Observation Sheet Questioning

(Please complete this form for both primary and secondary professional experiences and
place in your ePortfolio)
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?

Did you use a variety of

question types?

What balances was there

between the various
questions types?

Consider both why and

when you made use of the
different question types?

Yes, I feel the students understood the questions that I was asking
mainly because they were revising the topic for their exams. Any
questions that I asked more than half the class raised their hand to
give an answer. This gave me an indication of what students
understood the question and topic. For those students that didnt
raise their hand I made sure to monitor them closely during the
activity time.
I mainly used knowledge and comprehension questions during the
lesson. This is because the lesson was for math and mainly on
revision. My mentor teacher had provided me with the resources
she wanted me to use and what she wanted the students to do.
Therefore there wasnt much room for questioning them in terms
of the topic as it was very straight forward.
Mainly the questions were recall, recalling the answers to the
questions from their exercise. There was a lot of close questions
with just an answer required.

I used more open and knowledge questions at the beginning of the

lesson by asking the students to name the different types of
questions and how to write them. This was to get the students to
review what they had previously learnt. Due to the subject area
there wasnt much room or need to have reflective questions, they
only way I could have integrated them into my lesson would have
been for the students to reflect on their work effort of the day.

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?

Did you make eye contact

with the group as you
directed your questions?

At the beginning of the lesson I did some examples on the board

and asked the students to explain the examples. I used knowledge
questions to be able to see what students felt comfortable with the
subject. For math, we were focussing on revision so mainly the
questions were knowledge questions to recap the topic area.

As I had a math lesson the questions that I was asking either had a
correct response or not. The way in which my lesson was
structured the questioning aspect came in when we reviewed the
answers. I would select different students to supply me with their
answers and if one side of the class werent contributing I would
scan towards them when finishing my question so they knew I
expected someone to answer.
I would ask a question then utilise wait time to let the students all
think about the question. Then I would select a student to provide
me with the answer. I would also use wait time when I was
gaining the attention of the students. I would ask for their
attention and then wait for them to all be looking at me until I
continued.
Yes, I tried to make sure I was in a position (usually at the front of
the class) where I could make eye contact with each individual. I
did this by scanning the room as I asked the questions.

Reactions to Students Responses

How do you deal with
correct responses? Do you
qualify any praise given?

How do you deal with

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

I would give praise and positive feedback. I did this to

ensure the student felt confident to continue to contribute
and also felt proud of themselves for getting the answer
correct.
If I had a student who had an incorrect response I would
firstly ask someone else for the correct answer and then see if
they student understood the answer. If they didnt I would
simply tell them ill come over after we had finished working
as a class. I would still praise them on their efforts and say
that they possibly just made a working out error. Many
students doing stumble as I only asked those who felt

confident enough to answer, this was shown through them

raising their hands.

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?

Are you the only evaluator

of the students answers?

As the students were doing revision the learning purpose was to

revise those topic. I didnt redirect any questions and they were
simply correct or not as I was in a math class. I did redirect
incorrect responses by asking the class if they got anything
different.

No, I would ask the class if they agreed with the answers if they
didnt I would then ask for another person to contribute. Usually if
the first answer was wrong then the second person had the correct
answer. Once the class agreed I then made sure to explain to the
student after how they got that answer.

Overall Comments

I felt that the students behaved very well throughout the lesson and were very respectful. I
enjoyed teaching the class and the lesson. Many students did more than the required work
which just reiterated their talent in maths.

Observation Sheet Management

(Please complete this form for both primary and secondary professional experiences and
place in your e portfolio)
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?
e.g. How did the students
react to your lesson overall
and to your planned
activities?
Did anything unexpected
happen?

As the lesson I had(whole class) was revision the students knew

exactly what to expect. I explained that they were able to work
quietly so this meant able to chat to those around them. As the
work focussed on individual work I was able to walk around and
manage the class through monitoring their behaviour.
At the beginning the wrong books got handed out and there was a
little confusion to page numbers. That soon got sorted and I just
laughed it off and ask the students to collect the books and hand
out the correct ones. Apart from that all students cooperated well.

As I only had a short time and the lesson I was given was revision
Did you provide a variety of and my mentor teacher told me what she wanted the student to
activities?
do(revision questions) I only had one activity and that was to do
the revision page. I tried to break that up by doing some
Were you satisfied with
explaining beforehand and examples and then also stopping them
your timing, particularly for
to review the answers so that the students werent constantly doing
the end of the lesson?
work.
Did you feel you were able
to change things if needed? I was happy with the timing as after I was finished I passed over to
my mentor teacher. One of the main reasons I was satisfied with
my timing is that all students completed the task I set them. I
ended my lesson by reviewing the last answers and then my
mentor teacher continued on.
As it was a math class not many things could be changed, and my
mentor teacher had a clear view of what she wanted me to teach. If
I had to change things it would have been hard because my mentor
teacher had clearly stated what she wanted so if something had to
change it would have been instructed by her. Had that had
happened I would have just tried my best to accommodate for the
changes.

Yes, after one of the classes I observed and I had seen many

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
observe your mentor
teacher using to maintain
this?

student misbehave I asked my mentor teacher what the procedures

were. She explained the students can get a warning, then they can
get detention or rubbish duty, after that they can be moved to a
buddy class if this happens three times in a week they are sent to
the office and will most likely receive a suspension. After
suspension the student then goes on a student-teacher contract.
She would make sure that all chairs were pushed in and that all
students were behaving correctly. For any student misbehaving she
would sent them to a buddy class so the other students werent
disadvantaged or distracted.

