videotaped performances from previous years or when viewing professional actors in a movie version of the play, Ms. Greenhow found it difficult at times to get students to reflect on what they were seeing, especially if the scene shown was not "their scene." The students wanted to simply watch a movie rather than watch, critique, reflect, and refine their work. One student commented: "Can't we just watch something without thinking about it…" Ms. Greenhow agreed that students "were thinking a lot to read Macbeth."

On to:

• What new technology adds.