- Smile – don’t let your nerves get the best of you. Have fun teaching.
- Be familiar with the TIPC - and utilize those laptops (No testing).
- Ask open-ended questions while avoiding too many yes/no types of questions.
- Answer questions with questions & use wait time.
- Facilitate, don’t dictate/direct. Work the room. Move around. Ask questions. Interact with students/groups (while smiling).
- In the first 5 minutes of observation, preview lesson with students while making connections to previous learning/activities. Elicit student performance leading up to the observation/lesson from your students. What have they already done and where are they going? Your chance to recap/review with students and show observers where you are in your lesson.
- In the last 5 minutes of observation recap/reflect on learning/lesson with students as well as where they will go. What’s next?
- If using groups, have a group collaboration task sheet available that helps the team stay on track/focused on the task at hand. Have students have the task sheets available in the middle of the group/table so that as you work the room/facilitate you can reference it to ask questions about their work.
- Don’t stop if something doesn’t go as planned. Improvise. Use students – ask them questions that could help find a solution.
- Have assignment rubrics available. This is not just show for the observers. Have the students reference the rubric as they work on their assignment in order to reflect and self-evaluate – “How does my work measure up?” “Where do I go from here?”
Some Tech Tools to Enhance the Lesson:
