How to make the most out of observing as a trainee teacher

​How to make the most of observing in the classroom

In your first few weeks at your placement school you are in a fantastic position to be able to observe others teaching. This opportunity will get smaller as the year goes on, and you should make the most of it while you can!

To start with, you may just want to sit and watch to see how the lessons progress. However, there is a wealth of information in front of you, that without a clear focus a lot of this may well pass you by.

​You need to learn how to ‘unpack’ the lessons. To do this you will need to choose a focus for each of your observations, and prior to the observation, jot down some questions you will want to answer. Some of these you will be able to answer while you are watching, others you may need to discuss with your mentor later, or look for in another observation.

Some things to consider...

The key to success...

What subject to observe:  In addition to your subject, you will also be expected to observe some PSHE classes (in whatever format they are delivered in your school – sometimes called PD, or PHSE, or Values or Citizenship….). You may want to wait to observe these lessons at a later date. ​

Which key stages? Try to look at all key stages in your observations – initially you will want to see those classes you will ultimately have responsibility for so this may start with KS3. At some stage you will need to observe KS5 – although I would wait until later in the course for this. Equally you will have a primary school visit which will be arranged later in the year.
NB - Please check what your provider considers to be KS4 – although some schools start to deliver the KS4 syllabus to year 9, some providers only consider years 10 and 11 to be KS4 when it comes to their observations of your teaching.

Suggested observation topics for the first few weeks:

​You will want to find information about these during your initial observations. (Future blog posts will give more detail for each). I would suggest you choose ONE at a time!
1.Behaviour management
What kind of things do you see that may be considered as not behaving? Chatting? Being off task? Rudeness?

What does the teacher do in each case to respond to this behaviour?

Some teachers will have set the expectations in place so that there is no obvious behaviour issue – but this is where you will need to look carefully at how they structure the lesson to ensure all are kept on task.

A later post will give you some suggestions as to techniques you can put in place to prevent behaviour problems from occurring.

2.Classroom management
What does the teacher do to move from one task to another? – what we call transitions in lessons.

How do they manage handing out books, or going through homework or tests?

​3.Structure of the lesson
A final topic for your early observations is for you to plot out how the teacher structures each part of the lesson – what they want the students to learn; how they introduce the learning (starter); how they build the learning; how they check that they students have learnt it.

The best way to get the most out of your observations is to:

Plan in advance what you want to find out on each occasion.

1. Write notes during the observation
2. Write up your notes while they are still fresh in your mind, reflecting on what you can use from what you have seen.

EVIDENCE: all this forms evidence for your standards - a good piece of evidence would be...

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1. Your notes on an observation on eg behaviour management
2. A lesson plan using this information
3. An observation where your mentor sees how you have put it into practice.

To show your learning journey, you could then complete another reflection later on in the year to show how you have developed your thinking.

Next blog post: There are two ways of looking at behaviour management - how to look for these when you are observing.