Questions that Reflective Partners Can Use to Stimulate Reflection

When reflective partners are comparing their lessons, they can ask each other questions such as the following:

1. Did the lesson proceed in the way you had planned it? Why?
2. Did your students react to the lesson in the way you thought they would?
3. What specific things did you do to help the students understand difficult parts of the lesson?
4. Did you do anything that confused the students or made it difficult for them to understand the lesson?
5. How did the students react to your lesson?
6. During the lesson, did you feel confident and enthusiastic? Why?
7. What did you do in the lesson to allow for individual differences in students’ learning styles or abilities?
8. Do you think your students learned all that you wanted them to learn in this lesson? What brings you to that conclusion?
9. What did you do in the lesson to make students feel that they had some control over what they were learning?
10. What did you do to encourage the students to participate actively in the lesson?
11. Did anything in this lesson reinforce or contradict your beliefs about teaching or learning?
12. What did you learn about teaching from this lesson?
13. What did you learn about student learning from this lesson?
14. What are the positive features of this class?
15. What problems need to be addressed in this class?
16. What social norms were reinforced by your lesson?
17. What was there in your lesson that reflects the hidden curriculum?
18. What targets (for improvement) have you set yourself for this class, and are they realistic?
19. If you were to teach the lesson again tomorrow, what would you do differently? Why?

Questions to Assist in Self-analysis of Teaching

The main reason for making an audio recording or video recording of your lesson is your lesson is to help you see how you appear to your students. By listening to the audiotape or viewing the videotape several times, you should be able to identify your major strengths as a teacher, and the aspects of your presentation that need to be improved. When reviewing your tape, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did I appear to be interested in what I was teaching?
2. Did I appear to be enthusiastic about what I was teaching?
3. Did I appear to be well organized?
4. Did the students know what I wanted them to learn and why?
5. Did I have any mannerisms that might annoy students?
6. Did I maintain eye contact with as many students as possible?
7. Were my verbal and non-verbal messages consistent?
8. Was my presentation fluent but well paced, with appropriate pauses and variations? Did I use inflections, volume, and emphasis to convey variations in meaning, or was my voice monotonous?
9. Did the students have to strain to hear me?
10. Was my voice friendly and pleasant?
11. What did I do to help the students understand the structure of the information I was presenting?
12. Did I vary my presentation to make it interesting?
13. Did I walk around unnecessarily or remain frozen in the one spot?
14. Could the students see clearly all the materials I used to visually support my presentation?
15. Was my teaching style authoritarian, democratic, or friendly? How did the students react to this style?
16. What sort of questions did the students ask me?
17. Which students participated most in the lesson? Why?
18. What can I do to improve the image that I project to my students?

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[H1]Should this be in???