Observation Sheet Questioning High school

Graduate Standards - AITSL

Professional Knowledge:
Professional Practice:
learning

1. Know students and how they learn

2. Plan and implement effective teaching and

Question Type

Do you feel your questions

were clearly structured and
readily understood by the
students?

In my year 10 small group activity I do not believe that my

questions were clear enough for the year tens to understand. As
these students are at risk of failing English and number of them
have learning difficulties I needed my questions to be clear and to
the point.
In my activity I asked questions that they needed to be able to
answer for their exam. Things like what is a documentary, what are
the feature of a documentary.
When doing my year 11 ATAR class though I believed that my
questions were clearer and understood better by the class. I dont
know if this was because of the age gap and difficulty in the course
or if I had directed my questions better.
In this activity I got the students to debate. While their debate got
of topic I would give them questions to discuss. These include,
what if a little girl had two dads, who would explain her period?

Did you use a variety of

question types?

In my year 10 activity I used a variety of questions. I used both

closed ended and ope ended to try and get different pieces of
information out of the students.
When completing my year 11 ATAR class I found I mainly used
open ended questions to get the students thinking.

What balances was there

between the various
questions types?

Consider both why and

In my year 10 small group I used a good balance between open

and closed ended questions. This way I could get all the
information I needed to make sure that all students had a grasp on
the topics that would be found in their exam.
The year 11 whole class there wasnt a balance I only used open
ended questions as I wanted to know their opinions and thoughts
on topics. I wasnt after one word answers but open responses.
For my year 10 group I used these questions so they can prove
their understanding of the topic abut news programs and

when you made use of the

different question types?

documentaries. Using them throughout the group task allowed me

to see if all students understood and not just a few answering over
and over again.
Year 11 ATR was a lot harder. As it was a debate and they were
only meant to have one question that they would research and
debate on it but as year 11s do they got off track and I had to use
new open questions to get them back on topic.
This was the best way that I could get them back on track as I find
it better to be a casual teacher.

Distributing and Directing Questions

Did you recognise any

pattern in the distribution of
your questions amongst the
students? Consider
reasons for this pattern?
How have you directed
questions to the group?

Have you used wait time?

In my year 10 group I had some people who were not being

productive or taking part in the activity. This means a lot of the
time I would ask the group a question while looking at particular
students to get them to par take in the activity.
In my year 11 ATAR class I directed my main questions about the
topic on the 8 students who volunteered to do the debate. During
this debate is when I used extra questions on the same topic to
create more conversation. Once the debate was finished and I
questioned them on what they had learnt aiming this at the whole
class. This way I didnt just have the same 8 students talking all
the time. Selecting some students to answer to make sure
everyone understood why we were doing this activity.

I didnt need to use wit time when it came to my year 11 ATAR

group as no one wanted to volunteer to answer questions so I had
full choice of the classroom and who I wanted to ask upon
As my year 10 group activity was a game show there was no wait
time as it was a competition and the purpose was to think on your
feet. See who could have that pressure and still answer correctly.

Did you make eye contact

with the group as you
directed your questions?

In my small group I tried to look at the entire group when asking

questions unless I was trying to get a specific student to answer
the question then I would look at them while asking questions
For the year 11 ATR class I would base all my questions at the
class. As there was a step/platform at the front of the class it made
it easy to give each student eye contact

Reactions to Students Responses

With my year 10 group I gave points out for correct responses as

How do you deal with

correct responses? Do you
qualify any praise given?

that was the point of the activity.

How do you deal with

incorrect responses? How
do you deal with students
who stumble and grope for
an answer?

In the year 10 group I tried to be gentle with wrong answers as

these are students who are at risk of failing year 10 and not
graduating. I simply stated that it wasnt quite right and asked if
anyone else had an answer. When a student stumbled with an
answer they had 10 seconds to give an answer otherwise it went
to the next person. I wouldnt normally do this but as it was a game
to get them to think quickly it was necessary.

With year 11 ATAR class it wasnt supposed to be a correct and

incorrect answers. So I didnt give extra praise for correct answers.

With year 11 ATAR class it wasnt supposed to be a correct and

incorrect answers. If a student was stumbling or searching for an
answer I got the other students to help them out as it was a
debate. This way it flowed more freely and smoothly allowing all
view point to come out making it easier for the group to write an
essay on the same topic afterwards.

What use do you make of

the students responses to
develop the teaching point?
Have you redirected any
questions in order to add to
an initial response?

