I've been doing some teacher observations. Here's the most common problem areas I see:
1. The objective is not clear nor meaningful. As simple as this sounds this is the most common problem I see with lessons. The teacher is not crystal clear what concept or skill he/she is teaching. I saw a lesson recently where the objective was something like: "SWBAT (Student Will Be Able To) understand Andrew Carnegie." Obviously, this was a history lesson where the teacher spend the whole lesson in lecture or Q and A describing the key events of Andrew Carnegie's life where the goal seemed to be to just impart his own knowledge into the heads of his students. If the objective had been: "SWBAT apply the lessons Andrew Carnegie learned about supply/demand when growing businesses to the struggles that local businesses are having today;" then the lesson would look much different.
Questions to think about when coming up with your objective:
Is the objective clear and meaningful? Does it tie to state standards/benchmarks? Is it meaningful? Is it worded in a way where you can come up with a way to model the concept and assess mastery?
2. An overuse of the Q and A teaching technique. So many lessons I observe involve the teacher asking lots of questions of the students and then calling on one student at a time. This is probably better than lecturing for the whole hour, but if you were to really analyze the interactions of a typical Q and A lesson, it might involve something like 50 questions that the teacher poses where only a handful of students actually answer the questions. Assuming you had 25 student in the classroom, every time you ask a question and only call on one student, you can assume that 24 students either didn't know the answer or checked out mentally. Now maybe they didn't, but you almost have to make that assumption. Things to think about might be: How can I ask a question in a way where all students can respond (thumbs up/thumbs down, answering in unision, just this row, having them use mini white boards, etc...)? Perhaps I should be modeling more myself first before asking students. Perhaps I should have students modeling their thinking for each other rather than just doing Q and A. Perhaps I should try to move them into small groups or pairs as a way to gradually release opportunities for demonstrating mastery more quickly as well.
3. Lastly, the other most frequent problem I see is the total lack of differentiation that occurs in most lessons. This problem is related to the other problems already stated. If the objective isn't clear to begin with then it is hard to assess quickly who gets it and who doesn't. If the teacher is spending the whole lesson in large group Q and A, the teacher never really finds out which students need more help either. The key is to more quickly model the clear concept being taught, modeling it, and then finding out what students are getting it and which one's aren't so that 10 to 15 minutes into the lesson you can begin to differentiate - help those that need it more and let those that have achieved mastery move on to more challenging work.
1. The objective is not clear nor meaningful. As simple as this sounds this is the most common problem I see with lessons. The teacher is not crystal clear what concept or skill he/she is teaching. I saw a lesson recently where the objective was something like: "SWBAT (Student Will Be Able To) understand Andrew Carnegie." Obviously, this was a history lesson where the teacher spend the whole lesson in lecture or Q and A describing the key events of Andrew Carnegie's life where the goal seemed to be to just impart his own knowledge into the heads of his students. If the objective had been: "SWBAT apply the lessons Andrew Carnegie learned about supply/demand when growing businesses to the struggles that local businesses are having today;" then the lesson would look much different.
Questions to think about when coming up with your objective:
Is the objective clear and meaningful? Does it tie to state standards/benchmarks? Is it meaningful? Is it worded in a way where you can come up with a way to model the concept and assess mastery?
2. An overuse of the Q and A teaching technique. So many lessons I observe involve the teacher asking lots of questions of the students and then calling on one student at a time. This is probably better than lecturing for the whole hour, but if you were to really analyze the interactions of a typical Q and A lesson, it might involve something like 50 questions that the teacher poses where only a handful of students actually answer the questions. Assuming you had 25 student in the classroom, every time you ask a question and only call on one student, you can assume that 24 students either didn't know the answer or checked out mentally. Now maybe they didn't, but you almost have to make that assumption. Things to think about might be: How can I ask a question in a way where all students can respond (thumbs up/thumbs down, answering in unision, just this row, having them use mini white boards, etc...)? Perhaps I should be modeling more myself first before asking students. Perhaps I should have students modeling their thinking for each other rather than just doing Q and A. Perhaps I should try to move them into small groups or pairs as a way to gradually release opportunities for demonstrating mastery more quickly as well.
3. Lastly, the other most frequent problem I see is the total lack of differentiation that occurs in most lessons. This problem is related to the other problems already stated. If the objective isn't clear to begin with then it is hard to assess quickly who gets it and who doesn't. If the teacher is spending the whole lesson in large group Q and A, the teacher never really finds out which students need more help either. The key is to more quickly model the clear concept being taught, modeling it, and then finding out what students are getting it and which one's aren't so that 10 to 15 minutes into the lesson you can begin to differentiate - help those that need it more and let those that have achieved mastery move on to more challenging work.
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