North Central High School

North Central High School

Arrive 7:00am

Period 1 - Jocelyn Sisson - AP/IB English 11

JS mentioned today is an AP day and not really IB. However the point of IB is getting students into discussions and thinking of the bigger picture and the AP aspect of the class can also get students to develop the same skills.

JS copied student work to the power point/copies to students. JS walks through the student paragraphs and asks students to talk in groups and say out loud "what's working/what's not working". Discusses literary devices, good topic sentences, etc. Students talk in groups and then gives groups' responses to JS prompting questions. Questions being asked are critical thinking questions where students must analyze paragraphs.

"Take a minute and talk in your groups and give it a score of between 1 and 5" - JS

Students continue this same task on two other paragraphs. Paragraphs were chosen by JS to model to students what a good paragraph looks like vs some that may need some work.

Students works on individual tasks. 2 mins to do so. Write an AP prompt for a soliloquy in Hamlet. Students use mini white boards for activity. JS puts them on the chalk tray to discuss them. Wants students to realize that prompts must not give away essential information about the reading before students read the passage.

Students respond to teacher's prompting questions regarding Hamlet at the end of class to practice skills from today's class.

Classroom essential agreements posted for all class periods. Building classroom community. Refers back to IB learner profile attributes.

Period 2 - Julie Burton - Social Studies

Students chose a civil rights issue and had to compare it to modern day issue. They utilized technology by making digital stories using iMovie. Students spent most of the class periods working on their project.

I was able to see a brief part of a finished project and the student seems to really take a personal interest in the topic she choice and really documented her connection to the two issues she chose.

Period 3 - Spanish 2 -Tracy Rogers

Teacher greets the class in Spanish and class begins with school announcements. Student starts class with speaking Spanish (telling her name, date, the day, etc. and also asked questions to students). Teacher asks follow up questions if students just say sí or no. Student keeps speaking about a current event she read. This presentation is done in English.

Teacher transitions into reviewing different types of pronouns in Spanish, specifically IOPs and DOPs. Student get to choose which number they do. There is a lot of direct instruction on this topic with little student questioning. When questions are asked, there is little wait time for student to think.

Teacher passes our dictionaries for students to look up verbs to help them with the class activity they are doing. Students will translate the sentence into Spanish and then a second time using both DOPs and IOPs. Before starting to translate, teacher asked students if the verbs are in the preterite or the imperfect tenses. Student choose only 4 sentences to translate. Student have the rest of class to work on sentences and will be turning them in when they leave the classroom.

Teacher has learner profile attributes posted on the walls with both Spanish and English. Student can see both Spanish and English translations as well as the description in both languages.

What does inquiry look like in your class? How do you use the target language while incorporating inquiry?

Lots of questioning, not necessary in he language. Spanish being used in third year for inquiry in accelerated tract, and 4 year regular.

Do you feel student speak less Spanish because of IB?

When covering a topic, they actually think about it in English deeper than they would have before. From there they can begin to make connections.

Having student know the questions depends on the teacher. But students will probably know theme.

Spanish IB text used as main text in Spanish 4 and 5.

Classroom difference btw. traditional and IB. " I don't know if it's changed be of IB or just years of experience and reflection. I've learn to be more clear in steps. We've been trying to be more thematic because of IB. We do some kind of culminating activity with the IB rubrics.

New students coming to NVHS sometimes stressed about over all expectations between schools. Possibly relates to IB because of the higher expectations IB brings.

Leave 10:30am

Reflection

The three classes that I observed at North Central High School were all very different in terms of how they view IB learning. It is interesting to me that when asked if students know about their statements of inquiry, on teacher kind of shrugged her shoulders and said “it depends on the teacher if they know them or not. They at least know the theme they are studying.” It is possible that it just my own vision of what an IB classroom looks like, but I would think in order for students to get the most of the unit, they should know what they defining questions are. Overall, I was able to take away a new perspective of IB from an entire IB high school. On question I do have leaving this observation is how the AP/IB combined classes look and what the IBO’s take on those types of classes is?

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