Running head: FORMAL TEACHER OBSERVATION 1

Formal Teacher Observation

Michael Miller

Concordia University, St. Paul

ED 554 Supervision and Improvement of Instruction, Cohort 378

Professor Gerald Sakala

October 1, 2015
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Formal Teacher Observation

The supervision of instruction is one of the most important parts of a principals job. The

process of observing classrooms and following the observation with a post observation

conversation not only allows a principal to understand what is happening in classrooms, but also

gives principals the opportunity to positively influence the instruction in those classrooms. For

the formal teacher observation, this author used the Standards of Effective Instruction

observation model, which is used in the Minneapolis Public School District. This process

includes a preconference, full class period observation, analysis of evidence collected during the

observation and a post conference to talk about the observation with the observed teacher.

This authors formal observation was of a co-taught ELL United States History class. The

majority of the students in the class were level two or level three ELL students, but there were

six general education students in the class as well. During the preconference this author

learned that the students were learning about the American Revolutionary War and that the

students are having difficulty taking information they learned through online research and

putting it into their own words. To help her students, the observed teacher developed a graphic

organizer to help students practice re-writing information in their own words.

This author observed two instructional strategies during the forty-five minute lesson he

observed. In the beginning of the lesson the observed teacher spent about ten minutes talking to

students about difficulties she has seen in the previous days class. After discussing issues and

directions a video was used to give the students content knowledge and questions was used to

help the students better understand what they were seeing in the video. The video used in this

lesson was a School House Rock video about the American Revolutionary War. The observed

teacher would stop the video about every thirty seconds and ask the students two to three
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questions. In order to answer the questions, students were required to raise their hand and wait to

be called on. After the questions were answered the teacher would resume playing the video

before stopping again to ask questions.

During the lesson there were two separate occasions when the observed teacher stopped

the instruction to deal with student outbursts. This author found it interesting that these behaviors

were dealt with in front of the class while other students were allowed to continue talking at their

tables or be on their cell phones during the lesson. As the class period came to an end the teacher

began to rush to get through the end of the video and questions. Since the video took longer than

expected the observed teacher was not able to introduce the graphic organizer that was created to

help students work on rewriting information in their own words. When the bell rang for the end

of the class period the teacher was finishing her response to the last discussion question as

students began to leave the room. This author did not observe a clear conclusion to the lesson.

In the post conference, this author and the observed teacher had a collaborative

conversation about the lesson. The observed teacher talked about things that could have gone

better in the lesson and things with which she was pleased. I thought stopping frequently and

going through things went really well, but I wish we could have started the graphic organizer or

completed the exit slip (observed teacher, personal communication, October 1, 2015). This

author shared that the video may not have been age appropriate for high school students and that

he believed the questioning could have been more engaging if students were given an

opportunity to discuss the questions together in pairs.

The development supervision model this author used in the formal observation was

collaborative (Glickman, Gordon & Ross-Gordon, 2014). The observed teacher first shared how

she taught the lesson went and described specific difficulties she had in the lesson, in planning
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and in classroom management. This author then presented his view of the described issues based

on what he observed during the lesson. After discussing the difficulties observed in the lesson the

conversation turned toward problem solving. In this part of the post conference, the conversation

was mostly collaborative, but the observed teacher asked this author for advise on how to make

this lesson more engaging for her students. While the conversation did turn a little more one

sided in this section, the supervision model should still be described as collaborative because the

observed teacher and this author came to an agreement on what the observed teacher would try in

her class next (Glickman, Gordon & Ross-Gordon, 2014).

This author believes that the clinical model observation process was effective on the

improvement of instruction because this author were able to look for specific aspects of the

classroom instruction that could be improved. The preconference discussion helped this author

better understand what he could expect to see in the lesson and allowed the teacher an

opportunity to request that this author look for specific evidence in the lesson in order to give the

observed teacher feedback she could use to improve her instruction. While some argue that this

part of the observation leads teacher to pick their best lessons and do things that are out of the

ordinary, this author believes it created an opportunity where the observed teacher could work

toward growth by getting feedback on an area of concern.

The most impactful component of the clinical observation model was the post conference

conversation because it created an opportunity for this author to discuss what the observed

teacher requested feedback on as well as other observations made by this author. The discussion

allowed the observed teacher and this author to look at pieces of the lesson that didnt go well

and talk about how instruction could be changed to improve future instruction. This conversation

allows the observation process to be more about teacher growth than teacher evaluation.
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One thing that went particularly well in the observation process was all of the

opportunities for collaborative discussion that were created throughout the observation process.

According to Kachur, Stout and Edwards (2013), student achievement is directly linked to

collegial collaboration (3). This author believes the opportunity to collaboratively problem solve

gave the observed teacher new strategies to try with her students and ultimately increased her

confidence. The collaboration in observation process was the most significant factor that helped

improve instruction.

One thing that this author would do differently in the observation process in the future

would be to create opportunities for follow up discussions after the post conference. While future

observations, both walkthroughs and clinical model observations, would present an opportunity

to discuss how things are going since the first observation, this author believes another follow up

discussion about this observation could be helpful to improving classroom instruction. Another

change that this author would make to the observation process would be to pair the observed

teacher with another teacher in the school that is particularly good at something with which the

observed teacher has had difficulty. Kachur, Stout and Edwards (2013) describes one of the most

significant positives of having teachers observe each other is that it creates an opportunity for

teachers learning from teachers in a nonevaluative way (4). This would not only give the

observed teacher new strategies, but it would give her another support that she could turn in

order to help her grow professionally.

Overall the observation process was a positive learning experience for this author. He not

only learned what pieces of the observation process he likes and would like to implement as a

building leader, but this author also learned how to help facilitate a post conference conversation

focused on improving instruction.

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References

Glickman, C. D., Gordon, S. P., & Ross-Gordon, J. M. (2014). SuperVision and Instructional

Leadership: A Developmental Approach (9th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson.

Kachur, D. S., Stout, J. A., & Edwards, C. L. (2013). Engaging Teachers in Classroom

Walkthroughs. Alexandria: ASCD.