Proximity control, high school example

Narrator: Proximity control, high school example and non-example. Ms. Sentel expects her students to pay attention during instruction. In this example, the teacher implements proximity control to address Lydia’s off-task behavior. Take note of how she does so without interrupting the flow of the lesson.

Ms. Sentel: We spent a lot of time talking about the right triangle, and now is the time we’re going to connect that to what we know of the trigonometric functions. And, remember, these functions help connect the inside angles of a triangle with the lengths of the sides of a triangle. And so to do this and help us to remember the relationship between the sides and the angles we have this phrase here. It’s called SohCah Toa. And SohCah Toa, the upper-case letters—the S, the C, the T—they all represent our trigonometric functions. So that S represents the sign function, the C represents the co-sign function, and the T represents the tangent function. Now, the lower-case letters here represent the sides of the triangle.

Narrator: To review, the teacher implemented proximity control correctly. She subtly scanned the classroom for students engaging in desired behavior, identified a student not engaged and moved toward that student, stood in close proximity to the student for a few seconds (Note that the best location for Ms. Sentel to stand would have been behind or beside Lydia. However, the tight spacing of the room arrangement prevented her from doing so), maintained the pace and flow of her instruction, and continued to scan the classroom.

Proximity control, high school non-example

Narrator: When Ms. Sentel notices that Lydia is off-task, she attempts to implement proximity control, but does so incorrectly. Notice how she engages with the student and loses her place in the lesson.

Ms. Sentel: Alright, welcome back from lunch, everybody. I hope you are energized and excited to continue our discussion about triangles today. We spent a lot of time talking about right triangles, and we spent a little bit of time learning about the trigonometric functions that help connect the degrees of the angles within the triangle to the lengths of the sides outside the triangle. So today we’re going to review that and think about the trick we learned called SohCah Toa. And SohCah Toa helps us remember those thee important trigonometric functions. The S stands for the sign function, the C stands for the…Alright, where was I? The S, the C…yes…T… okay. So the T stands for tangent function.

Student: You didn’t say what the C stands for.

Ms. Sental: So the C, you’re right. Thank you, Christopher. The C stands for co-sign function and T stands for the tangent function.

Narrator: To review, the teacher did not correctly implement proximity control because she failed to maintain the pace and flow of her instruction, lingered near and engaged with the student by glaring at her, and lost her train of thought and struggled to resume the lesson.