Quality Teaching Rounds – Observation Sheet

Gilbert Walker – Year 8 Drama

Element Evidence Code

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1.1 Deep Knowledge

Good introduction to the lesson with students being made aware of the content being dealt with. Teacher draws out prior knowledge by asking students if they can remember what an ‘offer’ is in Drama. Teacher then proceeds to identify key concepts of offer, block, accepting and extending, which the activities will be based around. The activities presented involved teamwork and used all the concepts on a regular basis throughout the lesson, with students being constantly reminded of these terms.

5

1.2 Deep Understanding

Most students provide information, arguments or reasoning for the main concepts presented that demonstrates deep understanding for a substantial portion of the lesson. Students were encouraged to use real life experience to answer the question: “what did it feel like when you had to work in teams but you weren’t about to communicate?” Teacher demonstrated an example of what the terms ‘blocking’ and ‘accepting’ are so that students would have something to go off in the activities they were required to complete. Making students think about their performances with questions such as: “what really worked about that scene, and what didn’t work?” Students demonstrated their understanding of the key concept of ‘offering’ through role playing a scenario which required another student to interrupt the scene and present a problem i.e. an offer. Students were also encouraged to demonstrate their thinking when analysing a group performance: “how could she have set it up so they knew what was happening…” “She could have displayed a badge to show she was a police officer when making her offer.”

4

1.3 Problematic Knowledge

Students explored the key concepts of offering, blocking, accepting and extending through various activities, with some students offering up their perspective over why an act of ‘blocking’ they feel was more an act of ‘extending.’

2

1.4 Higher-Order Thinking

Most students demonstrated higher-order thinking in at least one major activity that occupied a substantial portion of the lesson. This activity was the small group performances where students were given a scenario and an outsider would come in an ‘offer’ a problem which the group then had to decide to ‘accept’, ‘block’ or ‘extend’ upon, demonstrated their understanding of the concepts. Performance or rehearsal is considered a HOT activity, and the majority of the activities in this lesson was of a high practical standard.

4

1.5 Metalanguage

Drama specific language: offering, blocking, accepting and extending were used. The majority of the lesson is discussing and putting into practice these terms, with students constantly being asked to refer to them. Introduction of new language ‘tableau’ and then a demonstration of this term occurred.

5

1.6 Substantive Communication

Substantive communication with sustained interactions occurred throughout the lesson, with the teacher and students scaffolding the communication. Substantive communication occurred through the general opening of the lesson with the concepts being dealt with and then in the proceeding activities where the concepts were constantly being interacted with in both a group situation and at the end where the class came together in a circle and discussed all the concepts and what the activities had demonstrated.

4

Qua

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2.1 Explicit Quality Criteria

Numerous statements of instruction are given throughout the course of the lesson: “I want you to be noticing what group 1 is doing”, “I don’t want you talking, or miming, you need to just improvise the scene”, “What I’m looking for is absolute focus, as this is quite hard”, “In a moment, I want you to get into your groups and fill in the table on the information we’ve done today.” However, these are only statements of quality of work, there is no evidence to support the fact that the students are using these statements to check their work.

3

2.2 Engagement

Serious engagement. All students were deeply involved in all aspects of the lesson. Students were eager to participate in the opening ‘mushroom’ activity where they had to work as a team to retrieve the mushroom before the ‘bear’ catches them. Students actively engaged with all the activities and were demonstrating their knowledge of the key concepts of the lesson through the activities.

5

2.3 High Expectations

Students were constantly taking risks by actively engaging in class activities that required them to perform for each other. This is a great risk in itself as getting up in front of your peers especially comes with a mixture of emotions. Drama especially calls for risk taking as most of the activities require students to let their inhibitions go and be silly and embrace the activity head on. All students were engaged with all aspects of this lesson and took part in challenging activities.

5

2.4 Social Support

The teachers social support of students was very strong. Supportive behaviours from both teacher and students were evident in the class activities. Some examples include: “I really loved the way you block my view from the mushroom and how you all pretended to have it”, “I loved the way you adjusted yourself then, it made the scene more dynamic”, “Keep going, that’s a great idea!”

5

2.5 Students’ Self-Regulation

Most students were able to regulate their behaviour and stay on task, however there were a select few who did talk while instructions were being given as well as some background talking during activities.

4

2.6 Student Direction

Students had some direction over the timing of the activities, particularly when acting out a scene, students got to choose what they did and how to accept the offer being presented to them by the outsider.

3

Sign

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3.1 Background Knowledge

Background knowledge was elicited to however it is trivial and didn’t really have any connection to the overall substance of the lesson. E.g. “have you heard of the term offer?”

2

3.2 Cultural Knowledge

No cultural knowledge was referred to in this lesson. 1

3.3 Knowledge Integration

No knowledge integration occurred in this lesson. 1

3.4 Inclusivity

All students participated in all aspects of the lesson. Students were encouraged to engage in the activities and no student was left on their own or refusing to participate.

5

3.5 Connectedness

No connection beyond the classroom was demonstrated. 1

3.6 Narrative

Narrative is used consistently throughout the lesson to enhance the concepts being focused on. The students are actively engaged in the content of the lesson as well as the process.

5

AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS OF TEACHING/EVIDENCE POINTS APST 6.1 Identify and plan professional learning needs

6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice 6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning 7.4 Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities

EVIDENCE POINTS Professional Development and Reflection • Engaging in Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR) with my fellow practitioners:

PLC group • Lengthy discussion in regards to the coding of each element • Reflection of the lesson we observed using: ‘I think, I wonder, next time’

REFLECTION OF QUALITY TEACHING ROUNDS Overall, the QT Rounds have been a very rewarding experience. I have found I’ve definitely grown as a pre-service teacher and have felt that the rounds offer the PLC a great environment in which to discuss openly, honestly and without fear of judgment, the lessons we have taught and observed. The following elements caused some deep and at times some heated discussion, however we were able to usually come to a unanimous agreement after seeing all sides of the argument.

• Higher-Order Thinking o Our discussion centered around whether there was such as thing as low-level creativity. As

creation is quite high in Blooms Taxonomy, we all came to the conclusion that acting, performing and engaging in activities such as role-play, are all aspects of Higher-Order Thinking.

• Substantive Communication

o Our PLC had a deep discussion regarding if the information being presented in the lesson was being communicated effectively and on a sustained basis between teacher and students. Some argued that because they weren’t engaging in writing activities and that the whole interaction was a combination of smaller interactive activities that this in fact wasn’t an example of substantive communication. However, after much debate our PLC arrived at the notion that because all the activities and the communication occurring during these activities was heavily related to the substance of the lesson, it moved into the realms of students actively engaging with the content and not merely recounting their experience or knowledge of the content.

• Student Direction o Again our PLC had some issues determining the language of the element. The element

states: “to what extent do students exercise some direction over the selection of activities related to their learning and the means and manner by which these activities will be done?” Some members of my PLC felt that students did not get any choice of the activities as they had already been planned prior by the teacher. Others felt that because the students were choosing the roles they would play in their performance activity, and how they would react to each new ‘problem’, that they did indeed have some manipulation over the direction of the lesson. Taking all of these into consideration, our PLC eventually came to an agreed decision and were happy with the code we gave this particular element.