You and Student Teacher Decide What to Focus On

Selective Verbatim

You and student teacher decide what to focus on

Concentrate on the words and category, a tape recorder may be necessary

Purpose: clear and unbiased feedback, data driven, look at teacher-student interactions

Talk to teacher prior to observation

Focus: what is said

Applicable to all except independent seatwork

Addresses specific concern to watch

Disadvantage – doesn’t tell you what the students say back, a lot of writing or transcribing involved

Advantages – specific, allows teacher to change behavior

Verbal Flow

How teacher interacts with the students

Focus on what is said by who and how often

Seating chart t

Andy

Applicable for whole group, not applicable for center activities

Disadvantage – not time representative or quality of speech

At task

Chart for each student and note behavior

Purpose: measure off/on task behavior

Determine what is on task behavior first

Interval data collection

Applicable to small group settings

Advantage: objective, frequency count

Disadvantage: doesn’t measure quality of work, must be in close proximity to child

Class Traffic

Grid to track teacher’s movements

Advantages: track teacher’s movements and interactions and frequency of interaction with specific students and/or part of the room

Disadvantages: doesn’t show how long did the teacher talk to the student, can’t gage quality of dialogue, doesn’t track when student approaches him

Interaction Analysis

Say and do

Purpose: track what the teacher and students were doing, how they were interacting, track patterns of instruction and interaction

Seating chart with coded letters to show who was interacting and how

Time is noted for each interaction

Graph to show the data

Tape recorder is helpful

Advantages: track teacher behavior, patterns between teacher and students

Disadvantages: not for novel teachers, miss the big picture

Global Scan

Purpose: general feedback on the entire class, record everything

Anecdotal

Be careful to objective

Applicable: classroom management

Advantages: whole picture

Disadvantages: hard to be objective, can’t see the interactions