Teacher F and the productive classroom
The comparatively high achievement gain of Teacher F’s lower-performing class recommends it for closer examination. Teacher F allocated considerably more time for checking and discussion of work (13.7 minutes) and the presen- tation of material—lecture or introduction to seatwork (14.4 minutes)—and considerably less time for the final seatwork activity (22.5 minutes) than was characteristic of the lower-performing classes in general. In addition, the lec- ture or introductory phase of seatwork was structured differently, frequently punctuated by two or more very brief, highly focused seatwork activities. In this class, the lecture or introduction to the final seatwork activity usually ex- hibited the following pattern:
Teacher F goes to the board, where there are 25 numbers written, and begins rounding off the first one. He has the students do this on paper. He says, “I want you to do the first five.” They are in columns of five. He continues, “Then put your pencils down.” They are writing these numbers down and he moves around the room. He stops the class (after about
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PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | TIME
6 minutes) and asks David what his answers were. David frowns and says that he didn’t get anything. “Who can help him out?” asks the teacher. Robert says, “I got it.” The teacher moves on to the rest of the column and then goes on to the A column which should be rounded to the nearest hundredth. The students then do this column. Kermit calls out, “Are we going to have homework, too?” The teacher says, “I’ll as- sign that in a minute.” Kermit says, “Well, we don’t have time to work on it if we’re going to do all of these.” Teacher F says, “Oh, we are not going to do all of these.” The teacher goes to the board and asks for the students’ attention and begins to go through the second column. He asks Jackie to help him round off the first, and she says she didn’t get it. He says, “I just asked you to help.” She looks at it and begins to try it. He walks her through the problem. [At this point, when there are approximately 10 minutes left, the teacher gives the seatwork assign- ment.] (Evertson, 1982, p. 182)