WCPSS Secondary Literacy Observation Checklist

Teacher______Date of Observation______Time______

Room #______Course______Unit/Lesson/Topic______

Classroom Environment
Seating: / £ Singles
£ Pairs/Trios
£ Groups
/ Seating Orientation: / £ Students face towards teacher
£ Students face towards each other
Room Arrangement: / £ Inhibits student interaction
£ Allows student interaction
£ Facilitates student interaction
/ Classroom displays: / £ Learning aids, concept-related items
£ Ongoing activities, projects
£ Examples of student work
£ Student recognition
£ Applications, careers
£ Racial, cultural diversity
£ Extracurricular opportunities
Lesson Overview: / £ Written objectives
£ Written agenda
£ Assignments posted
Classroom Culture
Major activities
of teachers & students / £ Lecture/note-taking, teacher-led work
£ Class discussion, small group discussion, student presentation or modeling
£ Hands-on activity following specific steps
£ Hands-on activity with open-ended instructions/latitude to decide steps
£ “Seatwork”: reading text, working on worksheet, questions, problem set
£ Processing: represent/analyze data, find patterns, write/reflect on learning
£ Assessment: test/quiz, performance task, questioning to assess learning
/ Using Discourse / £ Teacher-- Students
£ Students--Students
£ Both
Collaborative culture / £ No collaborative culture
£ Some evidence of collaborative culture (e.g. group roles defined)
£ Evidence of collaborative culture
£ Collaborative norms clearly defined
Technology
£ Teacher-driven / £ Student-driven / £ Lesson Enhanced
Technology used: iPad/iPod Document Camera Computer Projector Calculator Interactive Board Other
Researched Best Practices
Old skill/information/spiraling
New skill/information
Similarities & Differences
/ Summarizing /Note-taking
Reinforcing effort
Homework & practice
/ Nonlinguistic representation
Setting objectives/feedback
Generating/testing hypotheses
Cues, questions, organizers
Standards for Literacy
Text Complexity / £ Complexity meets or exceeds grade-level band (CCSS)
£ Complexity is below grade grade-level band (CCSS)
£ No text used during walk through / Text –Dependent
Questioning / £ Questions are developed in sequences that call students to examine textual evidence and discern deep meaning
£ Questions are confined to recall of text
£ Questions do not directly relate to the text
£ No questions observed during walk through
Writing / £ Evidence of some writing
£ On-demand writing
£ Process writing / Writing Type / £ Argument
£ Information/Explanatory
£ Narrative
£ Undefined/Warm-up/ General reflection/Journal / Writing Strategy / £ Integrated with reading to develop thinking
£ Writing from models
£ Writing conferences
£ Other
Vocabulary and Language / £ Students have opportunities to gain indirect acquisition of vocabulary through reading and writing / £ Students are prompted to focus on the nuances of words in context and their effect based on context, syntax, and structure / £ Students engage in discipline- specific direct instruction of vocabulary through researched best practices (e.g. Marzano’s) / £ Students engage in learning academic vocabulary / £ Students are provided lists of vocabulary to learn

