Direct Teach Observation Form
Example Student Teacher Observation
Preservice Teacher: Intern II
Field Supervisor: XX
Placement Start Date: August 26, 20XX
Placement End Date: December 3, 20XX
Date of Observation: 11/19/XX Start Time: 9:30 am End Time: 10:15 am
Subject/Lesson Observed: reading (literature unit)
Pre-Conference
What are you working with the students on today?
First day of literature unit (pets)
Briefly talk me through what you’ll be doing today.
- introduce the unit & connect it to genre study
- introduce theme (pets)
- Read Rich Cat, Poor Cat and discuss
How will you know if the lesson has gone well?
In the conversations that they have; the ways they connect to the text
Answering “What is our responsibility in caring for animals?”
What do you expect will be challenging for the students?
Going beyond just what the text is saying – connect it to the theme (be spurred on to action)
What would you like me to focus on in my observation? What data would you like me to collect?
How I am reading the room?
Observation
9:37 AM
T: So what is on this board?
Ss: Our genres!
T: So we have all of these genres that we’ve studied all year long. And since have so many, we’re going to learn about how we can connect them together … So, to start doing this, we talked, and we were like “Hmm, what should we do to start connecting these things. … What is this? (pointing at chart on the wall) A dog bowl!
S: Informational!
T: Yeah, so we’re talking about informational texts about pets, but we’re also going to use other genres to learn about pets. … So who has a pet?
Several students raise their hand. T asks students to share with their partner something special about their pet. Students talk at their tables (some in pairs, some in 3s) about their pets.
T: Okay, who has something they want to share?
S1: My dog almost had three legs because he got hit by a car. … They could save it with pins.
S2: My lizard… he’s funny and he’s fast.
S3: I have a Yorkie, his name is Max. Every single time when someone goes up to him, when he’s crying, you can totally see his tears … and when you go up to him he’s going to make you cry too.
S4: I have a dog named, I forgot his name…his name is Chewbacca, we got it off of Star Wars because he has fluffy hair …
S5: I got a dog that I like but now she’s dead…I loved her so much because she always stayed by my side the whole time … Until she never came back, she left. I don’t know if she’s still alive.
T: So maybe we can start recording some of these things that we love about our pets . (Gets paper to write down ideas, projects paper on doc cam). So he says she stays by his side.
S6: I have a weiner dog named dumpy, and she’s really old and I’m really happy that she is still here.
S7: I have a horse named General … The other one is named Buck, and when I go down to my grandpa’s, my horses follow me around like a dog.
T: So how does it make you feel like they follow you around?
Chris: I makes me feel safe (T writes that down)
S8: I used to have a pet dog, and her name was Lila, because her eyes were kind of a lilac color so we named her lilac, and her fur was a brownish-grey, and we had to give her away because we didn’t have the time, money, or food to give her. (T writes down “We had to give her away”) … She went with some people and they already had a dog, and their dog had won a lot of awards at dog shows, so they put her in dog school with the other ones …
T: That’s cool though, she’s learning how to do stuff.
S9: I have a dog named Bull … Something special that I don’t think a lot of dogs can do, he will jump up on the outside table and just lay there like a cat would. (S acts it out)
9:46 AM
T: So it sounds like we all have – I think that’s enough for now. … It sounds like we all have a lot of experiences where they were helping us … to feel safe or happy when we were sad, or they’re just funny and they cheer us up. So we’re going to be looking at a book about cats. Rich Cat, Poor Cat
T shows students the cover and asks, “What do you think this author is going to be getting at?”
S: The author made the book about a rich cat and a poor cat.
T: Who can add on to what Kendall is saying?
S: Maybe he’s saying he had a rich cat but then he turned out to be a poor one.
S: She took mine.
CT: But you can add to what she said.
S: She said that the rich cat became the poor cat.
T: What makes you think that?
S: The poor cat looks like it has the same face as the rich cat does.
S: I think that the rich cat will feel bad for the poor cat and they’ll ask if they can switch places just to see how it is for a change, and then the poor cat will get selfish and stay rich.
S: Maybe the poor cat was lonely, and this rich man came and picked her up and made her rich, rich, rich.
S: I think maybe that the rich cat and the poor cat are going to – that cat right there, the rich one is going to have a fancy house and it’s kinda like what Gabby said, and one day he’s going to be famous and they’re gonna switch places. And one day his owner is going to buy another cat but they found that cat on the street.
S: Maybe the rich cat is gonna help the poor cat so the cat wouldn't be hungry.
T: So I hear y’all saying a lot of similar things, like the rich cat might help the poor cat, or maybe they’ll switch places … Brie said maybe a human will help the cat. … So let’s see what happens.
9:52 AM
T begins reading the text.
T: What differences have y’all noticed about these two cats and the lives that they live.
S: They live in different places.
S: All cats are different.
S: They’re getting treated differently.
S: They have different names.
T: Oh yeah, let me read this part again (rereads part about Scat’s name) Do you think that she choose this name?
Ss: No!
S: She just heard everyone calling him that and she assumes her name is scat.
T: How do you think she feels about that?
S: She feels happy and she’s getting treated the wrong way. She doesn’t understanding what’s going on.
S: She thinks they’re just calling her name. She doesn’t understand that they’re mistreating her.
