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Daniel's Observation

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On June 23, 2015, I was able to observe a vacation bible school class discussing the story of Daniel. The twenty minute discussion followed a ten minute story about Daniel’s life and some of the struggles he faced while living in Babylon. During the story and discussion, the fourth grade children sat on rugs in the floor in a semicircle. There was no order to who sat where; they just picked a rug to sit on. There were nine boys and four girls in attendance that evening. Six of the boys and three of the girls were in attendance at the church regularly. The other four were all acquainted with the other students and had attended at least once previously. The two teachers were both female in their mid-sixties. One is a retired middle school …show more content…

In the beginning of the discussion, any student with a raised hand was permitted to reply. These types of questions were lower ordered based questions. Examples included naming Daniel’s three friends and stating what Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was about. During this time period, there were a total of 25 questions. Of these questions, 19 were answered by boys and 6 were answered by girls. On two occasions, a boy would yell out the answer and she would accept that. The girls followed the procedure of raising their hand. The second half of questions were higher ordered based. There were 10 questions during this time. Examples included why God would test Daniel and his friends and how can you apply this story to your life. These questions were asked of specific students. All nine boys were asked to answer but only four produced an answer to one question while two boys answered two questions. Three of the four girls were each asked one question. Only one girl was asked a question before it was offered to a boy to answer. Two of the girls chose to answer a question. There was really no order showcasing a pattern of which gender would be asked the next question, nor did she go down the row they were sitting …show more content…

She also used expressions such as ‘come on, you know this’ when asking the boys questions. In the questions that were posed to the girls, if she prompted at all, she would usually say “well, do I need to ask someone else” or a statement similar. She would wave her hands in the air similar to motioning children to come to her when she was prompting the boys to answer a question they were having difficulty answering. Her hands were generally on her hips when the girls would answer. She appeared frustrated when any of the children were unable to provide responses, but she seemed more frustrated with the boys than the girls. She would often make statements to the boys about needing to pay attention. She did praise all students when they participated and showed no bias in her feedback towards

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