Name: _________________ Grade/Subject: _____________ Pre-Observation Date: __________ Observation Date: __________ Focus for Learning Briefly describe your goals for today’s lesson. This is where I state my specific standards that I am addressing. Explain how today’s lesson goals fits into the unit as a whole and how it will be helping your students achieve content learning that will benefit the overall goals of your school. Standard #1 Standard #2 INSTRUCTIONAL PLANNING Assessment Data Prior Content Knowledge/ Sequence/ Connections Explain the variety of assessments pieces you used to determine student strengths and areas for student growth. Your assessments should have taken place prior to this lesson and should have helped you plan for this lesson. What did you use to help you know who would need extra attention? What did you use to know who would need to be challenged? Try for assessments that hit a variety of learning styles. Did you use oral assessments, technology assessments, performance based assessments, and paper pencil assessments? Were they diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments? List it all here because you are assessing your students every day. We should ALL get Accomplished in this category! Briefly describe how you get input from families, former teachers, and other professionals about the knowledge base of your students. Do they have the prerequisite knowledge to be successful at what you are about to teach them? Explain how you will connect this lesson to real-life experiences and to other content areas. Detail how this lesson builds upon information that has already been taught and connects to information yet to be learned. Make sure this lesson fits into the district curriculum and prioritizes the state standards. This is another area where most teachers shine. Briefly describe how you get to know your kids – interest inventories, parent phone calls, going to their extra-curricular activities, coaching, tutoring, sitting with them at lunch, etc. Use this spot to point out your Tier 2, and Tier 3 students in the RTI process. List any students on IEP’s (first names only). Point out gifted students. Discuss the many modifications and accommodations you are making to your curriculum to meet the needs of these students. Knowledge of Students Don’t forget about everybody else. Briefly describe background and experience this particular group of students brings to the classroom. Has this group of students been more independent, more knowledgeable than groups in the past, or have you have you had to spend more time reviewing basic skills? Point to specific data that you have analyzed to support your claims rather than just your feelings. How will this affect this lesson in particular? Discuss how your experience in knowing how children learn (development, learning styles) will be directly connected to strategies, content, and method of delivery you will use in this lesson. Explain the lesson here. Provide times, transitions, questioning, and discussion techniques. Make sure to include content specific vocabulary. Show how you will present the content in multiple formats to hit all learning styles and lessen confusion. Explain how you are going Lesson Delivery to get the students to be creative, thinking critically, and working independently. Your goal should be to have a lesson that is student centered with the teacher as the facilitator. Showcase how you are meeting the needs of all students. Perhaps you teach as a whole class for only 10 minutes because that is the length of time you can hold their attention. Then you move into small group collaborative work to explore the topic. After that, you have some working independently while you meet with others. The goal is to explain how your instruction is differentiated to meet the needs of all your students. INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENT Differentiation Briefly describe the different task expectations for the lesson. You should not expect your lowest 10% to be doing the same level of work as your highest 10%. If you are, then either one or both of those groups is very bored or very frustrated. Explain what it takes for EVERYONE in your class to reach mastery of this lesson. Your job is to make this particular lesson accessible to all (think lowest 10%) and challenging for some (think highest 10%). Describe the materials and resources you used to not only teach this lesson, but to engage the learner. Make sure it is aligned to the curriculum, however. That means candy for correct answers is not a resource. Resources Resources include content appropriate YouTube videos, SMART board lessons, math manipulatives, iPads, music, photographs, etc. Also include any resources you accessed to create the lesson. If you researched a book or learned something in a course, reference it here. Classroom Environment Briefly describe your rapport with your students. Explain how you develop it and your feelings about the student-teacher relationship. Discuss simple classroom routines. These should be the things that students do with automaticity even if you were not there. Do your students transition from one thing to the next smoothly? Explain your classroom management system ensuring that it provides for decreasing unwanted behaviors and rewards positive behaviors. Explain how you communicate with parents and the community so that it benefits your students and contributes to a positive learning environment. Assessment of Student Learning Let your evaluator know how you will be assessing the level of student understanding during your lesson. For example, what will you use to show you that students are ready to move from whole class instruction to small group exploration, to individual discovery? How will you determine which students are independent and which need more instruction during the lesson? You need to show that you are able to adjust the lesson to meet the needs of the students, not necessarily what you’ve written in a lesson plan. Have a few scenarios planned for different situations based on whether students are “getting it, not getting it, or are somewhere in between”. Explain how you are going to give feedback to the students and parents. Show how you are going to encourage student self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses before, during, and after the lesson. Professionalism List the ways that you are a professional with your students, with parents, and with your colleagues. With your students, explain any extra things you do like going to basketball games, watching plays, or heading any clubs. Show how you support them as a positive role model in school and out. Professional Responsibilities With parents and community, explain how you communicate with them, are available for conferences, and treat them with respect. If you play additional roles in the community, list them here. With your colleagues, list how you collaborate with them to improve the education of your students. List any committees you belong to at the school, district, and state level. Finally, indicate any professional development you have completed. This could be college course work, professional workshops, or even books you are currently reading. It may be a good idea to mention study of educational laws if you are reading up on them.