In the year 10 group I got students to expand on what another

student had said. But as it was a game show quiz it wasnt very
often answers needed to expand. What I did do though was
continue questions of simular topics to make it seem like I am
asking the same thing but needing a different answer.
In my year 11 ATAR group it was easy to get students to answer
the question and then see if someone has different response for
the same question. Then I could use those two response to
acknowledge that different people can interoperate things
differently.

Are you the only evaluator

of the students answers?

Overall Comments

In both lessons its obvious with teenagers that their afraid to

answer a question as they know its not just me evaluating their
answers but also their peers. This can be both good thing and a
bad thing. Students learn from one another so when they evaluate
each others work they lean what not to do and also what should
be done. This can be a bad thing though at the same time.
Students are very critical on one another and very rarely give
praise to one anothers work.

Observation Sheet Management

Graduate Standards AITSL
Professional Practice:
1. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
2. Planning for Effective Management

Was your lesson plan

effective for managing the
class?

For my year 10 group I dont believe that my lesson plan was

effective in classroom management. Some students were all for
the idea. They loved the competitiveness then other students could
not care less. In particular I had one girl sleep on the desk. As it
e.g. How did the students
was a 20 minute activity there was no variety of activates but a
react to your lesson overall variety of questions to test their knowledge.
and to your planned
When the one student fell asleep it was a shock and stopped me in
activities?
my tracks. All I did was lightly tap her on the shoulder and say her
name to get her to wake up and then focused a few questions at
Did anything unexpected
her to make sure she knew what the topic was about. I was early
happen?
on the timing but this was because students lost interest and I
didnt want them to disrupt the other members of the class.
Did you provide a variety of To finish the lesson I got the students to each tell me one thing
activities?
they now understand that they didnt before. Then to keep them
occupied for a little bit I got them to put the class back to the way it
Were you satisfied with
was.
your timing, particularly for
the end of the lesson?
For my year 11 ATAR class the students were interested in the
lesson and activity from the very start. It was easy to keep them all
Did you feel you were able on track. What stopped me in my tracks is the fact that they kept
to change things if needed? going back to the same things in their debate and didnt try to bring
new arguments to the table. To make this work I started asking
questions and getting them to debate on this.
As the debate didnt last as long as I had hoped I quickly thought
that they could write an essay response with the last 20 minutes of
the lesson. Even though these year 11s werent happy about this
they still did the task without argument. After the class was finished
I am glad that they did the essay response because I got to see
how well some of these students can write and how passionate
they are about the topic.

Were you aware of

classroom procedures and
school disciplinary policy?
How much did you know
about your students?
How did your mentor
teacher maintain a safe
learning environment?
What strategies did your

With classroom procedures I knew that students were to line up

out the front of the class at the start of each lesson go in to their
seats and have the role taken after that there wasnt many
procedures in place. I knew that if a student became too big of a
distraction or were particularly bad for that lesson that they are set
away to another class for punishment and had to sit at the back of
the class. In the classes that I had this never happened to our
students but we did have one student from another class get sent
to us as he has been fighting with another boy.

observe your mentor

teacher using to maintain
this?

Our mentor teacher always made sure that there was no eating in
his class that no one swang on chairs or desks and that people
paid attention when all instructions were being presented.

Maintaining a Positive Attitude in the Classroom

How did you demonstrate to
the students that you valued
them, and enjoyed
learning?
.

Which aspects of your

teaching style do you feel
helped you maintain class
attention?
e.g. Variety of activities,
class or group discussion,
pace of lesson, interest at
class level.

From day one I walked around the classroom trying to get to get to
know the students and a little bit about them. But having 100-150
students throughout the week it gets a little hard to remember
everyone. Whenever they asked me questions I would use open
body language, a happy tone of voice and smiled a lot. I continued
this throughout all my lessons that I took part in or preformed
myself.

The fact that I am a very casual teacher and dont stand at the
front of the class and dictate students got along and respected me
a lot.
For my year 10 group I located it at the back of the class, put
some desks together and sat down with them. This way we were
equal and more open so they were more willing to take part in the
activity.
In the year 11 ATAR class I got the students to walk in and sit on
the floor in their pre-arranged groups. Then they were told the
question and had to discuss in their groups their arguments. Then
as a class they did a debate. This kept if casual and fun. After that
they were told to write their essay response. After reading a few
good ones myself I got them to read 3 aloud so that the class
could admire the writing style and how they all took a different
approach to the question.

Did the students know what

was expected of them?

In both tasks I tried to be as clear as possible of what was

expected by all the students. The year 11 ATAR class took a little
more explaining than the year 10s as there was more to their
activity.
I had to explain what exactly I expected of the essay response a
couple of times as these students are so use to being told what
side of an argument to take instead of being allowed to take the
side they want to argue.

