Evidence: Lesson Observation and Mentor Comments

The artefacts provided as evidence are the observation sheet that I used during my placement and the comments from my mentor after I took a similar lesson style. This observation sheet was a great tool as it allowed me to take in a lot of the information that my mentor was talking about when speaking to the students and enabled me to use some of the strategies that he used when I was able to teach the class.

This observation shows the mentor verbally and non-verbally interacting with the students at the beginning of the lesson to gain the students attention prior to starting the explicit teaching of the lesson and links to the focus area 3.5 of the AITSL teaching standards (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited, 2018). This is one of the strategies that the mentor used for every single lesson that I observed him doing. The students within the classroom understood the expectations of the mentor when he was about to begin the lesson. Developing different strategies while working in the classroom allows for changes in the pedagogical approach educators take to ensure that each students needs are taken into consideration for a meaningful lesson to take place (Howell , 2014 , p. 12).

In addition, I was able to communicate with the students by incorporating similar strategies when I taught the class. I used ‘eyes on me’ with the students repeating ‘eyes on you’. This allowed for full attention of the students on myself prior to starting any discussion. I was commended by my mentor verbally that this was a great strategy when working with grade two students and obtaining their attention. However, as per mentor comments attached this is an area that I still need to work on as not all students were facing the front. It was a difficult time during my placement in the classroom as the students were very spread out due to social distancing regulation with Covid-19. We wanted to ensure that the students didn’t feel like they were being yelled out.