Observation Sheet – Questioning

(Please complete this form for both primary and secondary professional experiences and place in your ePort-folio)

Graduate Standards - AITSLProfessional Knowledge: 1. Know students and how they learnProfessional Practice: 2. Plan and implement effective teaching and learning

Question Type

Do you feel your ques-tions were clearly struc-tured and readily under-stood by the students?

Yes, I feel like I had a good response from my group when I asked them questions. I didn't get any silly responses and the students gave a clear answer back.

Did you use a variety of question types?

Yes, I used both open and closed questions through out my questioning group lesson. I used more open questions at my secondary placement than I did my primary placement as I felt closed questions would be too easy for the students and for the task they were doing and it gives them more of an op-portunity to give an individual answer.

What balances was there between the various questions types?

I used a mixture of open and closed questions in both my secondary placement must mostly open questions.

Consider both why and when you made use of the different question types?

At my secondary school placement I asked a lot more open questions through out the both lessons and a few closed questions if I felt that the students were struggling with an an-swer. I felt by asking the open question and then the closed question if they were struggling helped as the students would then have to think of one answer and come up with an idea with that answer.

Distributing and Directing Questions

Did you recognise any pattern in the distribution of your questions amongst the students? Consider reasons for this pattern?

In my group lesson I didn't necessarily have a pattern to my students I sort of threw a question to the group and see who responded with what. I thought that because it was an older age group they would know not to talk over someone and re-spect each other when talking.

How have you directed questions to the group?

When a student had an answer and I would ask them a fol-lowup question I made sure to make eye contact and use their name to make sure they knew who I was talking to. I also made sure everyone was listening to their answer

Have you used “wait” time?

I didn’t use wait time in my group lesson as there was no reason

Did you make eye con-tact with the group as you directed your questions?

Yes I did which helped the students knew who I was talking to in my whole class lesson as I didn't know many names.

Reactions to Student’s Responses

How do you deal with correct responses? Do you qualify any praise given?

I would praise the student that would give a good answer and ask them why they think this for example “that’s a really good response, why do you think the author has included this part of information.”

How do you deal with in-correct responses? How do you deal with students who stumble and grope for an answer?

When a student would give me a wrong answer I would say not quite and re-word the question to say something else but still meat the same to see if they could answer that question.

What use do you make of the student’s responses to develop the teaching point? Have you redi-rected any questions in order to add to an initial response?

If a student got an answer wrong I would make sure to make the question in a way they would understand it to give a bet-ter response, if I found the students were answering them re-ally quickly I would start to move to my next point as the stu-dents obviously had a good understanding.

Are you the only evalua-tor of the student’s an-swers?

Yes, I was the only evaluator as I was teaching the class and my mentor teacher was observing. I did also get the students to chyme in as well if they thought that the answer was right.

Overall Comments

Observation Sheet – Management(Please complete this form for both primary and secondary professional experiences and place in your e portfolio)

Graduate Standards – AITSLProfessional Practice: 1. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments 2. Planning for Effective Management

Was your lesson plan ef-fective for managing the class?e.g. How did the students react to your lesson over-all and to your planned activities?

Did anything unexpected happen?

Did you provide a variety of activities?

Were you satisfied with your timing, particularly for the end of the lesson?

Did you feel you were able to change things if needed?

The students reacted quite well to my lesson plan, they were all engaged and participated quite well to the given task. When the students were asked to do a task there was no complaining and the students carried out the task quite well.

I didn’t to get as nervous so after setting the first task for the student I took a moment to myself at the desk to take a deep breath and a sip of water after that I was more calm to con-tinue on.

For the class lesson there was an intro activity, a main activ-ity and a conclusion activity all relating to the same task.

Yes, I could have planned for more time at the beginning of the lesson, but overall I felt as though my timing I had planned for had worked quite well and wasn't pushed for time toward the end.

Yes, I noticed for the first activity that the students wanted more time to continue with the activity as they wanted to find more synonyms so I let them have a few more minutes to continue.

Were you aware of class-room procedures and school disciplinary pol-icy? How much did you know about your stu-dents?

How did your mentor teacher maintain a safe learning environment?

What strategies did you observe your mentor teacher using to maintain this?

After observing the teacher over the first few days I get to un-derstand what happens in her classroom and how she likes her classes to run. I didn't get to know the students as well as I did at the primary school as I wasn't in the class all day ev-eryday like I was at the Primary School.

My mentor teacher maintains a safe learning environment through her relationships with her students, they all feel wel-comed in her classes and all feel as though they can talk to her if they need help with anything.

Some strategies that I observed was how she lets them know at the start of the day that she is here for them. She also throughout classes she will have a talk to students if they don't look ok and make sure she knows what is wrong.

Maintaining a Positive Attitude in the Classroom

How did you demonstrate to the students that you valued them, and enjoyed learning?

e.g. Tone of voice, facial expression, sense of hu-mour, introduction to stu-dents and topic.