Were you able to redirect

energies of attention
seeking students? Did the
students have enough to

In my year 10 group activity I had to try and redirect the energy of

attention seeking students a lot. These kids lose interest quickly
and are very needy students. I had to try and pull them back into
the activity by asking specific questions on the topic that I know

do?

the students, whose attention is wondering and becoming

disruptive, understand and can answer. The students did have a
large list of questions to get through but due to the lack of attention
towards the end so I made the decision to pack up early and get
the classroom back in order.
In my year 11 ATAR class, not once did I have a student preform
attention seeking behaviour. They had lots of work to do, to
prepare for their assessment item in a few weeks.

Dealing with Minor Misbehaviour

Were you aware of what
was happening in all parts
of the classroom? Did you
know what each student
was doing?

As I had a small group of 6 students in the year 10 group I got

them to sit in a U shape. This way so I could see all the students I
sat at the end of the U.

Did you take any action

when you observed poor
behaviour? Why? Why
not?

In the year 10 group I simply said the students name and then sat
there silently till they realised that we are waiting on them. This
was because there were some students who were interested in
learning and they would put the pressure on those students to pay
attention.

In my year 11 ATAR class I will admit that I did not know what was
happening at all times in the classroom. This was a much larger
group but I did walk around the classroom constantly to see if
anyone needed help with work or to get students back on the
activity that had gotten off task.

I was extremely lucky that, in my year 11 ATAR class, I did not

have to tell any students off for poor behaviour. At some points
while walking around I did have to make sure students were
preforming the work expected of them but nothing to major.

Did you use non-verbal

cues? e.g. Contact, pause,
gesture, movement toward
student/s concerned.

In both situations to get the students attention I would just stand or

sit quietly till they stopped speaking and was ready to do the work.
In my year 11 ATAR class I did also cross my arms when I was not
getting the attention of the students fast enough. I also stood near
(used proximity) to get students to do their work when off tasks.

Overall Comments

Schools as text looking at the whole school

Describe the school in terms of

its demographics, appearance
and resources (be general here
and do not name the school).

What were the roles and

responsibilities of the teaching
staff you observed?

This particular high school was not of the highest

standard, being in the heart of Rockingham it is well
known the locals but not for all the good reasons. The
students who go to this school come from a variety of
back grounds. Out of the 970 students 10% are in
Department of Child Protection system, 23% of the school
population are Maori. As there are only 61 staff members
as classrooms are at their maximum compactly. With a
number of students having fly in fly out parents the school
decided that they would bring in the Bring your own
device (BYOD) concept. This school is full of old
buildings, old text books and out dated equipment. Using
the BYOD system has allowed the school to use their cut
funding towards developing the school in much needed
area.
In this particular school teachers are all required to carry
out their class room duties, do at least two school yard
duties a week and participate in regular staff meetings or
morning teas.
As this is an independent public school all teaching staff
are expected to part of a committee at the school to
contribute to different aspects of the educational
environment for the students.

What did you observe nonteaching staff doing to support

teaching and learning in the
school?

Each area of the school (middle and senior) have their

own office that looks after absentees, behaviour slips,
letters home and parent meetings. This allows the
teachers to have more time to focus on their classroom
duties.
There is also another lady who organises all relief
teachers, lessons and school yard duty. This desk is
located in the teachers lounge and allows the admin staff
to focus on the more important parts of the school.

Students
You will have observed the
diverse nature of your classes.
How was this diversity
supported?

Each year group has been divided up into groups based

on their level of knowledge and capability. This allows the
teacher to work towards the level of understanding that is
suited to that group of students.
When teaching class they my mentor teacher did a lot of
group work allowing the students to learn off one another

so that the lessons flow and run smoothly. This meant that
everything could be covered in that time frame provided.
There were a number of different student backgrounds.
With this the mentor teacher treated all students the same
no matter what they did or what was happening in their
lives.

Function of Schools
Did you observe the connection
of your schools with the broader
community? How did this
happen?

I did not see a lot of connection between the school and the
broader community.
Some students in the Year 11 VET courses (TAFE based)
do have work placement once a week. This gives the
students an opportunity to have real life experience in the
work place when leaving school. Many students do get
permeate positions from these placements but not all
students have this opportunity.

What do you think the function

of school is?

The function of this school could be one of these two things

depending on who the student is.
1. The school is a safe place where they go and stay
out of trouble. It is a place where they can hang out
see their friends and learn without noticing that they
are learning.
2. A place where students can decide what they want
to do with their futures and have support in working
towards these goals. It is a place where the
students can prepare for the obstacles that they
may face in their future careers and life.