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Indicators of Classroom Excellence

Looking at Student Work

Thank you for coming!

In an excellent classroom, teachers are:

In an excellent classroom, students are:

Demonstrating genuine curiosity and interest * Taking risks with new ideas * Making mistakes and being willing to try again * Working with peers * Being challenged by new ideas – theirs or others * Interacting with each other * Making discoveries * Deeply thinking * Challenging assumptions * Feeling that their contributions are constructing meaning * Comfortable, safe * Participating * Having fun * Listening to each other and the teacher * Showing appreciation for each other and the teacher * Working with concrete materials * Making choices and decisions * Happy, engaged ,confident, well-behaved and respectful * Sharing their knowledge (multiple opportunities) * Showing that they want to be there through their engagement, body language * Thinking (having the time/space) * Demonstrating proficiencies * Comfortable asking questions that reveal both knowledge and confusion * Taking risks (failing – making mistakes – and feeling good) * Comfortable asking questions that reveal both understanding and confusion * Still engaged even as the class is ending * Working collectively not just individually toward a greater purpose * Able to see themselves represented around the classroom (i.e., artwork/projects on walls) * Seeing their ideas validated and used to further the class * Doing: demonstrating skills (observable) and connections * On task * Building/creating * Caring for one another * Playing * Awake/alert * Have their notebooks, books ,pencils out * Aware of what the classroom rules and customs are (raising hands, not raising hands, etc.) * Being reflective * Challenging their own – and others’ – way of thinking * Making connections among topics * Seeing themselves reflected in the room * Constructing meaning

Involving all students * Asking and inviting questions * Providing a safe space for kids to ask questions, be wrong, and be creative * Organized and prepared * Able to communicate material and answer questions clearly * Engaged with students (eye contact, body posture, movement, etc.) * Providing a sense of purpose and direction * Modeling * Facilitating * Explaining * Planning * Mediating * Passionate/energetic/invested in the material/subject as seen through engagement with students and the subject * Clear in their expectations and directions ; outcome/intention of lesson is “visible” * Talking with students, not over or above them * Attentive to air time and privileging of student voices vs “teacher talk” * Valuing and affirming a multiplicity of voices * Attentive to his/her own identity and positioning (appropriate authority) * Allowing students to talk/clarify learning * Enjoying themselves * Challenging their students * Connecting with their students * Modeling an environment where risks are taken and rewarded * Listening and talking with all children with interest and empathy * Circulating around to each child for individual attention * Relating new material to old and encouraging children to do so as well * Providing concrete materials for learning that meet different learning styles * Charismatic * Learning beside/along with the students * Showing mastery of the material * Putting the kids’ ideas in the center of the conversation * Shaping the class without deforming the kids’ responses to the work at hand * Helping the kids experience a genuine excitement * Demonstrating genuine interest in and affection for the students * Providing opportunities for curiosity, wonder, questioning, experimenting * Providing regular concrete constructive feedback * Paying attention to everything that’s happening in the classroom and responding accordingly

Peer Observations

GDS In-Service

February 2012

In an excellent classroom, teachers are:

In an excellent classroom, students are:

Agenda

1. Overview of Peer Observation: 5 minutes

The What

Effective peer observations...

During the visit...

Before the visit...

After the visit...

The Why

Peer observation is a way to gather information about adult practice in the school, reflect on it, and use it to improve teaching and learning.

Research suggests that peer observation can benefit teachers, students, and schools by:

  • pinpointing successful instruction and areas needing improvement

  • helping us develop a shared language about teaching and learning

  • sharing a knowledge base by being public with our work.
  • are sustained over time

  • require will, a clear purpose, and good communication

  • lead to positive changes in teaching and learning

  • should avoid quick and artificial snapshots

  • should have student engagement at the heart of every peer observation

The observed teacher defines the purpose for the visit.

  • Specific purpose, question, or focus
  • Non-specific, open-ended

Both teachers establish the nature of the observations and what is expected of the observer, for example:

  • scripting observations
  • focusing on a particular student or particular element of the practice
  • anything of interest
  • The observer's feedback/comments should be specific, with reference to events noted, and should address the expressed interests of the person observed.

