Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Elementary Education Program

Pre-Observation Form

Directions: This form is to be completed prior to every lesson that will be observed by the mentor
teacher or university supervisor. It is to be submitted no later than 3 business days prior to the actual
observation along with your lesson plans.

Name: Sarah Suffridge and Meredith Dickens Date:11/28/17

1. What is the topic of your lesson?

Fostering empathy through generosity and compassion

2. Why are you teaching this lesson? What is your rationale for teaching it?
It is important to teach these values to children at an early age in order for them
to be sacrificial givers in the community as they get older. Also for the students to
be able to recognize and appreciate a giving nature from others.

3. What is your Teaching Behavior Focus? Why did you choose this?
Building classroom climate: Using positive reinforcement such as
Simple verbal acknowledgements
Extended verbal acknowledgements
Differentiated reinforcement
Delayed reinforcement
Non-verbal reinforcement
This TBF goes along with our lesson topic of social empathy and our reading
standard of creating classroom/conversational expectations.

4. Why did you design your instruction in this lesson the way that you did? Why did
you choose this way of teaching the lesson (e.g., Was the idea from a methods
course? From your mentor teacher? Another source?)
This lesson incorporates a lot of group discussion and learning from what others
say which is part of what we want our students to learn. A lot of collaboration is
cut out of instruction in order to receive individual assessments, but it is so
important for students to be immersed in the opinions and thoughts of their
peers. We were given this idea from our methods course in cultural connections.

5. As you are thinking through this lesson, what do you believe will be the most
challenging part of this lesson for you when you teach it? Why?
Making sure we communicate well the benefit and reward of giving. Often it is
easy to get caught up in the inconvenience and selfishness of giving, but we
want our students to only see the good so we must guard what we say carefully.
6. How will you know if your learning outcomes for the students are met
successfully?
Students will be able to characterize givers, what can be given that isnt
materialistic, and recognize the effect of giving.

7. How will your classroom management support the learning outcomes?

We will foster an environment which wants to hear all voices and not just a few.
Guidelines will be given for group discussion regarding respect, good listening,
proper speaking levels and so forth. This way students can be sure they are
learning from their peers and giving their time and respect.

8. List 1-3 areas which you would like for your observer to pay particular attention.
Why do you want your observer to focus on these areas?
1) Our collaboration at the beginning on establishing classroom and group
expectations because this is our NCSCOS which we chose.
2) Our ability to keep their attention during read aloud and changing from one
part of the lesson to another. This can sometimes be challenging with young
students and we want to be sure we do well at this.

9. Is there anything else you would like your observer to know before the
observation?
We appreciate you giving us time out of your day to let us do this
Also feel free to give us any constructive criticism afterward or stop us along the
way if you have suggestions!