Maintaining a Positive Attitude in the Classroom

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

I tried to use a very light and positive tone of voice when

answering questions or speaking to the students. I also smiled a lot
when necessary and would try to be positive towards them. I used
praise a lot to commend the students on their work and
contribution.

e.g. Tone of voice, facial

expression, sense of
humour, introduction to
students and topic.

Which aspects of your

teaching style do you feel
helped you maintain class
attention?

As the class wanted to learn it was very easy for them to maintain
attention on their work. I think by stopping every so often to check
their answers broke the lesson up and allowed them to have a bit
of discussion. The class was very eager to learn and it made it very
easy to maintain their attention.

e.g. Variety of activities,

class or group discussion,
pace of lesson, interest at
class level.

Did the students know what

was expected of them?

Were you able to redirect

Yes, at the beginning of the lesson I explained what I was going to

do and then wrote on the board the questions that they were
required to do. After each set of questions I would then check the
answers before moving onto the next ones.

I was able to redirect the attention of those students who

constantly wanted to call out the answer. I would simply ask for

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

hands up and then when they called out I would say, Please dont
call out raise your hand and I would ask someone else for the
answer. The students always had enough work to do as the
questions I had set out for them had others that followed on. Many
students completed the work and were able to advance onto the
other questions.

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?

Did you take any action

when you observed poor
behaviour? Why? Why
not?

Did you use non-verbal

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

Overall Comments

I tried to be aware at all time by used proximity and walking

around the classroom making sure I was giving attention to all
students. I know at one point I was helping a students and I had
my back to a few others so at that point I had forgot to position
myself so I could see the whole class.
I made sure I knew what each students was doing by continually
asking what question they were doing and prompting those
students who were lacking to continue to stay on task.

Yes, I knew I had to take action in order for the class to remain
respectful and not be out of control. When a student was
misbehaving I would ask them to remain on task. As I had an
extension class all of the students were mainly well behaved at
some point during class discussion it would get a little too noisy
and I would just set in to let the students know the level they need
to be working at.

Yes, when I was up the front of the class I used wait time. I asked
the class for their attention then waited around 3 seconds, for
those students that werent listening I would ask them specifically
for their attention. I used non-verbal cues such as eye contact to
allow the students to see that I was aware of what was happening.

The class that I had were very well behaved (whole class lesson). I was fortunate enough to
have a year 7 extension class that all enjoyed math and were naturally talented at the
subject. Had I taught a different year level in a lower math group the behaviour may have
differed.

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).

The school is situated in a middle social economic area

and is the only high school in the suburb. The school is
fairly new, going on ten years, and so the classrooms are
modern, clean and up to date. The resources available to
the students was hard to observe, I did note that they had
iPads that the teacher could borrow for the class to use
and also calculator to borrow.

What were the roles and

responsibilities of the teaching
staff you observed?

As my mentor teacher was an associated dean of the

maths department it meant that her role was more than just
a teacher. She had to control the maths department also to
a degree. While observing I saw her having to charge the
calculator that the student used. She had to teach a variety
of year levels with a variety of behaviour issues. As she
was a full time teacher she had two duties a week, these
duties were detention duties. The math department were all
close and so they celebrated each others birthday. As an
associated dean she had to manage issues to do with
students in math and also staff issues. Also she was a part
of a group that worked with neighbouring primary schools
and so this meant she had to attend meetings for that
group.

After discussion with your

mentor teacher describe how
policies and processes of
government, administration and
schools have an affect on the
work of the teacher?

After discussion with my mentor teacher she explained that

the union agreed on a salary increase and that resulted in
the staff having to dedicate more time to after/before hours
meetings. For those with children it made it very hard as
they would have to find child care. Another policy that had
an effect on the work of the teacher was the funding to
educational assistants had decreased therefore causing
students to be disadvantaged due to them needing extra

help which the teacher couldnt provide all the time.

What did you observe non-teaching

staff doing to support teaching and
learning in the school?

Administration played a major role in support learning

they would be there to guide visitors and monitor the
visitors that came into the school. Also they would take all
the phone calls and be in charge of passing on
messages to the correct people.
Student services also played a major role in the school.
This was a place where students had to report to if they
were late, if they had incorrect uniform, if they had to
leave early and also if they were misbehaving. In student
services there was staff there constantly to deal with the
issues.

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

In high school is it much easier to support diversity. For those

students that struggle with math they are put in a lower math
area in order to work on topics that they will be able to grasp.
For those students who excelled at maths they were able to
be in a high class in order to support their needs.

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

In the math department which is where my mentor was

situation I was able to see many connections to the broader
community. One way was that the schools in close vicinity
work together to track the results of a student from kindy
until they leave that primary school and attend the high
school. The test allow teachers to see the progress of the
student and also gives the high school teacher an insight to
their prior knowledge, strengths and weaknesses.

What do you think the function

of school is?

After observing I think the function of school is similar to

primary school. The school is there to teach students the
curriculum and to educate them before they embark into
the real world.
I think in high school more a function of the school is
discipline and consequences. The school enforcement
certain rules that mirror the laws of society. Students then
realise that when these rules are broken there are
consequences such as detention and in more extreme
cases suspension. Its through these rules that the school
teach students about the value of respect and obeying
rules.
I think the high school has a responsibility to teach students
what it is like to live in the world without the safe boundary
of the school walls. They have to broaden students eyes to
what it is like through work experience, community work
and even those apprenticeship opportunities.