WRT 670 – Teaching Practicum
Fall 1999
Class Visit Questions
The following questions are intended to serve as guidelines to class visitors, focusing attention on a range of classroom activities and effects. These questions are intended to be neither inclusive nor exclusive; you should certainly remark on whatever aspects of pedagogy that you find significant. But they are intended to provide a common core of observational techniques to be shared by 670 members visiting each others' classes.
Before you visit, be sure to have a preliminary talk--in person, on the phone, or on line--with the person whose class or conference you're visiting, so you know what her objectives are for the class session or conference.
After you've visited, write up your reflections. Give a copy to your 670 group leader and a copy to the person whom you've visited.
1. BEFORE visiting the class, talk with the instructor. What are his/her goals for the class, and what does s/he want you to focus on as you observe it?
2. Provide a brief chronology of the class session--what happened today?
3. To what extent are the instructor's identified goals being met? What additionally or alternatively do the students seem to be learning?
4. How would you characterize the teaching philosophy that might underlie today's class session?
5. What immediate or potential problems do you see that the instructor might want to address?
6. What successes or assets do you observe on which the instructor might build?
7. What do you see here that you might replicate in your own teaching?
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