Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences
Elementary Education Program
Pre-Observation Form
Directions: This form is to be completed prior to every lesson that will be observed by the mentor
teacher or university supervisor. It is to be submitted no later than 3 business days prior to the actual
observation along with your lesson plans.
Name: Kelsi Harris Date: 11/14/17
1. What is the topic of your lesson?
The topic of my lesson is diversity within our classroom and building classroom
community.
2. Why are you teaching this lesson? What is your rationale for teaching it?
I am teaching this lesson to introduce the idea of diversity to students.
Additionally, I aim to show the value of diversity, specifically of those that
compose our classroom community. Our classroom is built up of a diverse
population of students in many different ways, and sometimes they do not know
how to interact with each other when a student thinks or says something that is
different than the way that they think, I am hoping that this lesson starts to help
students be able to deal more effectively and intentionally with issues of diversity.
3. What is your Teaching Behavior Focus? Why did you choose this?
My teaching behavior focus is paraphrasing students verbal content. I chose this
because, in this lesson, students will be invited to express sensitive or difficult to
articulate thoughts and feelings- it will be important to not only document
students articulations accurately, but also give other students better access to
the thoughts being expressed through multiple chances to hear and understand
the sentiments of their peers.
4. Why did you design your instruction in this lesson the way that you did? Why did
you choose this way of teaching the lesson (e.g., Was the idea from a methods
course? From your mentor teacher? Another source?)
I chose to design this way of teaching the lesson because of the way I saw
engineering lessons engage students with a novel first- and the power of read
aloud texts from my english class. Also, my cooperating teacher often has class
discussions pertaining to content she is introducing so the format of this lesson
will be familiar to our students. Finally, the students in my class love art and
being creative so I thought it would be engaging to add a component of
expressing themselves through drawing.
5. As you are thinking through this lesson, what do you believe will be the most
challenging part of this lesson for you when you teach it? Why?
I think that the most challenging part of this lesson for me to teach will be to help
students see the value in their diversity and how diversity will be important for
them to understand and relate with in the future. Because this is such a concept
that will challenge students to think critically about the value of diversity in their
classroom currently and how that skill will help them in their future, which I think
will be a difficult thing for students to conceptualize.
6. How will you know if your learning outcomes for the students are met
successfully?
I will know if my learning outcomes are met by the final discussion we have about
the topics covered in the lesson. During this conversation, my partner and I will
ask questions about why diversity is important, how our classroom is diverse,
and what they have gained new ideas about.
7. How will your classroom management support the learning outcomes?
Setting rules at the beginning for the discussions that will occur during the class
will be important because this will allow for students to speak candidly without
being interrupted- helping them to remain confident in their ideas. Additionally,
allowing students to have wait time in my discussion so that they can fully flesh
out their ideas (to a certain extent) in their head before answering for more
thorough ideas to be presented.
8. List 1-3 areas which you would like for your observer to pay particular attention.
Why do you want your observer to focus on these areas?
I would like my observer to pay particular attention to
a. How I pose questions
b. My paraphrasing skills
c. Classroom Management
9. Is there anything else you would like your observer to know before the
observation?
I get very nervous with keeping kids in check- something I am working on, that is
to say, classroom management is not a natural strong suit for me, so I will be
paying careful attention to how I deal with frustration and with control of the
lesson.
