New York State Principal Evaluator Learning System
Trainers Guidance
Day 2- Learning and Teaching
Session 1- Observing Lessons
February 2012
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
For all seminar training days you should have:
MATERIALS
 Trainers’ Notes for the relevant Day 2
 Participants’ packets
 Digital Projector (probably already in the assigned training room)
 Your laptop (capable of running DVDs) (or you will use the one in the room)
 PowerPoint presentation (loaded on your laptop or you will load it on the one in the room)
 DVDs
 Flip Chart paper (x2 if possible), Post-it notes, marker pens, and name tags
MATERIALS FOR PARTICIPANTS
 Participants’ Handbook this will be posted on-line
 Handouts for the day
THE TRAINING VENUE
The training room should be set up so that all participants face the front, but are around tables in
groups of no more than five (preferably four).
Set out markers, name tags, and Post-it notes on each table.
Set up the laptop, digital projector and speakers well in advance of the arrival of participants.
If possible, play suitable music on arrival, during breaks and activity sessions. This should enable you
to welcome the participants into a relaxed learning environment.
MEET AND GREET
Please meet and greet all participants with a smile. This is sometimes known as BEAM:
 Body language
 Eyes focused on participants
 Attitude is positive
 Mouths (and eyes) always smiling
The first slide of the presentation should be on as participants arrive.
Welcome the participants and introduce yourself. Explain that you are an experienced trainer, teacher
evaluator and any other details that you feel are relevant. Be enthusiastic and energetic!!
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
NYSED Principal Evaluation
Training Program
Day 2: Learning and Teaching
Session 1: Observing Lessons
Aims of The Day
To further enhance your understanding as principal evaluators of what a
principal needs to know and do in order to establish and maintain an
effective performance management system. Including the importance of:
•
preparation
•
collecting and recording objective evidence
•
providing clear and concise feedback which leads to actionable
change
•
implementing effective systems to track agreed actionable action
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Agenda: Day 2
1. Whole Group Introduction Session 1: Observing Lessons – 8.30 am
• Aims of today’s session
• Learning and Teaching
Break 9.30 am to 9.45 am
2. Breakout session 2: Recording Evidence - 10.00 am
Lunch – 12.00 pm to 1.00 pm
3. Breakout session 3: Effective feedback 1.00 pm
Break 2.45 pm to 3.00 pm
4. Breakout session 4: Dynamic Process – 3.00 pm
5. Breakout session 5: Gathering Feedback for Teaching - 4.00 pm
Review and reflection 4.45 pm to 5.00 pm
Close - 5.00p.m.
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Session 1 is with the whole group and will be conducted in the main room.
Sessions 2, 3, 4 and 5 will be in breakout groups.
TIMES ARE APPROXIMATE ONLY. Remind the trainees that there will be a break in the morning around
9:30 AM (This happens when participants transition from the main room to break out rooms). Lunch
will be from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM. The second break will be in the afternoon at approximately 2:45PM.
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Session 1:
Observing Lessons
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Briefly welcome all participants to day 2 and share the aims of the day and the aims of this session.
Aims of The Day
To further enhance your understanding as principal evaluators of what a
principal needs to know and do in order to establish and maintain an
effective performance management system. Including the importance of:
•
preparation
•
collecting and recording objective evidence
•
providing clear and concise feedback which leads to actionable
change
•
implementing effective systems to track agreed actionable action
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Use slide 5 to recap findings from the 2012 Wallace Report and the key role of the principal as leader of
learning.
Leader of Learning
Wallace’s work since 2000 suggests this entails five key responsibilities:
1. Shaping a vision of academic success for all students, based on
high standards
2. Creating a climate hospitable to education in order that safety, a
cooperative spirit and other foundations of fruitful interaction prevail
3. Cultivating leadership in others, so that teachers and other adults
assume their part in realizing the school vision
4. Improving instruction to enable teachers to teach at their best and
students to learn at their utmost
5. Managing people, data and processes to foster school improvement
THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AS LEADER: GUIDING SCHOOLS TO BETTER TEACHING AND LEARNING - The Wallace
Foundation, January 2012.
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Emphasize that this session focuses on the importance of the principal establishing effective systems
and protocols for lesson observation; it is not a session devoted to Teacher Evaluation.
Aims of The Session
To increase participants’ cognition of:
• Different ways to observe lessons
• Common features of effective lesson observation
• Self confidence to observe lessons and provide reflective feedback
• Role of lesson observation in principal evaluation
• Overview of best practice in observing lessons
• Impact of observing lessons on improving teaching and learning
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Use slide 7 to introduce the concept of multiple ways to observe lessons
(Depending on size of the group, you could take suggestions from the participants before showing the
slide).
Multiple Ways of Observing Lessons
There are a number of ways to observe lessons.
