Be sure to be on time. School principals, secretaries and teachers
have a lot to do, and we don't want to abuse their hospitality by creating
extra work. At least for the first week that each group (A,B,C) goes
to a new school, wait until most or all of your colleagues are present and
go in together.
When you enter a school building always go directly to the office
and sign in using that building's procedures. Typically this will
include your wearing an identification badge before you go to your
classroom. (Not all schools have a badge type system). Don't
forget to sign out when you leave the school as well.
Remember, you will be observing in trios at each site. In the
Fall quarter, you will visit each site 3 times; an elementary school, a
middle school, and a high school. Your observation period will be a
half day, beginning at the start of your teacher’s day and ending
at . You
will need to take the time at the end of your morning to complete your
observation reflections in your journal.
Do not sit next to fellow MIT students in the classroom. If you are
able, sit in different parts of the room with different views of the
classroom. If it ever seems possible, try to sit at the front of the room
sometimes so that you can see students’ faces.
In order to explain your presence in the classroom, ask the teacher
to introduce you to the students in the class. Let them know that you are
also students who are learning about teaching. Also, let the teacher know
what kinds of things you will be observing each day.
Do not initiate conversation with the children, nor interfere as
they do their work. If the children engage you, be polite but not
engaging. If you avoid most individual eye contact, scan the room as you
observe and take notes, the students probably will ignore you after they
get used to your being there. Remember, this quarter your task is to focus
on observing and taking notes.
You may see things in the classroom that you don't agree with.
These observations will give you your first chance to control your body
language -- your non-verbal responses. If you see something you are
uncomfortable with, describe it in your journal and don't discuss it with
anyone but the MIT faculty. Remember you are a guest, not a classroom parent
nor a paid evaluator.
You’ll notice in the weekly guidelines, questions to ask the
teacher.Check in with the teacher
for a convenient time to pose these questions and talk for about 5
At the end of each observation session, plan to meet with your
observation partners for 20 to 30 minutes. Go out of the school, and find
a spot to have a cup of coffee and debrief what you each saw and what
questions you may have. Note alternate interpretations your partners bring
to the same situation. For example, maybe I thought the teacher was angry
and aggressive in giving directions, my observation partner may have
interpreted that same interaction as the teacher being clear and direct.
After each observation and reflection, write down a question or two about
teaching, learning, and schooling that arises from your observation. We
will share these during computer lab time.
At the end of your 3 weeks at one school, be sure to let the
teacher know how much your appreciated your opportunity to observe. A note
or card is always appropriate. If you can think of one or two things that
you learned or thought were particularly good, let the teacher know.
It is important to appreciate that these teachers are being
generous to let us come in and observe. It is easy for outsiders and
people new to the profession to be highly critical of what is going on in
the classroom. While we want you to reflect deeply on the relationship
between teaching, learning, and schooling, it is not appropriate to be
negatively critical of the teachers we visit. We don’t know their
circumstances, and teaching is a very complex profession.
You are bound by confidentiality and must not discuss anything you hear or see in the
classroom with people outside the program.Do not have
conversations with your peers in public places where you may be overheard.You never know if the teacher’s best
friend or the parent of a child is sitting near you.
Here's to a great experience!
Fall Classroom Observation Guide
These formal classroom observation tasks
will help you to focus directly on the classroom environment, which includes
the physical arrangement and teacher -- student interactions. Rather than
engaging in teaching or tutoring experiences, which may limit focused
observation, these tasks promote very centered looking, listening and
Record your observations in a journal
devoted exclusively to this assignment. Observation journals contribute
to the structure and content of the Thursday technology sessions and Friday observation
You will be using the observation guidelines below on
Thursday mornings at each of the three school sites: elementary, middle school
and high school. You may observe and record events in addition to those listed
below, but this format will assure that you have observations that can be
compared with those of your colleagues, and we can learn from each others’
experiences in a thoughtful way. Be sure to leave enough pages in-between
each observation for your regularly written reflections, and for your response
to the reflections of others in your seminar.
