Observation Example #1

Teacher: Erin

Date: 10/23/12

Class: Ancient Civilizations

Erin, thank you for having me into your classroom again. This class once again demonstrated your continuing growth of expertise with our program. It was a solid direct teaching lesson in which students were introduced to new concepts relative Chinese feudalism. Here is what we especially good about the lesson:

• You took the time to do a brief review of their reading that they did for homework to check and see if students understood the unique viewpoint of the article of Babylonian captivity.
• You had students take reading notes for homework and you checked the quality of their notes. From a study skills perspective, I know there is nothing better you can do to get students to be actively engaged in their reading.
• You applied clear and consistent application of the team’s behavior management principles when students did not have their homework. This was done in a respectful and non-emotional manner.
• You made excellent use of some subject specific multimedia software to enhance your presentation. This is a great example of the meaningful use of technology in the classroom.
• Your use of a study guide in which students filled in information as you presented it was a great way to structure the presentation and help students actively engage in it.
• The engagement of the students was quite good (87% on-task from direct observation measurement) as they were well engaged in completing their study guide sheet.
• Your activity at the end of class that called on students to work together to demonstrate that they had learned the information presented was a great example of the intention of guided practice. Your game format allowed you to monitor and check whether students were “getting it”.

There were a few areas in which I felt the lesson could have been improved upon.

• Your modeling was well organized and made good use of visual aids. The presentation, however, involved primarily you talking and there was little opportunity for the students to respond or be actively processing the information. Your study guide that students filled in kept them on task, but I question how much some of the students were actually thinking about what you were presenting. It was not until the guided practice game that they actually had to internalize the information. The solution to this issue is to simply ask more directed questions of students to see if they can put information in their own words. Increased opportunities to respond during modeling would have made this presentation even better.
• With just a bit more planning, I think the guided practice game at the end of class could have been made into a nice cooperative learning activity. Cooperative teams could have been organized and the game used to get students prepared for a quiz to be given on the next day. They may have needed a little more time in this class to make that work but it would have been another opportunity incorporate more cooperative learning in your classes. This is just an idea for future curricular evolvement.

Thanks for having me in. You continue to demonstrate some great classroom skills and this class really ‘worked’. Nice job! – Peter