6 Tips to Help You Rock Your Next Teaching Observation (EP24)

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Elementary Math Chat!

Today, we are going to continue the conversation on teacher observations. As you know, last week, I shared six things not to do before, during, and after your observation. Today, I’m going to share six things to make sure that you do.

So, let’s jump right in with my first tip, which is to use the W.H.E.R.E.T.O. planning strategy that I talked about in episode two, and use the rubric that you’ll be scored with to plan out your lesson. I’ll go through the W.H.E.R.E.T.O. acronym just because it’s been a while since I’ve talked about that.

The W stands for where am I going and why? The H stands for hook. E stands for equip. R stands for rethink, reflect, and revise. The second E stands for evaluate. T stands for tailor, and then O stands for organize. Again, I talked about this planning strategy in episode two, and it’s worth mentioning again, because it covers everything.

It makes sure your lesson connects to prior knowledge. It makes sure your lesson has a clear beginning, middle, and end. It makes sure you have a lesson hook and plan time for reflection and questions. It is an all-inclusive planning strategy, and once I learned about this in my master’s program, I used it for every single observation, and it never let me down.

The second part of this tip is to make sure you’re looking at the observation rubric as you plan. I was observed using the TEAM general education rubric. So first, I went through and planned my lesson using the W.H.E.R.E.T.O. strategy, but then after that, I went through the rubric to fill in any gaps.

Remember that you’re going to be scored on things like your lesson pacing, and how you give feedback, or the management of your student behavior, or even your classroom environment. The rubric will remind you of things like, do you have student work displayed in your classroom or in the hallway? And is it up to date?

Is your classroom organized? Do your students have roles in the classroom that they all know? Or do you have systems in place that show these roles? If so, showcase this. It can be as simple as having groups of four students and one student is in charge of distributing materials, and the other is in charge of collecting them.

I mean, those things are not in your lesson plan, but they matter when it comes to your classroom environment. So that’s why it’s important to go through the rubric once you’ve done your lesson plan. Also, if you need some ideas for what to put in your lesson plans, I will put a link in the show notes to my free lesson plan framework that has over 60 lesson plan ideas.

Alright, let’s move on to the second thing to make sure that you do when it comes to your teaching observation. Have a backup plan just in case technology does not work for you that day. Chances are that’s not going to happen, but you never know when the internet’s going to go out, and you want to be prepared for what you will do if something you’re trying to use won’t work, and you also want to have backup activities for your students if their technology doesn’t work.

This actually happened to one of my teammates, and it could have been a disaster. But what really saved her was she had her whole lesson in Smart Notebook, which doesn’t require the internet. So yeah, she couldn’t show her video that she wanted to show as a lesson warm up, and I think she had a set of Boom Cards assigned or something online, and they just did a workbook page instead. She handled it like a pro, and the lesson went well.

I don’t tell you this to scare you, but like I said, you want to be prepared just in case it does happen.

The third thing to do when it comes to your teaching observation is to make sure your students are an active part of your lesson. You of course want them to talk to you during your whole group lesson, but you also want them to talk to each other. Plan something like a Quiz-Quiz-Trade or Sage ‘n’ Scribe where they are engaged with each other and they’re purposefully talking about math.

Also plan out the questions you’re going to ask and use formats like Think-Pair-Share, Turn-and-Talk, or Numbered Heads Together, and that will add a lot of engagement and accountability. I wouldn’t do that for every question. Sometimes it makes more sense to just simply ask a question, give them ample time to think, and then call on one or two students to share. So, I wouldn’t overdo the Numbered Heads Together or Turn-and-Talk or Think-Pair-Share, just kind of sprinkle them throughout your lesson.

When you are having them discuss with a partner or with a group, I would definitely remind them to stay on task with their conversations, and maybe even have something for them to do if their group finishes early. Can they make up a problem for their partner to solve or challenge them to see who can list the most multiples of seven in the time that’s left? Something fun like that.

Or if you don’t want to give them another task to do, you can have them give you the quiet sign or show you a signal when they are finished. That will not only help them be quiet, but then you can see who is still working and who’s finished.

The reason I suggest this is because I was doing a Turn-and-Talk during one of my observations, and the group right next to my administrator was talking about something totally unrelated to the question I posed, and I had no idea until I got my notes back. I think they were talking about who had the smallest pencil and they were all comparing their pencils. So, it wouldn’t hurt to remind them to stay on task with conversations and give them something to do when they finish.

Another way you can make them an active part of your lesson is to use manipulatives, and try to make it as hands-on as possible. I know manipulatives aren’t ideal for every single lesson, but it is worth mentioning just in case.

Alright, let’s move on to number four. The fourth thing to make sure you do when it comes to your teaching observation deals with managing student behavior, and there are two parts to this.

One of the things my former district always reinforced is to praise in public and reprimand in private. It’s something I always strived for, and I’m sure it’s something you strive for as well. It’s super important to remember this because someone is writing down everything you say and everything you do. So, you want to be respectful and aware of the way you are handling behavior issues, and there are a couple of different ways that you can do this.