A central goal for your observations is
learning the differences among descriptions,
interpretations, and evaluations. Further, we want you to
become aware of your own interpretations and evaluations, and those that are
informed by the research literature and our MIT community.
Interrupt your journal descriptions at any time with
an asterisk (*) or some such sign, and write down at once anything to which you
strongly react -- it may make you feel uncomfortable, surprised, alarmed,
shocked, delighted, sad, happy. These are important reactions, because they
will contain messages about your own perceptions. It is important to go back to
your notes and reflect what you were responding to and why.
We will collect your journals on Fridays.
ONE AT EACH OBSERVATION SITE
Classroom Context- Record
the following information for each classroom you visit in your journal.
School setting - urban/rural/suburban
Grade level - single grade/ multi-grade classroom
Number of students and number of teachers
Profile of students - boys/girls; race/ethnic profile
of students (best guess); second language speakers; other visible or audible
differences e.g. wheelchairs. You can also access the OSPI report card website http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/Default.aspx
to gather additional information about the school including socio-economic
class of students looking at the percent of students on “free or reduced
Journal Format: Draw a vertical line down the center of your paper to
make two columns. The left column is for descriptions
of the physical environment. The right column is for your interpretations of what you have described.
Include these basic
observations and descriptions: A brief "grand tour" description
of the school as a cultural scene. What do you see and hear as a first
time visitor of the school and class? Describe the building, the
halls, things on the walls in the halls, the lunchroom, the library, the
office. What do you see? What do you hear? Who do you see as you
move about the building?
The physical environment of the classroom: Make a
drawing of the room layout: size, location and arrangement of student and
teacher desks or tables; shelves and other large equipment; windows and doors. When
the teacher is free to talk with you, ask about why he/she decided to arrange
the room as he/she did. Take note of the teacher’s response. What do you think
are the opportunities and limitations of the physical space?
The walls: Once again, draw
a vertical line down the center of your paper to make two columns. The left
column is for descriptions of the walls. The right column is for
interpretations of your descriptions. In the left hand column, write descriptions
of classroom and building walls and other surfaces including: student work,
commercial posters, lists of rules, reward charts, photos, display cases,
plants, holiday pictures, etc. What is the visible curriculum in the
school and classroom? In the right hand column of interpretation and
evaluation, describe what you think the teacher might be trying to do given
his/her selections? What messages do you get from these artifacts? Who might
feel most included in this setting? What/who is normalized? What thinking do
students bring to the school about learning, and how could they conceptualize
the building as a resource for learning?
Personal Responses to
the Cultural Scene
Written Reflections: After you leave the school, take some time to write reflections about
your observations. Pay attention to any responses you have to the school, the
classroom, what is being done and what is being said. If you do not have any
strong responses, this could indicate that the environmental context matches
your expectations or experiences so it appears ‘normal.’ What does that mean?
Who may experience it differently?
Note: When you are reflecting on your
observation, it is important that you begin with your own reflections prior to
talking with your observation partners. Your ideas and insights are likely to
be different from each others’. We want you to preserve your personal
interpretations and conceptions long enough to get them out on paper.
Convergence to shared perceptions among your MIT colleagues can happen quite
quickly, with a glance, a nod, or a few words.
TWO AT EACH OBSERVATION SITE
Observation and Description of Student-Teacher Dialogue
In week two of
your observations at each site, you will be focusing on student-teacher
dialogue during whole group interactions. This is a partner activity where you
and your observation partners will need to attend to different things and then
share notes following the observation.
One MIT student-teacher (or 2 – if there are 4 of
you) will create a map of teacher and student contributions to the whole class.
Using your notes from the previous week’s observation, design an observation
chart ahead of time that will make your recording of observations more
Map out the
desks and the teacher location.