These include:
• walkthroughs
• focused observation
• whole lesson observation
• peer observation
• video
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Use slide 8 to introduce the key feature of effective lesson observation.
Stress the importance of the 3 stage process:
1. Preparation
2. Observation
3. Feedback
Plus annual summative evaluation
Common features of Effective Lesson
Observation
• Preparation by the principal, this may or may not include preconferencing with the teacher
• Collecting evidence - the lesson observation, part or whole of
lesson
• Post observation feedback, which focuses on actionable
change - ideally this should be done face to face
• Summative year evaluation to align evidence against the
agreed upon rubric
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Use slide 9 to introduce Activity 1: Continuum for self-reflection.
Activity 1
• Consider your experience and confidence in observing
lessons and providing feedback to principals on their
work as instructional leaders
• Now, complete the ‘Continuum for self-review’ chart
individually, as a personal self-reflection
• Place crosses to indicate your current position
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Introduce activity 1 (handout – Continuum for self-review). This will provide you with further evidence
as to how experienced and confident participants are in observing lessons.
NB: on this version, point 2 refers to using data to provide feedback to principals (not teachers).
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Continuum for Self-Review
NO EXPERIENCE
EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE
Lesson observation:
Using data to inform feedback to
principals
Looking at students’ work
Gathering evidence from
talking with students
LOW CONFIDENCE
VERY CONFIDENT
Lesson observation:
Using data to inform feedback to
principals
Looking at students’ work
Gathering evidence from talking
with students
Complete this individually as a personal self-reflection.
Place crosses to indicate your current position.
‘No experience’ may indicate lack of opportunity.
It will be useful to review this at the end of each stage of the training.
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Ensure all participants have a copy of the Activity 1 handout (should be in their folder). Independently,
participants must look at the eight criteria and reflect where they feel they may be in the developmental
continuum of experience and confidence. This should take 1-2 minutes.
Participants mark on each line (with a dot or an X) the place that best fits their experience or confidence
for each criterion.
Use a key/color of ink that identifies today’s date and time for each of the eight criteria. We want them
to use the same document to do a self reflection later in the training.
Use Slide 11 to introduce the importance of lesson observation in teacher effectiveness.
As with slide 7, depending on size of the group, you could take suggestions from the participants
before showing the slide, which is self-explanatory.
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Lesson Observation and Teacher Effectiveness
The main reasons for principals to
observe lessons and provide evidence
based feedback are to:
• drive changes in teacher practice
• drive changes in teacher
effectiveness
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Use Slide 12 to introduce Activity 2, which discusses the importance of evaluators shadowing the
principal observing lessons and giving feedback.
Activity 2 is designed to change the mindset of supervisors: they need to embrace the fact that sitting in
the office talking to the principal is not an effective way to gain objective evidence.
Activity 2: Why should evaluators shadow the principal
observing lessons and giving feedback?
In pairs or threes identify the:
• positives and benefits
• issues and concerns
about evaluators shadowing the principal
classroom observations
through the lens of the principal and
separately through the lens of the
evaluator
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
ACTIVITY 2
Participants should split into three or four small groups (pairs or threesomes).
Each threesome (or pair) should turn and talk about the positive features and therefore benefits to
observing lessons per se, from the view point of principal and a supervisor. Also, identify issues and
concerns.
Next, the threesome (or pair) should turn and talk about the positive features and therefore benefits to
the supervisor shadowing the principal observing lessons and giving feedback from the viewpoint of the
principal and the supervisor. Also, identify issues and concerns.
Allow a maximum of 12 minutes. Then as a group they need to share and record their common
‘positives and benefits’ and common ‘issues and concerns.’ Then, using a different color marker pen,
they should identify any points from the two categories unique to either administrators and unique to
classroom teachers. This could also be done as a Venn diagram.
The presenter should select one or two of the small groups to share their findings with the whole group.
The presenter should then lead a discussion on the findings of the whole group. It is a useful time to
recognize the positives, but not take them for granted BECAUSE at the same time it is essential for all
the negatives, concerns or issues to be identified and discussed.
Depending on the size of the group, it may not be feasible to mount flip charts on the walls to
summarize. However, when the training is delivered in smaller groups, each group should be invited
to post their flip chart conclusions on the wall and one person from each group to stand next to their
chart. As others walk around, if there are questions, then the author can answer.
Possible responses include references to:
Positives/benefits for principals: deserved positive feedback, reassurance, new ideas, opportunity to
discuss the principal’s role in leading learning and to identify areas for professional development or one
to one coaching; accountability i.e. it is not at all unreasonable that the principal’s evaluator should
know the qualities of teaching throughout the school.
