Inquiry Question 6 - Teaching Observation

1. Plan and conduct detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature. Inquiring into your teaching should give you:

• Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development
• Baseline information that you can use at the end of the year to provide evidence of shifts in teaching

Use multiple tools such as self- or peer-observations, analysis of your class site, student voice.

2. Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented.

3. Write a reflection in which you summarise your main learning about your teaching and next steps. This will prepare you to design an intervention next time.

I asked Mrs Anderson, the HOD of Technology to observe my lesson. We decided that if she was in the room taking notes then I would change how I interacted with the students without meaning to, so we decided to record a section of a lesson with my inquiry group.

This is the rubric that we are using ...

Mindset Lesson Observation

Item	Seen / Not seen	Notes
Listening to the students talking about their work.
Does not use negative language with the students while talking about their work.
Inquires into / Encourages / helps students when they are stuck or need help.
Has help available for the students to use in their own time when they need it without them having to ask all the time. Building self resiliency.
Uses growth mindset language - you can, effort, try, fail, learn, mistakes. Etc… to model mindset talk.
Encourages self reliance and self management in project work.
References to work?

Anything else to add …

I recorded one period of a double lesson and we reviewed about 25 minutes of it.

Here is the whole video.

Here is the rubric with the notes on it ...

Mindset Lesson Observation

Up to 24:08 in the video

Item	Seen / Not seen	Notes
Listening to the students talking about their work.	IIII	Is it important to get the students to talk more? The only listening time was when they were responding to questions asked.
Does not use negative language with the students while talking about their work.		There was no negative talk directed towards the students personally or their work. Comment about them being slow in finishing work.
Inquires into / Encourages / helps students when they are stuck or need help.	IIIIIIIII	Inquiring a lot into student progress, “what are you doing?”
Has help available for the students to use in their own time when they need it without them having to ask all the time. Building self resiliency.	II	Students were drawing and making in 3D. They all needed individual help.
Uses growth mindset language - you can, effort, try, fail, learn, mistakes. Etc… to model mindset talk.	I	Not enough of this type of language used throughout the lesson. A little seen in the whole class talk at the start of the session.
Encourages self reliance and self management in project work.		Students are seen getting on with their work. It is when they need a “next step” that they sit and wait for the teacher.
References to work?

Anything else to add …

Teacher Self-talk IIIII

Notes:

Identify what is turning over work output by the students to know how to expend teacher time effectively

Student Voice and Observation Reflection - figure out what is positively impacting student output, to know what items could be focussed to improve student output even more

The main talking points and analysis for Mrs Anderson and I after reviewing the video were

1. What are the main things that the students feel help them to get on with their work confidently? I can do a very quick Google Form for this to get some student voice about it. I can then plan what the main focus of attention needs to be in terms of changes to put in place from the rubric.
2. What can I, as the teacher, do to stop the negative self talk that is coming out of me all the time? I had not noticed this was a problem until we watched and analysed the video together. If Mrs Anderson had done an observation in the class and we had not recorded it, I would not have believed her. To see me doing that so often was embarrassing. How can I expect the students to improve on their mindset if I am constantly putting myself down? This is going to be a tricky one to work on and I am going to need time to think of strategies. I may involve the students in this too and explain to them what I am trying to change and why.