Observation Tool: Questions and Student Voice
Are you supporting teachers around increasing or improving their questioning techniques, or incorporating a higher frequency of student talk, especially in hearing from all students? Below I’ll share a one-page observation tool to help you track questions and student responses by sketching a class seating chart.
When we observe teacher’s classrooms, especially in ongoing coaching partnerships, having a clear focus for the observation is crucial. This allows us to collect data that helps the teacher know exactly how they can grow, and allows you to track their growth over time. One of the ways that I’ve found helpful to give myself a clear focus in observing is to use an observation tool that structures what I’m looking for. (Check out my previous post on the Student Engagement Observation Tool.)
Typically, I print out the observation tool so that I draw all over it, but I’ve known others who use a tablet just as effectively. While I’m observing, I also keep a blank page in my notebook open for any important notes I want to capture that stray from the focus of the tool. Whether I’m observing in person or virtually, I begin by drawing a rough sketch of the seating chart. When observing from a video or virtual space, just know that you may not be able to see the entire seating chart, and that’s okay.
In this tool, you’ll sketch a quick layout of the classroom in the form of a seating chart. In contexts where you are familiar with students, begin by adding the students’ names to the seating chart sketch. Where you don’t know students’ names, add a note about each student’s perceived gender and race/ethnicity. (For example, you may use abbreviations B, G, or N for boy, girl, or gender neutral.) It is likely that we’ll make mistakes in this process, since we don’t know how the students’ identify themselves, but we can allow the teacher to correct us in the coaching conversation. Identifying the perceived gender and race/ethnicity of students allows you to have an open conversation with your teacher, based on concrete data, about which students they may be calling on more often, or asking predominantly lower or higher-order questions.
When we observe teacher’s classrooms, having a clear focus for the observation is crucial.
The Tool Explained
Here’s a quick overview of what’s on the observation tool for questioning and student voice:
A large box in the middle for drawing a seating chart and tracking questions & responses
Suggested coding for tracking on the seating chart:
H = high-order question asked to a student (I typically think of this as the top three tiers of Blooms, but you may have a different definition in your context)
L = lower-order question asked to a student (bottom three tiers of Blooms)
V = the student called on is a volunteer
C = the student was called on through cold calling
+ = after a student gives an initial response, the teachers asks a follow up question or pushes them to extend their answer
? = a question asked by a student
Feel free to adjust the coding or add your own, based on your context and what you are looking to capture
Under the seating chart box, there is space to capture a few sample teacher questions and student responses. If similar questions are being repeated, simply use a tally next to the question you’ve already captured instead of trying to record every single one. If you are focusing on the teacher’s questions, you may want to capture additional questions on the back of the observation tool.
The three lines at the bottom are for questions that require all students to form a response, if you hear this in the lesson. The strategies used to do this may be whiteboards, hold-ups, think-pair-share, quick writes, etc. Note what percent of students actually generate a response.
At the bottom, tally up the totals for each type of question and response pairing that you see in the seating chart after you’ve completed the observation.
Finally, after the observation is over, capture the percentage of the lesson where you heard student voice. I recommend keeping a rough agenda of the lesson while you are observing on a scrap piece of paper, or the back of the observation tool, and track each activity and who is doing the majority of the talking. This may be a rough estimation, but it is helpful for teachers to see (most often) that they are doing more talking than they’d like to be doing.
Practice Before You Go!
Whenever you are using something new in coaching, make sure to practice with it first, just like we ask teachers to practice with us right in our coaching meetings. I recommend doing a practice observation at your school or by using a recorded lesson. (The Massachusetts DESE, for example, has a freely available classroom video library helpful for this practice.)
Working with a partner or a small group of coaches helps calibrate what you and your team is looking for with the observation tool. Seeing what others see helps you notice what you tend to focus on or what you missed. For example, I did a calibration activity with this observation tool with a group of principals, and when we shared the seating charts that we captured from a video observation, one principal exclaimed that she had missed that there was an African American girl at the back of the class. She was the only African American girl in the class, she was never called on during the lesson and the camera almost never included her in the shot. Doing this activity together allowed us to uncover that inequity in student voice during the observed lesson.
Get your copy of the observation tool for questions and student voice in the free download below! I hope this tool supports your coaching practice as you support teachers in creating more equitable, rigorous, and engaging classrooms for all learners.