The way I paid attention to them whilst they were speaking and I always made sure I wasn't talking mono tone to bore the students. I also used facial expressions when I was talk-ing, I used these techniques to make sure I was engaging the students and also so they knew that I was intrigued in that they had to say.

Which aspects of your teaching style do you feel helped you maintain class attention?

e.g. Variety of activities, class or group discus-sion, pace of lesson, in-terest at class level.

By having many activities for my lesson kept the students en-gaged and focused on the task. At the start the lesson was going quite quick so I slowed down the timing so the stu-dents could enjoy the activity more. By having the multiple activities I think the students had to pay attention to know why they had to do to move on to the next activity. I feel as though my teaching style was more student centred in the high school than it was at the primary school.

Did the students know what was expected of them?

Yes, I feel I had given clear enough instructions, the students weren't unsure about any of them and the students end prod-uct of the main task was really good.

Were you able to redirect energies of attention seeking students? Did the students have enough to do?

With many activities in my lesson keeping the students busy the entire time made them keep on track and to make sure they wee focused for the lesson.

Dealing with Minor Misbehaviour

Were you aware of what was happening in all parts of the classroom? Did you know what each student was doing?

The class desks were arranged in groups of 6, so standing up the front of the class I could see the entire class. I could see what everyone was dong but I couldn't see what they were doing individually on their iPads. Because I couldn’t see what they were dong on their iPads I started to walk around the class to make sure they weren't doing anything that they shouldn't be.

Did you take any action when you observed poor behaviour? Why? Why not?

Yes, there was one incident where I had asked the class to do the task individually and a group of boys kept talking so I reminded the class that it was individual work and when they still kept talking I went to the desk and told the boys that’s twice now that I've asked for individual work I don't want to all them a third time.

Did you use non-verbal cues? e.g. Contact, pause, gesture, move-ment toward student/s concerned.

Yes, I used a pause at the front of the class when I was wait-ing for the classes attention and when there was a small group that was talking when they shouldn't of I would walk towards their desk, if they hadn't realised I was walking to-wards them then I just put one hand one the desk as I walked by the person talking and all of a sudden they stopped talking.

Overall Comments

Schools as text – looking at the whole school

Describe the school in terms of its demographics, appear-ance and resources (be gen-eral here and do not name the school).

This high school has been around for quite a while so the buildings itself has a lot of character. The school is double storey so it has lots of classrooms, not as much colour as the primary school did but you would expect that difference. Each student is required to own an iPad so a lot of their work is based on their iPads or electronically. Every teacher owns a mac-book as well so the students can do majority of the things that the teacher can do.

What were the roles and re-sponsibilities of the teaching staff you observed?

The teachers weren't only teachers to the students but they were also leaders so they have a responsibility/role to the students to be a good role model and leader. The teachers also have to do duties roughly two a week, when they go on duty they are either dur-ing school time (recess and lunch) or after school on bus duty. The teachers have a responsibility of stu-dents when they are on duty to make sure they are doing the right thing, when they are on bus duty they have to make sure the students do the right thing and also they keep the student safe incase of the public do anything.

After discussion with your mentor teacher describe how policies and processes of government, administration and schools have an affect on the work of the teacher?

Minimally affected as they don’t a big deal to do with administration and the processes of government, teachers get told what to do and teachers follow. With NAPLAN and WACE teachers are a bit more affected as they have to reach a certain standard with their stu-dents.

What did you observe non-teach-ing staff doing to support teaching and learning in the school?

At this high school they have an EA assigned to an individual student rather than one EA in a few classes. The EA’s are there to look after the individ-ual students so the teacher doesn't have to keep too much of an eye on the student and can focus on the class as a whole. Some other non teaching staff around the school that I have observed are graders, administration, canteen ladies who look after recess, lunch they cook for both the students and the teach-ers, there is also the deputy principal and the princi-pal of the school.

Students

You will have observed the di-verse nature of your classes. How was this diversity sup-ported?

From seeing such a variety of classes I got to see a whole lot of diverse nature within the classrooms al-though I didn't hear of any programs that were ran by the school to help out students other than EA’s.

Function of Schools

Did you observe the connec-tion of your schools with the broader community? How did this happen?

Yes I did, the week that I went for my placement was also teacher wellness week where the administration organise for local businesses to supply their food to the teachers at the school for example one day we had a local coffee van come to the school for the teachers to order a coffee.

What do you think the func-tion of school is?

Reflection – think about your experiences during the week and describe how your pre-vious experiences have in-formed your view of teach-ers and schools. Has any-thing changed?

I think the function of the school is to provide students with a safe learning environment and help set the stu-dents to achieve what they would like to achieve when they are older. They are also to help guide a support the students through their school life.

Other than my primary placement this was my first time teaching at a school and being in a high school from the teachers point of view. I still think highly of the teachers that work at a high school but it has not changed my opinion of wanting to teach at a primary school.