Label each desk
with numbers 1, 2, 3 to indicate students (rather than assigning pseudonyms).
each student is a boy or girl and whether a student is of color or white. Your
notation could look like: 9BW (indicating student number 9 is a boy who is
teacher in the room as well.
copies of this map for yourself and the colleagues who are observing with you.Give each of your colleagues a copy of this
map beforeyou start this
Your job on the actual observation day is to draw lines
from person to person, mapping the order of the conversation. Attach this mapping to your journal.
The other two MIT student-teachers will have copies
of the map provided by their colleague as a reference.You will set this map on your desk next to
where you are taking notes as a reference page. You will individually document
the dialogue both between teacher and students, and among students.
Journal Format: To prepare for this documentation of the dialogue, create several pages
in your journal as a T-chart. On the left hand side you will note what the teacher says. On the right hand
side you will note what the students
say. Keep a running journal of the questions and comments made by the teacher
and students. When the dialogue is slow enough, note which student is speaking
(referring to the class map you developed prior to class).
Do this for at least 2 whole class discussions you
witness in each school. Make sure to switch jobs with your field partners for
each discussion. Make sure to note what class is being observed (i.e. 2nd
grade science, 2nd grade reading, Period 2 highly capable social
studies, etc.) Make a copy of your partners’ work and tape or glue it into your
journal for your own records.
Ask the Teacher:
“What did you want students to learn today? Do you
feel that they learned it?”Summarize
what the teacher said in your journal.Then write a reflection on whether your perceptions align with what the
Examine the Dialogue
Journal Format: Draw a line down the
center of your page for your reflections:
On the left hand
side, write about what you noticed about the patterns in student-teacher
dialogue as it is mapped out. Who is engaged in the conversation? What does the
map look like? (Please be descriptive
rather than interpretive or evaluative.)
On the right
hand side, note your corresponding interpretations.How do you interpret the dialogue
patterns from the map? What do you think is going on and why might that be
reasonable? What concerns arise for you as you examine this map? What insights
do you bring to this from your readings?What beliefs or filters of your own do you think are causing you to make
the interpretations in this way?
Discourse Analysis:Now look at the words in the
discourse, in particular, times when teachers are posing questions to students
and students are responding to those questions.
identified one common questioning interaction: Inquiry-Response-Evaluation
(IRE). This is where a teacher poses a question (inquiry), a student responds
to the question, and the teacher evaluates
the correctness of the student’s response. In your notes, use a different
colored pen or pencil to bracket off segments of the conversation that follow
the IRE pattern. Do the questions call for yes/no and short answer responses?
Looking over the IRE patterns, interpret what level of thinking or reasoning
was required for the student to provide the responses. High –medium –low? [For
example, if a teacher asks a 5th grader, “Is the word ‘dancing’ a
noun or a verb?” we would say that requires a low level of thinking or
reasoning. The student would simply follow a rule for identifying the part of
speech. Or if a teacher asks students to give a response to a question where
the answer comes directly from a textbook, that would also be low-level. On the
other hand, if students are working on the concept of fraction addition and the
teacher asks a student what kind of representation they can use to show that ¼
+ ¼ = ½ rather than 2/8, that requires a higher level of thinking and
Now that you’ve
identified examples of IRE dialogues, look through and identify other kinds of questions the teacher
poses.Bracket off these other
-Is the teacher seeking to clarify student thinking? Is the teacher probing for a more substantive
response? Is the teacher leading
students to a correct response?
-Is the teacher asking students to describe steps/processes, or provide more complex reasoning behind ideas and responses?
-What level of thinking or reasoning was required for
students’ responses to those questions? High-medium- low?
Written Reflection on the Analysis:What
insights do you have about questioning in general? Where do you see examples of
students learning important ideas through the dialogue? Where do you see
examples when students were likely reflecting what the teacher wanted to hear,
but not deepening their understanding?
**Remember** After each observation and reflection,
write down a question or two about teaching, learning, and schooling that
arises from your observation. We will share these during computer lab time.