S: Uncomfortable.
9:55 AM
T: Let’s keep seeing what’s going on, (T continues reading)
CT: Oh I didn’t get that! She likes grey!
T: Oh, I didn’t get that either!
T: [student] said something, did y’all notice that on the other pages too? There’s kind of like a line…. One side is this, the other side is this.
S: Opposite!
S: (inaudible)
T: What do you mean by insecure? Can you say more about that?
S: … This side is the poor insecure cat. This side is the rich, comfortable cat.
CT: And one like looks more difficult, I like that word.
S explains which side looks more difficult. T continues reading.
Ss wonder if the cat is a cat or a kitten. One student points out that the poor cat is smaller than the big cat, and the teacher wonders if there’s any significance to that. Some students say yes; others say no.
T: Maybe the poor cat feels small. Have y’all ever felt small? … You feel small when people don’t pay attention to you.
They discuss Scat, and a student notes that it’s multi-meaning word. [CT] says they need to add that to their chart later.
10:07 AM [transcript continues]
T: So everybody point to this dog bowl. (Ss point) … When she got taken home, y’all were like “Yay!” (several students call out) … So, what we’re going to do with this dog bowl is fill it up with dog food. … So we’re going to write down ideas that we have that we could use to help the animals. So here’s a question: What is our responsibility to these pets? (T writes down student responses)
Student responses: Make them safe and take care!; Feed them; Take care of them; Make sure they get plenty of rest; make sure they know that they’re safe; Make sure to give them a lot of healthy food and give them a little love; Take care of them and don’t let them out of the house; Make sure they have a place to sleep; Treat them the way that your mom used to treat you (act like a parent); clean them; treat them like you would treat your own child
10:34 AM
The class discusses what to title their bowl. T says they’ll keep thinking and decide on something.
T: Are y’all still interested in learning more about this? (Students call out yes) Tomorrow y’all are going to read a story with [CT] …
10:36 AM
CT steps in to tell students to stop talking over T, so that she can hear her.
T: So tomorrow, we’re going to be, or y’all are going to be read a story about a horse … Y’all talked about how your pets helped you, so we’re going to look more into how we can help animals, and it’s going to be in a different genre … So get ready for that.
10:38 AM – End lesson.
Post-Conference
Some Questions to Consider:
● What have you been thinking about the lesson?
● What went as you expected?
● What surprised you?
● What did students struggle with?
● What did you adjust in the lesson? What do you wish you adjusted?
Preservice Teacher Initial Reflection:
I think that the students really connected to the heart of what we were talking about in regards to our responsibility in caring for animals. Even though it may have seemed a little loud or crazy, it still felt like, for the most part, students were engaged, excited, and thinking. It feels okay for me to have them thinking in a lot of directions and not necessarily thinking in the same line of thought. I am not sure how to connect these ideas together or to run a productive whole group time with this though. I also didn’t really know how to conclude the lesson and what to leave them with. It felt awkward at the end, but I didn’t really know how to fix that.
I was really impressed with the energy that the students brought and the ways that they were connecting throughout the entire conversation. At the end of this lesson, I was really overwhelmed by their responses and all that they wanted to say.
Below are some key points from our post-observation conference:
- Closure/transitioning: This is an area you want to focus on in your teaching. You felt like students weren’t really listening to your closure (whether they were quiet or not), and we talked about hoe you might change your closure to make it more purposeful for students. You decided that in the future you might close by adding what students said about responsibility for pets to the language chart (dog bowl).
- Critical literacy (what the text says vs. what they say): We discussed the very interesting contributions that students had to make about the text. In particular, students were offering different possible narratives throughout the text (especially around the text’s dominant narrative that being poor was always a negative thing). We talked about how we could encourage students to continue this practice (taking multiple perspectives, the dominant narrative, and talking back to the author) while at the same time making it clear that the ideas they are bringing are different from the choices the author decided to make. We talked about the possibilities of noticing and naming this strategy for students (in a Choice Words way), and this is an area we both want to keep thinking about.
- Building democratic discussions: One of the tensions you’re experiencing is between how you would like to run classroom discussion and how your CT does. Part of this is connected to raising hands – your CT thinks this is very important, but you would rather students have a more natural conversation. You also don’t want to squash the contributions that students want to make to the conversation. We talked about the importance of students being able to not only talk but also to listen to one another’s ideas, and how you want to develop in connecting student ideas to one another. We talked about some of the ways that you can try to develop this kind of talk, including: asking questions that go deeper (e.g., “Tell me more about that); using pair-share; highlighting student contributions during pair-share to the whole class; encouraging students to add on to one another’s ideas, and decreasing the use of summarizing in your own talk (restating what students have said). We also talked about how the classroom organization of furniture/students can make it challenging to have the kinds of discussions you want to have, and how that might be a space to have a conversation with your CT.
- Time: We talked briefly about the length of the lesson (~ 1 hour). In this case, you had enough time, but we talked about how you might shorten the lesson if you had to for time (what parts you would include and what parts you might cut out). You noted that if you had limited time, you might spend less time setting up the book, and you would stop to discuss fewer times.
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Candidate Signature Date of Post Conference
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Field Supervisor Signature
Updated 5/24/19 dlw