Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Classroom Observation
Kevin Quinn
1. What class or grade did you observe, for how long, and with how many students in the
room?
The class I observed was a grade 8, U.S. history class. There were 30 students in the
2. For which Danielson elements were you observing? Why were these selected?
Students. I chose Domain 2 because this teacher identified these areas as part of his professional
practice goals for this year. As a middle school teacher, classroom environment is one of the
most important components of teaching at this level and can be, at times, one of the most
challenging as well.
3. What did you notice about the teacher’s approach to those elements?
As the students were coming into the room and taking their seats, the teacher asked the
students to take out their previous night’s homework and pass it in. The students passed all
homework from the back rows of the room to the front where the teacher collected each pile.
This transition into the room and the collection of materials was “seamless” and obviously well-
rehearsed with the “students assuming some responsibility for smooth operation” (Danielson,
2007, p. 72).
CLASSROOM OBSERVATION 3
The teacher began the class by reviewing the previous day’s lesson. This aided in
connecting the current lesson with students’ prior knowledge and helped to make “the purpose of
the lesson or unit clear, including where it is situated within the broader learning…” (Danielson,
2007, p. 80). The teacher then communicated the expectations of the lesson within the first few
moments of class to his students by not only writing the objective on the board in a clear and
visible location, but the teacher also began the lesson by reviewing the objective with the class.
The ability to clearly communicate expectations and objectives to students about a lesson makes
the learning purposeful. And, "a fundamental assumption of the framework for teaching is that
teaching is purposeful; that purpose should be clear to the students" (Danielson, 2007, p. 77).
The objective was written in a KUD (Know; Understand; Do) format, so the students understood
what they would be learning, why it is important, and what they will be doing with that
Lesson objectives should be written in kid-friendly language and not simply put on the
board as part of a procedural checklist in case an administrator pops their head into the room. In
this case, the teacher made “the purpose of the lesson or unit clear” to the students thereby
“enhance[ing] the learning experience” (Danielson, 2007, p. 77). This is a characteristic of the
“Distinguished” category under expectations for learning in Danielson’s framework: Doman 3a.
The teacher began the lesson with an individual task by asking each student to identify
what they believed to be examples of freedom of expression and whether or not the students
believed that schools had the right to limit their freedom of expression. This activity served two
critical functions: it got the students thinking about the topic and “connected the students’
knowledge and experience” (Danielson, 2007, p. 80). During the whole-class share out on the
CLASSROOM OBSERVATION 4
were identified. This demonstrated how the teacher “anticipate[d] possible student
misunderstanding[s]” (Danielson, 2007, p. 80), and used this anticipation guide activity as a
During the activity in which students were given a few minutes to individually write
down their thoughts on the two questions that were provided to them in their groups, all of the
students were observed partaking in the task. Additionally, during the whole-class share out of
their responses, and again during their small group work discussions, “students demonstrated
through their active participation, curiosity, and taking initiative that they value the importance
of the content” (Danielson, 2007, p. 69). The teacher had created a culture for learning in his
room, and the evidence was in the way the students entered the classroom ready to work, actively
participated in the learning activities, and interacted with one another and the teacher in a manner
that “reflected the importance of the work undertaken by both students and the teacher”
4. How did the teacher (or you) know that the students’ understood the lesson?
The teacher's objective for the lesson was to have the students be able to identify and
analyze events that involved school children and whether or not their constitutional rights were
violated. By the end of the lesson, the students should understand their rights as they relate to
freedom of expression in school, freedom of speech in school newspapers, and protection from
While the groups were discussing each court case, the teacher monitored each small
group, and stopped one group to review with them the procedure for counting group votes. This
continuous monitoring served as a way to formatively assess the students during the course of
the lesson and to once again ensure that the “directions and procedures are clear to students” and
any student misunderstandings are immediately addressed (Danielson, 2007, p. 80). When the
groups shared out how they ruled on the first Supreme Court case, they had to explain why they
decided to vote the way they did and use evidence from the case in order to support their
response. It was evident from the structure of the lesson with the student groups being
strategically designed, the anticipation discussion, the question prompts, and the level of
discourse from the students, that all of these “[had] been specifically designed to supply
diagnostic information” (Danielson, 2007, p. 86). The teacher also provided immediate feedback
to students while monitoring group discussions with the goal of engaging students further in the
learning.
5. What suggestions do you have at this time to help this teacher improve on the selected
elements?
One suggestion that I had for the teacher was not in the actual execution of the lesson, but
in the lesson plan and discussion during our pre-conference meeting. Under the category of how
the teacher would differentiate the learning for students in the room, one of the items he listed
was to give some of the stronger groups more cases to look at. Even though this teacher has five
years of teaching experience, it is a common misconception that differentiating for higher level
students means providing them with more work, and differentiating for students that need more
support is to provide them with less work. Tomlinson (2001) emphasizes in her text on
CLASSROOM OBSERVATION 6
differentiation that differentiating is taking student interest, choice, and readiness into
consideration when planning lessons and carrying out varied approaches to the content, process
and product. Differentiation is understanding how a student learns and providing students with
I also suggested having some kind of closure for this activity because, while they did run
out of time with finishing the last discussion of the final court case, the class just ended without
having some way of pulling all the learning together in a way that synthesized everything they
6. Beyond the selected elements, what did you notice about the classroom?
To begin the lesson, the teacher used an anticipation activity for the "Do Now" as a way
to introduce the topics that they would be discussing. The class moved from independent work
to small group to whole class which is what Tomlinson (2001) describes as scaffolding both
teacher and peer support in order to understand a concept though an activity matrix.
The teacher also used videos on the individual court case decisions in order to provide
students with a visual of what the actual Supreme Court decision for each case was after the
students voted on each case. The videos provided a visual form of learning as an additional
modality for teaching. Finally, there were multiple learning methods accounted for in this lesson
References
Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. 2nd Ed.