Transcript: Active Supervision: Secondary

Narrator: Active supervision, secondary school example and non-example. In this example, Ms. Harris implements active supervision to prevent challenging behaviors from occurring, while at the same time encouraging on-task behaviors. Prior to the beginning of the video, Ms. Harris identified partner activities as a context in which her students commonly engage in off-topic conversation. As you will see in the video, Ms. Harris provides a prompt for students to turn and talk with their partners about their predictions. In addition, she scans and monitors while walking around the room and she interacts with students. Note how Ms. Harris also incorporates explicit timing by informing students that they have 30 seconds for the partner activity.

Teacher: Okay. Today we are going to read an informational text. Before we read the text, I want you all to make predictions about the central idea. Take about 30 seconds and turn and talk with your partner about your predictions.

[Students discuss their predictions about the text with their partners.]

[Teacher scans and monitors while walking around the room.]

Teacher: Great predictions, guys! I’m hearing a lot of good predictions.

[Teacher continues to scan and monitor while walking around the room.]

Teacher: Alrighty. Let’s bring it back to the front in five, four, three, two, one. Let’s hear some predictions!

Narrator: To review, Ms. Harris implemented active supervision correctly. Prior to the video, she identified the context in which students commonly engage in challenging behaviors. Then, as you saw in the video, she provided a prompt; she walked around the room, scanning and monitoring student behavior; and she interacted with students, reinforcing desired behaviors. Additionally, Ms. Harris used explicit timing to proactively reduce the number of disruptions.

Narrator: In this non-example, Ms. Harris attempts to implement active supervision, but her efforts fall short. Prior to the beginning of this video, Ms. Harris identified independent practice as another context in which challenging behaviors occur. She also provided a prompt for the students to take notes. As you will see in the video, Ms. Harris moves around the room, scanning and monitoring student behavior. However, she does not interact with students, thus failing to implement a key step of active supervision. To her credit, though, Ms. Harris incorporates precorrection and explicit timing.

Teacher: Okay, everyone, please continue working. We have about 10 more minutes of independent work and I’m seeing a lot of great note taking going on so far.

[Ms. Harris walks around the room observing students as they work independently.]

[Ms. Harris picks up phone.]

[Ms. Harris picks up book.]

[Ms. Harris places phone on desk.]

Narrator: To review, Ms. Harris attempted to implement active supervision. Prior to the video, Ms. Harris identified the context in which students commonly engage in challenging behaviors and provided a prompt for the students to take notes. As you saw in the video, she walked around the room while scanning and monitoring the students’ behavior. Yet, she did not implement this strategy correctly because she failed to interact with students. However, to her credit, Ms. Harris incorporated precorrection by reminding students to continue working. She also implemented explicit timing, letting the students know they had 10 more minutes to work.