Introduction: Why visit lessons?
Visiting lessons is a useful activity in the toolkit of quality assurance. It provides first-hand evidence about the quality of teaching and learning in that classroom. It can also give useful insights into school-wide policies and approaches. Seeing students in lessons can tell us something about their behaviour and attitudes to learning.
While visiting lessons can give useful insights into elements of teaching, learning assessment and so on, it has its limitations. To get the most useful information from a lesson visit, it is important to understand these limitations and to apply the right principles to interpreting what you observe.
What you can get from lesson visits … and what you can’t
1. Effective use of pedagogical strategies.
Our brilliant basics and our codified approach to student engagement are key to teacher effectiveness. Visiting lessons is a helpful way to gauge a teacher’s and the students’ understanding of these. Is the teacher using these strategies? Are they being used appropriately? What does this show about the teacher’s understanding?
However, there is a note of caution. What you see during a lesson visit may or may not be what typically happens. People can get nervous when they have a visitor to their lesson. They may not
perform as well as they usually do. Conversely, what you observe may be the gold standard, but that does not necessarily mean that this is what happens every day.
Crucially, it is important to interpret what you see and not extrapolate beyond this. However, it may be possible to identify typicality in ways beyond just what the teacher is saying or doing. For example, if the teacher is using STAR listening but students’ do not know what the instructions mean, it suggests that the techniques are not being used consistently.
2. Information about the curriculum
Lesson visits can be used to test out the quality of intent and the implementation of our curriculum. To a lesser extent, it may also be possible to see evidence of impact (or lack thereof).
When evaluating the curriculum intent through lesson visits, it is a bit like going to the middle of a box set. A good writer ensures that the previous
plot allows the current scenes to be understood and the current scenes are planned to prepare the viewer for what is to come. Just like when we watch a boxset, we can look backwards and forwards in our curriculum during a lesson visit.
To make sense of the plot (or the current curriculum content) we need to understand
what has gone before. We should be constantly thinking backwards – what did pupils need to have learned in order to successfully access today’s learning, and have they learned it? We are also looking forwards – is what pupils are learning now creating ‘readiness’ for future learning?
We are asking ourselves if the curriculum has set out knowledge in the right sequence for students to learn it cumulatively (curriculum intent).
We are then identifying if it has been taught in ways that ensure the essentials are committed to long-term memory (curriculum implementation).
Again, we need to exercise caution with this –we know that observers looking at snapshots
are not always the best judges of teaching activity choices. We also know that even the best teachers often make poor activity choices. We need to triangulate with other information to determine whether the curriculum is being taught well.
Finally, we can consider impact. Again, it’s about the box-set. What has gone before and what comes next. Has the lesson been made possible by what pupils already know?
Does the work demonstrate that pupils have learned key components that were taught previously?
3. Information about students’ behaviour and attitudes
It may seem obvious that you can see how pupils behave in class by visiting lessons, and to a large extent you can. It is possible to spot whether students are responding to the teacher’s instructions for STAR listening, for example. It is also obvious if any pupil is disrupting the lesson. However, think ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’. Just as with adults, students may behave differently when there is a visitor in a classroom. The presence of a senior leader, for example, may lead to unusually positive behaviour. Or, a student might react adversely to the presence of someone they don’t know. Again, look for signs of typicality. Also, note how the teacher reacts to low-level disruption. Is
it tolerated? Does the teacher follow the school’s code correctly? Does the teacher’s actions prevent the behaviour continuing or escalating.
It is also possible to get insights into students’ attitudes to learning by watching how they engage in the different parts of a lesson. STAR listening speaks for itself. Beyond that, notice how quickly students get down to work when set an independent task. How silently do they work in Silent Solo? How productively do they work in the time allocated? What care do they take to present their work? Etc.
Our guiding principleseffective use of lesson visits
Be clear about the purpose of the visit:
Having a clear purpose when visiting a lesson in school is crucial for providing meaningful feedback and promoting targeted professional development. To get the best out of time spent in lessons, the visit needs to be focused, efficient and beneficial to all.
Clear objectives for observation help streamline the process and make the best use of everyone’s
Style and culture of the visit:
Visiting lessons is a privilege and should not be taken for granted. The observer is a guest in the teacher’s professional environment. Always enter a classroom with a curious mindset. Genuinely listen to the conversation that happens with the teacher.
At WAT, we use ‘spotlight tours’ for leaders to identify areas of success in lessons and wider-
Feedforward from the visit:
The ‘Grow’ should be the highest-leverage action that will move learning forward. It should be precisely worded so that the teacher knows exactly what they need to do. It should be given speedily and with humility and integrity.
time. Observers can focus on what matters most, and teachers can receive feedback that directly contributes to their professional development.
As part of the quality improvement cycle, teachers are more likely to embrace feedback and make positive changes when they understand the specific areas that require attention and improvement.
school life. We use the Brilliant Basics, the codified approach to student engagement and the teacher effectiveness strategies as our conception of quality. In our visits, we identify a ‘Glow’ (something that the teacher is doing well) and a ‘Grow’ (the teacher’s next small step for improvement)
See appendix a) sentence stems for giving feedforward in a radically candid manner.
Sentence Stem
I liked what I saw when…? It made me wonder…?
Useful for… Lethal Mutation
If I had been in your shoes, I might have…?
When you did ‘X’, what did you notice ….?
Tell me about your rationale for …?
How did it feel when you …?