In my new role as Assistant Head I have done a lot of lesson observations lately and they haves been brilliant. My Head has asked me to put together some advice for staff on how to teach a lesson that can safely be judged as Good. This is my first draft and is based on some of the things I have seen in the last half-term. I would be very grateful if any of the wonderful teachers who occasionally stumble upon my ramblings could read it and make suggestions. What have I missed? I know there will be lots as this is vey much a first-stab at this. I look forward to lots of your comments.
How to teach a Good lesson
Preparation
Give the observer a seating plan which is annotated to show student targets and current level of progress. The best ones also have comments about particular students, i.e. "very quiet but making good progress with group activities". This shows the observer that you know the students well. You do not have to produce a lesson plan but for a planned lesson observation you might want to. The lesson plan could be your opportunity to explain the context for this lesson, work covered already or, particularly if this is a 30-minute observation, let the observer know what will happen in the second part of the lesson which they will not see. The lesson plan could also be useful if this lesson comes at the wrong time to show off your skills at group work or active learning because they have to do Controlled Assessment today or the exam is tomorrow.
Starter
In a good lesson, students are learning from the moment they arrive at the lesson. Meet and greet them at the door - this shows you know them and have a good relationship with them. It can also get minor behaviour issues such as earphones and wearing a coat out of the way before they come in.
The starter activity can be on the board or screen - if you know the class always arrives in dribs and drabs for this lesson because they come from different places, you might want to do a settling starter that each student can get onto individually as they arrive. Activities like asking students to draw a brain (or head) and fill it with words used last lesson work well for this.
In a good lesson students need to be making progress. Make sure you let them do things to show that progress. It is extremely difficult to show they have made any progress if they have spent a lot of the lesson sitting listening to you. Explain what the lesson is about and their progress targets - but do it quickly. The information can be on a PowerPoint slide or on a handout to go back to but don't spend 10 minutes telling them about it.
Pace and Progress
Structure the lesson around a series of activities. Although it may have been discredited by some educational experts and thinkers, I still use the idea of concentration span as age in minutes + 2 minutes as a pretty good guide for how long to make an activity last. It is a very good idea to stop any activity after around 12-15 minutes at most. In an observed lesson you may want to make a quick stop after around 6 minutes to just check they are all on task.
With any activity check the 3 T's - Task, Team and Time. Explain exactly what the task is, tell them whether this is individual, paired or larger group and exactly how much time they have. Keep the instructions for the task to a minimum. There is no point in giving them a long list of instructions as they will have lost you by about the 2nd or 3rd one. Give them 1-2 instructions to get started and then use a brief stop a few minutes later to give the next instruction.
If working in groups, put them in the groups yourself. If you allow them to choose their own groups you are inviting questions, discussion and negotiation which at best will delay them starting on the task and at worst lead to students challenging you. Students rarely complain about groupings if they know it is for a specific reason and a short period of time. Group work is best when it is something that students are used to and have done with you many times. It is dangerous to do anything in an observed lesson you have never done before. Use group work often so that students are familiar with it, with you and in your room.
An observer will want to walk around and have a look at what students are doing. They want to ask them questions and probably look in their exercise books. Group work gives them an opportunity to do this. It also gives you a chance to show how good you are at working with students in smaller groups and individually. Get around to every group and speak to them. Check they understand the instruction, answer any questions they may have, encourage those that haven't quite got round to starting yet and ask them about the work they have done. These question-and-answer sessions are another good way of showing how much progress they have made in the lesson. Publicly praise groups or individuals who have completed tasks, asked a great question or done something interesting.
Feedback
Make an opportunity for students to give feedback to you and/or each other. Stop activities and do quick question-and-answer sessions. Use these sessions to stretch the most able students. Push them with your questioning and explain what is required at the highest levels or grades.
Showing progress
One of the key criteria now for judging lessons is whether students made progress during the lesson. This can be very difficult in a 30-minute observation but there are strategies which might show it. The Dump Test or Pages of Progress is one way. This is simply a sheet of paper or a page in the back of the exercise book. At the start of the lesson ask students to write down in just 60 seconds anything they know about a topic. 10 or 15 minutes later, revisit the paper and add in as much as possible in 60 seconds in a different colour - a simple, visible and measurable record of progress. Later sessions can ask students to make links between words or ideas. Another way of showing progress is to have a list of questions posed either by you or by the students on the wall or board and stop occasionally to ask students which ones they can answer now. I observed a lesson once where students were given a C grade exam answer to look at and at different stages in the lesson asked to add things to it to turn it into a B and then an A grade answer.
Key points for a good lesson:
Let the students do the work - most of the lesson should involve them doing things
Allow students to interact with each other - create opportunities for them to talk to each other and feedback to each other
Short focused tasks - if any one activity is going to last more than 15 minutes make sure there is a really good reason for it
Allow the students to show that they have made some progress in the lesson
Every student in the room needs to be engaged and part of the lesson - it is part of your job to make that happen
Don't talk for long periods of the lesson - focus on teaching the lesson rather than trying to show the observer something
Aim to do all of these things every lesson and they will work better in an observed lesson. Students will do them naturally because they are used to them, you will be more confident in doing them and an observer may ask students if this is typical. So be careful if you have never done group work and throw it into an observed lesson!
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