Positives/benefits supervisor: opportunity to reflect, opportunity to discuss the principal’s role in
leading learning, qualities of teaching with peers; opportunity to celebrate effective feedback; seeing
different teaching styles; spending time with children in classes in school; opportunity to gain objective
evidence for undertaking the principal’s evaluation; gain a greater understanding of colleagues and how
they work.
Issues/concerns principals: fear about negative feedback; feeling ‘on the spot’; having to perform; what
is actually looked at by the observer; misconception that the observation judgment is a career
statement (which it isn’t); concerns about how specific teachers might behave during the observation
and feedback sessions; difficulties associated with me being able to make accurate judgments; what to
do if I see a poor lesson? What happens to the information collected on me? I could feel insecure
observing and giving feedback outside my subject.
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Issues/concerns for supervisor: managing morale of principals, especially principals who do not like
being observed; what am I actually looking at? What should I do with the information I get?
Improving teaching and learning: the central issue that effective classroom observation and effective
feedback identifies what in teaching directly affects the quality of students’ learning and therefore by
focusing on when and why learning occurs and how effective it is reflects back onto the quality of
teaching, so helping to raise achievement and standards for all students.
In the next slide, trainers simply highlight the summary messages of the slide.
In summary
Principal evaluators shadow principals observing
lessons and providing feedback so that the evaluator can:
obtain objective first hand evidence of the principal’s
ability to lead learning in the school
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Use slide 14 to review a typical lesson observation process.
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
What is the lesson observation process?
Observing in the context of evaluation includes:
• documenting objective evidence
• matching the recorded evidence against agreed upon
criteria
• using the outcomes from the lesson observation notes in
a positive way to provide feedback which promotes
student learning by driving actionable changes in teacher
and principal practices
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The purpose of slide 15 (next) is to introduce the concept of relative versus absolute performance.
Some participants are used to looking at relative performance which can give them an inflated sense of
success. If their school or their teachers are outperforming other schools or classes, even though
passing rates are still low, they miss the fact that many students are still under performing and far from
the goal of 90 percent of students performing at the proficient level.
Improving Teaching and Learning
Recorded observations
provide the basis for
informative feedback to teachers
leading to
improvement in teaching and learning
leading to
HIGH LEVELS OF ACHIEVEMENT FOR ALL STUDENTS
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The next slide (16) shows that in addition to an inflated sense of success is the ‘one size fits all’ model of
teaching with little attention to formative assessment. Therefore the next slide, in a small way, is to
demonstrate that different students achieve and make progress at different rates over different time
spans, and that when measuring progress in learning some higher achieving students may well be
coasting and others performing ‘out of their skin’, even though the absolute achievement score for the
‘coaster’ is higher than that student who only gets two out of five attempted problems.
Student Achievement and Student Progress
Over Time
• Note from the previous slide that our target is high achievement for all
students.
• The rate of individual student learning varies over time.
• Imagine a class of students learning long division….
Example: students have 20 questions to complete during the first 30
minutes of the lesson. You observe that: one student only completes five
questions and gets two wrong, another completes 12 and gets them all
right.
• How can this evidence be used as part of a post observation discussion
with the principal about differentiation of learning?
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Use the next slide, which is taken from the work of Barbara McGilchrist and Kate Myers to highlight that
teaching and learning involves two parties.
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
The Teaching and Learning Pact
The LEARNER brings
• their background
• their capacity for,
and experience of,
learning
• their prior and
current knowledge,
interests, skills and
understanding
• their preferred
learning style
• their current profile
of intelligence
To the PACT they bring
• Self esteem and
motivation
• Mutual respect and high
expectations
• Shared commitment to
learning goals
• Active participation in the
learning and teaching
process
• Learning from each other
• Reflection and
performance feedback
• Willingness to take risks
The TEACHER brings
• Knowledge, enthusiasm
and understanding about
the matter to be taught
• Understanding of the
learning process
• A design of teaching and
learning that is fit for
purpose
• And emphasis on
instruction
• An ability to create a
learning environment with
appropriate learning
conditions
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One of the outcomes form the session discussions, commentaries and questions should have been to
bring out the key elements of good teaching, namely that:
 students learn (or do not) as a consequence of the teachers’ actions.
 evidence of learning is discernible in student work and student discussion.
 desire to learn is a product of motivation and enjoyment.
Break
15 minutes
Transition to breakout room
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Day 2, Session 1: Observing Lessons
Remind the participants that the next four sessions are held in their breakout groups.
These should be the same groups they were in on Day 1. If anyone is unsure of their breakout group,
then they should see one of the administrators (give location).
They now have a short transition break (15 minutes) and should be in their breakout rooms ready to
start the next session at 9:45 AM.
If session 1 does not finish around 9:30 AM, the lead should adjust one or both of these times to get the
training program back on track.
Complete any other administrative tasks.
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