  • Both teachers should share observations, questions, and suggestions about changes in professional practice that could restructure the learning opportunities for students.

  • There should be time for the person observed to respond to feedback and for both parties to review the process.

Observers take descriptive (rather than interpretive or evaluative) notes on student actions and teacher actions.

  • I see a yellow circle surrounded by blue.
  • There's a sun in a deep blue sky.
  • The sun is drawn skillfully.

  • There is no white space left on the page.
  • I think that the student was afraid of leaving space on the page.
  • I don't like the way there's no room left on the page -- it feels so crowded.

2. Watch Video Example: 5-10 minutes

Video Examples

Video: Kindergarten

Video: 4th grade

Video: 5th grade

Video: 1st grade

Making Bread Together

Making a Difference Through Giving

Explorers in North America

Historical Change

Darlene Jones–Inge is a fourth–grade teacher at O’Hearn Elementary School located in Boston’s inner city. Ms. Jones–Inge, a teacher for 10 years, presents a complex lesson that focuses on the theme of giving. Ms. Jones–Inge has students work in teams to determine a meaningful service project addressing the needs within their school, community, country, or world. Through thoughtful voting and collaborative decision making, students must determine the goal and scale of their project. Go to this unit.

David Kitts is a first–grade teacher on the Santo Domingo Indian Reservation in New Mexico. In his bilingual classroom, Native American students are studying the history of farming through a lesson that compares farming in eighteenth–century New England to current–day practices in the Midwest. The lesson uses literature and the study of various farming tools and products to illuminate the changes that have taken place in the industry over time and in different parts of the country.

Meylin Gonzalez is a kindergarten teacher in Tampa, Florida. Ms. Gonzalez uses this lesson to introduce her students to several economic concepts, including production and cooperation. Using a children’s book as a guide, Ms. Gonzalez reviews with her students how people work cooperatively on an assembly line to make a product. The students then experience the concepts of production and distribution through an activity in which they create an assembly line in the classroom and prepare hand–made bread. Go to this unit.

Rob Cuddi, a fifth–grade teacher at Winthrop Middle School in Winthrop, Massachusetts, has been teaching for almost 30 years and has recently taken an active role in restructuring the social studies curriculum to accommodate both state and national standards. Mr. Cuddi’s lesson introduces the theme of exploration in North America, posing three essential questions: How have people in history affected our lives today?; How do the human and physical systems of the Earth interact?; and What role do economies play in the foundation of our history?

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1772

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1775

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1779

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1769

Video: 12th grade

Video: 7th/8th grades

Video: 9th grade

Landmark Supreme Court Cases

Competing Ideologies

The Individual in Society

Wendell Brooks is a teacher at the diverse Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California. Mr. Brooks' ninth–grade history class focuses on a variety of political ideologies present during the period of World War I. His class includes lively discussion on capitalism, communism, totalitarianism, and Nazism, as portrayed by leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini. In his lesson, Mr. Brooks incorporates a Socratic discussion into his lesson, as well as group activities and presentations.

Brian Poon is a teacher at Brookline High School in metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts. Mr. Poon’s 12th–grade philosophy lesson focuses on the role of the individual in society. Based on readings by various philosophers, including Reinhold Niebuhr, Thomas Hobbes, Mao Zedong, Martha Nussbaum, and Plato, students apply the philosophers’ viewpoints to solve the dilemmas of a fictitious nation called "Fenway." They then participate in a dynamic class discussion about how to integrate the best philosophical ideas to address Fenway’s problems.

Wendy Ewbank teaches seventh and eighth grade at Madrona School in Bellevue, Washington. In a civics lesson on landmark Supreme Court cases, the students focus on the tension between the rights of the individual and the good of society. In the lesson, students work in groups, presenting various cases to the class in the form of a press conference. Key issues include the right to privacy, equal protection, and the First Amendment. On day two, students hold a town meeting to discuss whether the burning of the American flag is protected under the right to freedom of speech. Ms. Ewbank provides clear rubrics, which help students understand the expectations and goals for the lesson.

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1794

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1791

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1786

3. Debrief: 10-15 minutes

4. Next steps and suggestions / comments: 5 minutes

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