THREE AT EACH OBSERVATION SITE
Description, Reactions to, and Interpretation of Instructional Strategies
Using vertical lines, divide your paper in thirds for
these observations and reflections:
Label the left
hand column Descriptions.Label the
middle column Reactions, and the last column Interpretation based on
In the Description column, identify the
teaching model(s) being used and write notes about what you observe (see the
different types of strategies described below).
In the Reactions column, make notes
about your reactions, feelings, beliefs about things such as:(i) usefulness of the strategy and
assignment; (ii) intent of the teacher; (iii) attitude of the students; (iv)your
personal attitude to the work.
In the Interpretation Based on Theoretical
Models column, relate what you are learning through our texts to what
you are seeing in the classroom.For
example, do strategies seem to be explained by Piagetian, Vygotskian, Skinnerian
or Eriksonian perspectives?Why?
Ask the Teacher:
observations, ask the teacher, “What did you want students to learn today?”Did your perceptions match the teachers’
statements?What’s your hunch about why
or why not?
Analyze Types of Instructional Strategies and Academic Tasks
observation we would like you to identify the key instructional strategy (or
strategies) the teacher is using during each class period. It might be one of
direct instruction by the teacher: i.e., teaching content by lecturing in front
of the whole class:
consulting, i.e., the teacher consults with a small group of students about a
project they are working on;
work, i.e., small groups of children are investigating something together ,
each student is writing up or drawing something about their own work;
group work, i.e., small groups are working toward a common goal. The
students make a plan about their investigation together, then each student
takes a particular task responsibility toward the cooperative goal;
problem-solving in small groups, i.e., teacher presents a problem to a small
group of students and they attempt to solve it together;
and group exploration, i.e., teacher poses a problem and small groups explore
process, content, goals and resolution, then return to the entire group for a
sharing or debriefing session;
student-selected study, i.e., a student chooses a study of interest and works
alone at a computer, at a classroom center, or at his or her desk;
class discussion or media/film instruction.
You will see many other strategies, as well. Describe them in
terms of who sets the tasks
(student or teacher), size of group,
nature of the task. Also note
if all students usually do the same thing or different activities take place
What is the
teacher doing? What are students doing? How does participation differ from
student to student? (Note the numbers of students participating in various
ways. It is easy to incorrectly make broad claims about student participation
that actually applies to only a few students.)
main task students are expected to engage in during the class.
How does the
teacher set up the task with students to encourage all kids to participate? Has
the teacher done some prior work so that students know how they are supposed to
behave while working on the task? Are these habituated or apparently new to the
students? Is each student accountable for the work or is it possible for few
students to participate and others can be passive?
Written Reflection on Instructional
Strategies, Tasks, Student Participation and Your Reactions.
What does the
teacher do to involve all students in the learning? To what degree can some
students be passive in class while others engage actively? In what ways are
individual students accountable for their own learning? How are students
accountable to each other? What seems to be working? What is not working
according to your image of what should be happening?
What do you
believe is the learning goal of the lesson? Is there a relationship between the
type of task the teacher gives the students and the instructional strategy
used? Consider whether the goal is to develop skills, make sense of ideas,
develop hypotheses, etc.
attention to the feelings, reactions and attitudes column.Consider the relationship between your
reactions and your conclusions about student involvement, accountability,
teacher effectiveness, etc. It’s
important, for example, to consider the degree to which we have interpreted and
evaluated a particular situation through our own cultural lenses. So what are your cultural filters and what’s
your hunch about how they effect your interpretations of classroom events?
each observation and reflection, write down a question or two about teaching,
learning, and schooling that arises from your observation. We will share these
during computer lab time.
Now, you will repeat the 3 week process of
observations at your next school assignment.
**Be careful not to lose your journal!!!**J
Descriptive means noting what is
observable—what you actually see “Seven students were involved in the
discussion including 2 boys and 5 girls.” Interpretive
is ascribing meaning to what is going on – “The teacher is trying to call on
each student at least once and distributing it between boys and girls.” Evaluative means giving judgment to
events – “The teacher is doing a good job of calling on both boys and girls.”