6 Ways to Easily Ace Your Teacher Performance Assessment

Read here for tips on your next teacher performance assessment

Your teacher performance assessment (AKA “observation”) can feel dreadful. Maybe it’s planned, and maybe you know there is one more left. Either way, a shift in mindset will get you to understand how to showcase your strengths to your administrator. Although teacher observations can be very stressful, these”no fail” tips will help you to impress your administrators and score high.

Read here for tips on your next teacher performance assessment

Anticipatory Sets at the Ready for Your Teacher Performance Assessment

One of the most basic (and some might say crucial) parts of a lesson is the opening. Think about it. You’ve been to many workshops and have taken many, many classes. When the instructor can grab you from the beginning, you are usually “in”. If they don’t, you’re “out”.

I once had a principal show a video of a science teacher literally lighting something on fire to capture his students’ attention at the beginning of the class. I honestly don’t remember what he was setting on fire, but the point was, he got his kids’ attention.

My principal then went on to ask, “How can you figuratively set your class on fire as soon as they walk in your door?”. It was honestly a great discussion and some great ideas came from it. It is something that I ALWAYS keep in mind in my teaching, especially during my teacher observation.

It’s important to have this in place for many reasons. First, it’s good teaching. However, we all know that there are days when you just need to get right into your lesson or there are “odds and ends” that need to be addressed. Some days just don’t lend themselves to the “perfect” lesson. So if an observer pops in, you need to have something on hand so that you can score well on your teacher observation.

Help with anticipatory sets

So, be sure your kids are used to you handing out a quick response sheet or posting something on Google Classroom™ (I like using the “Questions” feature; read here for more tips). I have a bunch of “generic” class openers for both language arts and social studies. Grab yours for free. This way, if someone pops in, all you have to do is copy and paste and post, or write it on the board and let kids go.

Free language arts anticipatory prompts

F ree social studies anticipatory prompts

Score High with LESS Teaching

The biggest mistake I see new teachers making during their teacher performance assessment is teaching too much. Yes, you read that correctly. Of course, you have to lead the class, get them ready, and give them some direct instruction. However, the majority of the time should be spent with students doing the work/activities that you provide and being engaged.

My philosophy in the classroom has always centered around doing “mini-lessons”. Even though that is a term we hear more in reading/writing workshops, it can be applied to any teaching environment. As I also teach social studies, I depend on this concept. Kids zone out if your teaching is too long-winded.

So, keep your lessons quick, snappy, and engaging. Do your thing in about 15 minutes. Then send kids off to work. And by work, I don’t mean sitting silently at their desks completing a worksheet. I mean get them into groups or working with a partner on higher-level activities. Rotate around and engage with your groups. This type of engagement will help you to score high.

Centers for your Teacher Performance Assessment Lesson

If you want to showcase your lessons in the best possible way, use centers. This has been a staple of my social studies classroom, and I incorporate this into language arts whenever possible.

Here are some ideas that have worked well for me and helped me to score high on observations:

Teaching the Constitution: Do a mini-lesson. Perhaps you will pull up a slideshow and go through some of the Amendments. Then, kids can go into centers. Ideas: Do a scavenger hunt, illustrate what life could look like without that specific Amendment, and rank a handful of Amendments in order of importance (their opinion) and why.

Character Study: Do a mini-lesson on character traits. Then, have kids work on centers that can include finding text evidence, creating a sensory character, creating a bio poem for a character, and doing a side-by-side comparison of the character vs. themselves. Be sure to check out my full line of reading centers.

When it comes to teacher observation, centers are the way to go!

Causes of the Revolution: Again, the mini-lesson comes first. Go over your lesson quickly. Then, kids can work in teams on activities such as ranking the causes as to what they think were the worst, reading a primary source on the Tea Act, and examining a piece of art history. And hey, I have centers for this very topic and others. Click here to check out all of my social studies centers for middle school.

Use that Clipboard during your Teacher Performance Assessment

Create a template that has your students’ names in a column and blank rows on top to write in skills. And use it often. Again, there are times when we don’t always do this, but if you are having a teacher performance assessment and want to score high, it’s helpful to have a clipboard that shows you are recording notes on your kids. So make your list. If you get a surprise “pop-in”, you will have it all set and ready to go.

This happened to me one time during a teacher observation. I was finishing up a mini-lesson and getting kids ready to go off to write. I had my clipboard (which I use frequently but admittedly not always). The skill that day was to use text evidence. I walked around to kids and checked in with them, having a genuine conversation, and then wrote a very brief note about the kids with whom I met. My administrator specifically commented on how that was a great technique and asked what I did with the data. I told him I used it to form small groups if needed and to look for trends in specific students’ writing (all true).

Clipboards work with any subject

This is also easy to do for social studies. When I do a “lecture”, I keep it brief and then send kids off to work on various activities. So if they are, say, working on an activity where they have to rank the Acts that led to the Constitution, I might write “Acts” as the skill on my clipboard list. In talking to kids, I can immediately see which students have low comprehension and bring them to work with me in a small group.

There are also times when kids are working on research in social studies and the skill might be more of a common core skill, such as using citations. This method can really work for anything that you are teaching that day.

High-Level Questioning List on Hand

One aspect of a teacher performance assessment that is very important to my administrator (and I’m guessing to yours as well) is using high-level questioning. I keep a Bloom’s Taxonomy list on my magnetic board next to my desk to be sure it’s handy. If I’m doing whole-group direct instruction, it’s right there for me. If I’m walking around, I put one on my clipboard. This way, I have an easy reference to be sure I’m not asking all recall questions.

Although I have most of this stored in my memory right now, having my list close by is sort of like a “safety net”. Using high-level questioning will help you to score high on your observation.

If you’d like a freebie with an organized list of questi o ns, click here.

Grab your free copy!

Wrap It Up to Score High

If you don’t close out your lesson, you are not going to score as high as you should. We all know this is important, and we all know there are days that we don’t do this with intention. If you are getting observed, you need to do this.

When closing out a lesson, be sure to:

Re-state your teaching goal, or ask a student to re-state it
Let students know what the “next steps” are (i.e. what you are doing in class tomorrow, what homework they should finish, etc.)
Have some sort of exit strategy, like an exit ticket, a Google Question to answer, or some type of sharing from the day’s activity

Note on exit tickets: Your kids should be exposed to these so that it doesn’t seem unusual. I usually just have index cards on my desk so that I can assign an exit question “on the fly”, or post something on Google Questions™.

Not enough time to read? Try the Podcast!

I recently started a Podcast for middle school language arts teachers. Check it out!

Listen here!

If you are feeling overwhelmed and need more help, I offer one-to-one coaching for teacher observations and lessons. Contact me if you are interested.

Need more help? Contact me.

If you have any further suggestions or have specific questions, please be sure to comment below.

Wishing you all the best on your next observation!

-Linda A. “All in One Middle School“