Let’s say you notice that there’s someone who’s way off task and you want to get their attention, go over to that student and just give them a little tap on their desk. Sometimes they just zone out, I mean, don’t we all sometimes, and you could probably do this without anyone else even seeing it. So, it’s a good way to get them back on track without calling them out.

Here’s another scenario. If you notice that someone doesn’t have the right materials out, have everybody do a shoulder partner check to make sure their shoulder partners have all the materials out, or maybe that they’re on the right page if that’s what you notice. So, if you have some minor behaviors that you don’t want to call out but you want to address, try this instead. Also, praise those students who are doing the right thing in public, just like I said earlier.

Now, if something major does come up, try to pull that student away from a natural break in your lesson. Maybe they’re watching a video or working in a group. Pull them out so it’s not so obvious and have a quick chat with them to try to get them back on track.

I know that’s not always possible. So, a way for you to address their behavior without having to actually take the time during your lesson is just to touch base with that student and tell them that you’ll talk to them later about their choices, and make sure you follow up on that. Either of these actions will show your administrator that you’re trying to handle the behavior without it being a disruption to your lesson.

Now for the second part of this tip, the rubric even mentions this. If it’s something minor, just let it go. So, maybe two students are whispering when they’re not supposed to be, or someone interrupts you when you’re talking. There’s nothing wrong with redirecting them in a professional manner, but sometimes you just have to let things go so it doesn’t affect your lesson.

Something else that really helped me was to schedule my observation first thing in the morning when I was still feeling energetic, when behaviors from the day hadn’t escalated, and my patience hadn’t been tested 1000 times. Plus, then I got it over with and I didn’t have to worry about it the rest of the day.

Let’s move now to number five on the list. The fifth thing to do when it comes to your teaching observation is to put everything you’ll need for your lesson, such as workbook pages, video links, and questions you plan on asking in your presentation slides so they’re all in one place.

I’m sure most of you use PowerPoint, and I love PowerPoint because you can put everything you need for your lesson in one document. This will do wonders for the flow and the pacing of your lesson, which is also a category on the rubric.

So, if there’s a Flocabulary video you were showing as a lesson hook, have that video linked in your slides ready to pull up. If there’s an online set of fraction tiles you are using, have that hyperlinked so you can pull it up within seconds. If there are questions that you want to ask type those up in your slides so you don’t forget.

If you’re using the math workbook for your lesson, instead of stopping and going over to your document camera to do the workbook pages, just take a few snippets and put them in your slides so they’re there and ready to go. And that way you don’t have to keep multiple copies of your math workbook. You can just put those in your slides and work through them there.

Putting everything in one place will lead to quick transitions with very little wasted time. And another thing I liked is I never really had to think about what was next. I just went to the next slide and it told me.

My sixth and final teaching observation tip today is to make sure you have early finisher activities prepared. I touched on this a little bit, but you don’t want a situation to occur where a student has nothing to do. If you need some ideas, go back and listen to episode 22, because I gave six specific examples of early finisher activities that worked well for me, for example, having them create a crossword puzzle or research and then present a Google Slides Presentation on a teacher-approved topic.

There’s an entire category on the rubric that talks about student work, and they don’t want just busy work. They don’t want them to be on a computer playing games. They want them to do things that require them to organize, evaluate, draw conclusions, and write, so having some of these enrichment activities for your early finishers is a good way to score higher on the student work on the rubric.

So, those are my six tips for what to make sure that you do when it comes to your teaching observation. And remember, the build-up to the observation is way worse than the actual observation itself. I know I certainly got nervous before an observation, but honestly, once my administrator was in the room, I just went into my normal teaching mode, and it really wasn’t a big deal after all. And then when it was over, I was like, why did I get so worked up about this?

So, if you start to get a little bit nervous before your observation, just remember, this is what you do every day. You are a rock-star teacher, and you are going to be amazing.

And that takes us to today’s Teaching Tip of the Week!

I know many of you have shown the crackling fireplace on your screen while your class was working. But did you know there are ambiance videos that you can show all year long, not just the wintertime?

If you go on YouTube and type in ambiance, after things like Halloween, or St. Patrick’s Day, or even things like summer or rain, you’ll see there’s quite a variety that you can choose from.

My favorite one is this Halloween one called the Cozy Witch Cottage. It almost looks like a haunted house, and there are jack-o-lanterns everywhere and there’s witch’s brew stirring in the fireplace, and it has really fun sound effects too. You can hear the owls hooting and the bubble of the brew. So, I would say that one is my favorite one. But again, there are a ton of them.

I have listed my favorites for each season in the show notes if you want to check those out. Take the ones that you like, mark them as an Internet favorite, and then create a folder on your bookmarks bar and drag them in there so they’re easy to find when you need them.

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode, and I know you are going to rock your teaching observation. Have an awesome week and I will see you next Tuesday!