Teacher Observations.
As a new teacher these lesson observations have been invaluable. The process of being observed has the obvious advantage of pointing out areas that you could improve as a teacher but these observations also had a strong emphasis on highlighting the positives of teaching practice. This type of positive encouragement has allowed me to develop a balanced idea of myself as a teacher. Not only am I improving those things that I don’t do so well but I am also focused on refining things that I already do well.
Included here are observations from two of the three teachers who have observed me this year. One is an experienced classroom teacher who also works in student welfare, as she, in her current role has a focus on student behaviour I asked her to pay particular attention to my ability to monitor and attend to or ignore student behaviour. The idea is that not all behaviour is worth interrupting the flow of a class for and can often be dealt with by appearing to not pay any attention. The second teacher is the executive teacher of the learning support unit and as such I had her observe my learning support humanities class. The classes are incredibly diverse in both academic ability and behaviour. What this means is that the ability to both plan and implement successful lessons is both difficult and important. As such I had this as my focus for this observation.
The process of observing another teacher and providing feedback gives me yet another perspective on my own teaching. inevitably I have found myself reflecting what I observe in other teachers back to my own teaching. This type of reflection is invaluable as it exposes me to other ways of achieving the same outcome and thus equips me with more tools to improve my practice. In this instance I was observing our teacher librarian with a learning support class and was looking at ten essential skills that have been a focus for the school this year.
These lesson observations cover the following standards:
- Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students (1.1)
- Understand how students learn (1.2)
- Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds (1.3)
- Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities (1.5)
- Strategies to support full participation of students with disability (1.6)
- Apply knowledge of the content and teaching strategies of the teaching area to develop engaging teaching activities. (2.1)
- Organise content into coherent, well-sequenced learning and teaching programs. (2.2)
- Apply knowledge and understanding of effective teaching strategies to support students’ literacy and numeracy achievement. (2.5)
- Use effective teaching strategies to integrate ICT into learning and teaching programs to make selected content relevant and meaningful. (2.6)
- Set explicit, challenging and achievable learning goals for all students. (3.1)
- Plan and implement well-structured learning and teaching programs or lesson sequences that engage students and promote learning. (3.2)
- Select and use relevant teaching strategies to develop knowledge, skills, problem solving and critical and creative thinking. (3.3)
- Select and/or create and use a range of resources, including ICT, to engage students in their learning. (3.4)
- Use effective classroom communication (3.5)
- Evaluate and improve teaching programs (3.6)
- Support student participation (4.1)
- Manage classroom activities (4.2)
- Manage challenging behaviour (4.3)
- Assess student learning (5.1)
- Identify and plan professional learning needs (6.1)
- Engage in professional learning and improve practice (6.2)
- Engage with colleagues and improve practice (6.3)
- Apply professional learning and improve student learning (6.4)
- Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities (7.4)
Hyperlink to evidence:
Education Portfolio 