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?

Yes I think they were clear and understood by the students.

Did you use a variety of

question types?

I used open, closed and paraphrasing.

What balances was there

between the various
questions types?

The question types that I found that I mainly used were closed for
specific information and commands. I also used paraphrasing to
make sure they understood what they were meant to be doing.

Consider both why and

when you made use of the
different question types?

I used open questions to generate thought processes in the

students and to engage them in conversation when I was doing my
lesson on persuasive writing techniques.
When I used paraphrasing questioning it was to clarify that they
understood instructions.
Closed questions were used for specific information eg : which
group are you in?

Distributing and Directing Questions

Did you recognise any

Yes when I was directing my questions to the group, mainly the left
pattern in the distribution of side seemed to want to answer. These were generally the stronger
your questions amongst the students.
students? Consider
reasons for this pattern?

How have you directed

questions to the group?

I asked them to listen to me carefully and I spoke clearly and a bit

louder so that they understood me.

Have you used wait time?

I didnt really use wait time like I did with the little ones and also I
was aware of the time constraints.

Did you make eye contact

with the group as you
directed your questions?

I always made eye contact so that the students knew I was

interested in their responses and my body language reflected my
speech.

Reactions to Students Responses

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

I found myself saying yes thats right, well done and great
work when they gave the correct response. Also they received a
chocolate when they answered correctly.

How do you deal with

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

For incorrect responses I tried to guide the students to the correct

one with clues and hints.
There wasnt any students who were stumbling to answer

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?

I tried to reinforce the responses to develop the teaching point for

example, yes well done, that was one persuasive writing
technique, now can you tell me two more

Are you the only evaluator

of the students answers?

The students themselves like to evaluate the other students

responses too so I am definitely not the only evaluator.

Overall Comments

Did the students know what

was expected of them?

Yes they had been told plenty of times what they would be doing
so they had a good understanding of what was going to happen in
the lesson.

Were you able to redirect

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

There wasnt really any attention seeking students but there was
one who refused to read his out and the teacher spoke to him and
made him apologise to me after the class. The students definitely
had enough to do.

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?

I think we were aware of what was going on because there was

two groups of students on two big tables right in front of us.

Did you take any action

when you observed poor
behaviour? Why? Why
not?

The student not reading their work out. I tried to convince him but
he wouldnt so I moved on and the teacher stepped in.
I did have to say sh a few times and keep it down a bit please too.

Did you use non-verbal

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

Smiles, thumbs up and movement toward students at times.

Overall Comments

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 split into a junior and a senior campus. It is

in a middle to low socio economic area and the junior is
quite an old school.
This school had a lovely calmness about it and had
plenty of room for the students to run around.
There was an oval, a basketball court, canteen, and all
the learning areas you would expect of a secondary
school.
The senior school had amazing joining facilities for
further education like TAFE and Murdoch University and
once again I found it very calm and didnt witness any
bad behaviour during the week at either campus while I
was there.

What were the roles and

responsibilities of the teaching
staff you observed?

The teaching staff were mainly responsible for their

learning area alone and of course a duty of care to all
students. They had to attend learning area meetings as
well as whole school staff meetings and attending PDs.
The teachers had reporting to do as well as marking
assessments and tests. The teaching staff did yard duty
too and helped out at the sports carnival like myself and
were given an area to cover.
They also had a pastoral care role in looking after the
students and they had a student services team to help
deal with these kinds of issues.
There was a couple of programs the school ran that
were for disengaged or at risk students as well as a Ed
support program.
The AVID program was also run by my mentor teacher
so she had those duties too.

What did you observe non-teaching

staff doing to support teaching and
learning in the school?

I didnt actually observe too many EAs or non teaching

staff around the junior secondary school. However I did
see the senior campus, where they have an ed support

program, their EAs supervising some special needs

students during lunch time and recess.

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

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

The diversity was supported by the different programs the

school ran as mentioned before. There is AVID, PACE
and Mind matters which are all life skills, confidence and
resilience building programs.

The mentor teacher said that she wished she had more
time to teach as well. I witnessed her taking one
assessment and then handing out the next one due in
the next two weeks and she told me she wished that
they could have focussed more on the teaching side of it
rather than so many assessments and testing. She also
commented on the fact that they have to rush to get
through all the their curriculum content and how the

curriculum constantly changes, so that has an effect too.

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?

I think my lesson plan was effective in managing the class as I had

a guideline about what I wanted to do next and the end result.

e.g. How did the students

react to your lesson overall
and to your planned
activities?

The students were pretty engaged I thought. They particularly

liked the chocolate for rewards and the competition side of the
lesson.
I dont think the you tube clip had too much effect but they seemed
to like the music and comedy towards the end of the clip.
It took a while for them to volunteer to read their speech out but
eventually we had about 6 read theirs out which was awesome to
see their confidence grow

Did anything unexpected

happen?

Did you provide a variety of

activities?

Were you satisfied with

your timing, particularly for
the end of the lesson?
Did you feel you were able
to change things if needed?

They didnt really like the theme of the persuasive writing speech
which was I am really good or I am really great so we allowed
them to write it about someone else they knew.

Yes we had the you tube clip, the persuasive techniques and their
description and effects competition and then finally their own
persuasive speech.

The timing was awesome and finished about 5 minutes before the
bell however we went over time for the competition part by about 3
minutes.
Yes we had to make a couple of changes and it worked out OK.

Were you aware of

classroom procedures and
school disciplinary policy?
How much did you know
about your students?

How did your mentor

Yes I was made aware of the classroom procedures and

disciplinary policy.
I had only met the students once before but I had known they were
a good class to teach form what the teachers told me.

teacher maintain a safe

learning environment?
What strategies did your
observe your mentor
teacher using to maintain
this?

My mentor was amazing with the students, she really had a great
relationship with them and you could see how much they
respected her.
Some of her strategies were sh, sh, shshsh to quiet them down and
also 3,2, 1 spoken really softly. On a couple of occasions I saw her
give the stern look but that was all, she did not yell and treated
them like they were mature students not in an authorative way.

Maintaining a Positive Attitude in the Classroom

How did you demonstrate to
the students that you valued
them, and enjoyed
learning?
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?
e.g. Variety of activities,
class or group discussion,
pace of lesson, interest at
class level.

I liked to give them praise and I tried to pick things in their work
that I liked and could compliment them on when I was walking
around the classroom.
I smiled at them lots, was friendly towards them and tried to start
conversations with them as much as possible. I also tried to use
their names as much as I could but it was hard since I had only
met them once before.

Keeping things moving along enthusiastically and the variety of

activities helped the majority of the class maintain attention.
Chocolate as a reward always works well too.