Scenarios
Examples of Existing Scenarios
(If you are interested in using an existing scenario, please reach out to Julia Brandeberry at jbrandeberry@towson.edu. She will put you in contact with the author of the scenario.)
Classroom Management
Classroom Management: Maintain Engagement by using Contingent and Specific Praise
You as the teacher candidate will focus on maintaining engagement by using contingent and specific praise while introducing the lesson. Praise should be contingent (i.e., occur immediately after the behavior takes place) and be specific (i.e., describe the behavior that the praise is intended to reinforce in the future).
The avatar students are beginning a lesson to design a television commercial that will familiarize new students with the school and its resources for the teacher candidates content area. In the lesson introduction, avatar students learn that they will be working in small groups with assigned roles, and certain avatar students may initially refuse to work with others, be resistant to learning in general, or offer inappropriate behavioral expectations in the discussion. Your objective will be to provide contingent and specific praise to maintain engagement and reinforce on-task behaviors.
Classroom Management: Gain Attention & Establish Expectations for Group Work
As the teacher candidate you will strive to gain the avatars’ attention by using a consistent learning signal from a designated location in the classroom. You will have the opportunity to work with the avatar students to establish group expectations for behavior during small group work.
The bell has just rung to signal that class has started, and the middle school avatar students are still engaged in conversation or personal activities. The teacher candidate’s objective is to teach a lesson. To support overall learning in the classroom, they will utilize specific classroom management strategies, such as establishing a consistent attention signal for transitions to learning activities, establishing norms for working together in small groups.
Eliciting Student Thinking
English Language Arts: Eliciting and Interpreting Student Thinking with Linguistically Diverse Learners
You are a teacher working with a literacy group of Emergent Bilinguals. This is your first- time meeting for the new school year, and you’ve decided to engage the students in an “All About Me” activity to gather background information about the student’s relationships, interests, and strengths.
You will have to ask a combination of open and close-ended questions and gain clarification on confusing student answers, while avoiding questions that may make the students feel uncomfortable as their “affective filters.” A key task for learners in this scenario is to lower students’ affective filters by making them comfortable and relaxed, and by noticing when they become nervous, assuaging their anxiety. You will begin the session by introducing yourself and the activity. You are to engage each of three learners, one at a time, asking them appropriate open-ended, and when necessary, close-ended questions in order to gather the All About Me activity information.
Your focus is on content and meaning, not on the mechanics or syntax of language. You want to elicit student responses that show their thinking around the sub-topics of All About Me, and to create opportunities for students to use complex and extended language that explains their thinking. Be sure to look for the logic in students’ responses and to provide clarification for yourself as needed.
English Language Arts: Eliciting Student Thinking about Themes
In this simulation the teacher candidate will elicit student thinking related to the content. Specifically, they will pose questions that provoke avatar students to share their thinking about the content in order to evaluate their understanding, guide instructional decisions, and surface ideas that will benefit other students.
In today’s lesson the learner will lead a group discussion related to Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The teacher candidate will elicit avatar student thinking related to the content by posing questions to evaluate understanding and surface ideas that will benefit other students.
Leading Group Discussion
English Language Arts: Leading a Group Discussion – Using Explicit and Implicit Questions
In this simulation, candidates will have the opportunity to plan and lead a group discussion for intermediate elementary students centered on the first two chapters of “Because of Winn Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo.
Teacher candidates will create a variety of explicit and implicit questions that will allow them to increase or decrease cognitive demand based on the responses of the students in the group. Keeping students engaged and facilitating respectful discourse while fostering a thorough understanding of key components of the text is the goal of this simulation. In groups of five, teacher candidates will each serve as lead discussion facilitator.
Special Education: Leading a Group Discussion about holiday traditions
Previously your students had two trade books, My First Kwanzaa and The Night before Hanukkah read to them in class. In this lesson, you are going to lead two group discussions that promote inclusivity for two students with exceptional learning needs, including ADHD and autism. The discussion topics will focus on the students’ own family traditions and how these are similar to and different from one another, and the similarities and differences between Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as depicted by the texts.
Modeling
Mathematics: Modeling word problems using the story problem routine
You are a third-grade teacher. Your students have just recently learned how to use the relationship between multiplication and division to solve division problems. Your students have a good understanding of how to solve computations, but are having difficulty discerning which operation to use when solving word problems. Today your students will learn to solve word problems by using a routine. Your task is to model how to use the story problem routine (visualize, represent, solve, check and justify) in order to determine which operation is needed to successfully solve the problem.
Problem for model: Ivan scooped 16 scoops of ice cream evenly onto 8 cones. How many scoops of ice cream are on each cone?
Problem for guided practice: There are 9 cages at the pet store. Each cage has 3 kittens in it. How many kittens are available for adoption?