The Look-Fors : What They Mean and Why They Matter

Classroom Environment
What It Is / What It Isn’t / Why It Matters
Seating / · Arrangement of desks
· Ability for students to engage with each other in learning tasks
· Ability for students to see key information
· Single: Student desk does not touch other desks
· Pairs/Trios: Student desk touches 1 or 2 other desks
· Groups: Student desk touches other desks in groups of 4 or more. This includes
o seminar discussion circles
o horseshoe and U arrangements
o other arrangements with contiguous desk placement / For Observation purposes, it does not evaluate
· teacher-chosen v. student-chosen seating
· purposeful seating v. random seating
· fixed room structures beyond the teacher’s control, such as door, built-in cabinets, lighting, or support columns. / · Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 6: Cooperative Learning. Research shows that socially-constructed learning has an effect size of .73. (note: an effect size of .50 is considered medium)
· Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 3: Reinforcing Effort—Effect size .80. Peer evaluations and Self evaluations of effort require that students be aware of their own and their peers’ relative effort. Seating arrangements have a direct effect on this.
· Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 7: Providing Feedback –Effect size .61. Formative peer and teacher feedback can be given only when peers and teachers are able to see and evaluate student attempts at mastery.
· Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development rests on the awareness that there is a difference between what students can demonstrate independently and what they can demonstrate with the help of others. Thus, seating that maximizes peer support is crucial.
· Room arrangements themselves can be the trigger for the teacher to design a variety of student-centered learning tasks (McCorskey and McVetta, 1978)
· Room arrangements influence teacher and student beliefs about the role of the teacher in the learning environment.
· Flexible room arrangement allow teachers to adjust for a variety of learning tasks (Professional Learning Board synopsis)
Seating Orientation / · Placement of desks and which way students face
· Orientation towards one focal point, such as the front screen or teacher lectern OR
· Orientation that allows multiple focal points, depending on the learning activity
Room Arrangement / · Includes teacher choices of:
o Placement of student desks
o resource area(s)
o teacher location(s)
o materials and technology
· Includes effect on movement and purposeful student interaction.
· Inhibits means the room arrangement is fixed in a way that it deters students from interacting in meaningful ways for learning tasks.
· Allows means the room arrangement is flexible enough for students to interact if needed.
· Facilitates means the room arrangement is fluid and inviting for meaningful student interaction during learning tasks.
Classroom Displays / Easily seen displays especially designed to add energy and awareness to the learning environment.
· Learning Aids: maps, word walls, concept posters, graphic organizers, skill reminders, and other easily seen supports for student learning.
· Ongoing Activities and Projects: large and easily seen assignment specifications, models, anchors, exemplars, skill supports, milestones, benchmark displays
· Examples of Student Work: examplars of admirable student work such as essays, tangible products, models, printouts of digital presentations.
· Student Recognition: Data charts, Wow! Boards, extra-curricular awards and recognitions, for example
· Applications, Careers: Easily seen representations of discipline-specific applications of content-area learning in the 21st-century world of work
· Racial, Cultural Diversity: Representations of many types of students, their heritages and backgrounds, and their interests and values found in classroom displays. This includes holiday displays.
· Extra-curricular opportunities: Notices of clubs, organizations, and other opportunities that support content-area learning, development of social and cultural capital, and leadership development, such as Debate Club, Robotics Club, Student Council, to name a few. / · Static, never changing from Day 1
· Trite, stale posters with little connection to particular needs of the students
· Out-of-date information and representations, such as maps with last decade’s borders, or outmoded formats for resumès, or representations of careers that no longer exist.
· Hard-to-find, hard-to-see displays, unless clearly grouped and labeled as a classroom exhibit area
· Student models and exemplars that clearly are from students of bygone years; torn, musty, faded examples of student work. / · In order to make a difference in student learning and disposition, displays must have a meaningful connection to the curriculum.
(Marlynn Clayton, Classroom Spaces that Work, 2002)
· Purposeful displays that include all students in some way send important messages to students:
o The teacher values what students do
o This is the students’ classroom as much as it is the teacher’s classroom
o In this classroom, students share their learning with each other and get feedback from each other.
(Mike Anderson, Classroom Displays, ASCD , 2011)
· Many researchers are looking at the factors of student engagement and dividing them into three areas: cognitive domain, emotional domain, and behavioral domain. Purposeful classroom displays affect student learning directly by activating the cognitive and emotional domains.
(Richard Jones, Strengthening Student Engagement, 2008)
· Marzano, High Yield Strategy 3: Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition—Effect size .80. Displays of student work are central to providing recognition and demonstrating to students that teachers value their efforts.
· Marzano, High Yield Strategy 5: Non-linguistic Representations – Effect size .75. Maps, charts, graphic organizers, photographs, pictures, concept maps, and other non-linguistic representations are all types of displays that can affect the cognitive domain of student engagement and learning.
· Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 9: Questions, Cues and Advance Organizers—Effect size .59. Teachers who use purposeful displays to pique interest, pose real-world problems, activate prior experience/knowledge are using Marzano’s 7th high-yield strategy.
· Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 1: Identifying similarities and differences—Effect size 1.61. This Super Yield Strategy is easy to achieve with charts showing similarities and differences among unit and course concepts.
Lesson Overview / · Written objectives: Learning objectives for the day written in colloquial language that students can understand. These may be written as learning targets. These may be what students will demonstrate by the end of the class period.
· Written agenda: The order of events and activities for the class period. Even better: include the expected time each event/activity will take. Even better: format the class agenda as a business meeting agenda would be, including the Who and the Why.
· Assignments posted: Even in this day of teacher websites with postings and updates for assignments, having the assignments posted on the board is important to student learning. Include purpose, product, and due date. Even better: have the assignment handout and rubric of skills posted nearby adjacent to the assignments. / Written objectives that are copied straight from the CCSS or teacher’s manual; that use educational jargon, abbreviations, and acronyms; that are only for a full unit or course; that are “canned” or “stock” objectives.
Written agenda that
is a generic/ happens-every-day listing.
Assignments posted that are hidden or unreadable from student desks / Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 7: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback—Effect size .61. Objectives and Agendas set purpose for students for the class session.
Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 9: Questions, Cues and Advance Organizers—Effect size .59. Objectives and agendas are advance organizers. Objectives, agendas, and assignments posted are all cues for students.
Marzano, High-Yield Strategy 4: Homework and Practice—Effect size .77. Assignments posted reminds students of the homework and practice opportunities they have.
Agendas help student make smooth transitions between parts of the lesson. In addition, it adds to a stable and orderly classroom routine. (Melissa Kelly, Steps to Starting a Class Off Right. )
Agendas that conform to a business-meeting format send the nonverbal message that learning is the students’ jobs, that the classroom time is purposeful, and that all students have a role in the culture of the classroom.
Not only do Agendas help students know what to expect, but they also are a visual cue to teachers as they manage the pacing of instruction and learning.
Classroom Culture
What It Is / What It Isn’t / Why It Matters
Major Activities of Teachers and Students / · Lecture/note-taking, teacher-led demonstration Classroom is teacher-centered at this point. Students are doing one or all of the following: listening to teacher-talk; copying or summarizing notes; watching the teacher show something. / · Lecture/note-taking, teacher-led demonstration NOT Student-generated meaning-making. / · Mini-lectures are valuable for giving direct information that student may need for background information or as the basis for a problem-solving task. Because research shows that students must make their own meaning in order to learn, lecture on its own has little impact on student learning of concepts or skills.
· Class discussion, small group discussion, student presentation/board work Students are at the lead during this activity. Students are talking with each other about a course concept. / · Class discussion, small group discussion, student presentation/board work NOT Teacher asking questions and calling on students, or a one-to-one conversation between teacher and one interested student. / · Socially-constructed learning yields high retention rates because students are getting immediate feedback on their ideas from people who matter to them—their peers. Highly interactive discussions or student presentations place students in the role of peer-teachers, which places higher value for the student on the need to understand and communicate concepts to peers. Research for peer teaching routines in multiple studies throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s indicate a high return on critical thinking skills and reasoning.
· Hands-on activities following a set of specific steps Students are working together or independently to replicate a procedure or process previously presented. / · Hands-on activities following a set of specific steps NOT Students watching one student do the whole process. / · Adding to research supporting Constructivist theories of learning, 2013 research from Stanford University reports that students learn concept knowledge best if they explore hands-on projects prior to reading or watching videos on the topic.
· Research stretching back 20 years or more shows that problem-solving skills used for solving predictable outcomes are important. But on their own, these are not sufficient for solving problems in open-ended, multimedia problem-solving environments.
· Using design cycles, such as the STEM Design Cycle or the IB/MYP Design Cycle, formalizes the steps that effective critical and creative thinkers use to “play with” open-ended problems with multiple possible solutions—such as those in life or on assessments that judge thinking more than discrete facts.
Hands-on activities with open-ended instructions/latitude to decide steps Students are following a “design cycle” of thinking steps to generate original procedures, processes, or products. / Hands-on activities with open-ended instructions/ latitude to decide steps: NOT prescribed steps leading to a well-structured or expected outcome.
”Seatwork”: reading text, working on worksheet, questions, problem set Independent or paired learning, in which the student is figuring out his own responses, with or without minor help. / ”Seatwork”: reading text, working on worksheet, questions, problem set NOT group discussion or problem-solving; NOT guided practice or structured scaffolds. / · Independent work is another piece of the learning-strategy puzzle. It is not to be used to the exclusion of socially-constructed learning, but it is valuable in its own right. Without independent work, students will not be able to assess the levels their own skills and knowledge independent of supportive prompts. Independent work, monitored by the teacher-coach, trains students to play an active role in their own learning through self-awareness of their learning needs. Self-direction, strategic planning, and heightened self-motivation are the desired learning habits that emerge as outcomes.