CTESS ebook

Lines of Evidence (Administrator Responsibility)

Classroom Observation (IPOP) A key component included in the IQR is classroom observation. Canyons School District developed the Instructional Priorities Observation Protocol (IPOP) to provide performance feedback to teachers. The IPOP is a universal classroom observation tool that captures a broad array of key practices identified by research that significantly improve student learning. The IPOP provides teachers with actionable feedback on key indicators of quality instruction that increase the probability of student learning. It is the expectation in Canyons School District that quality instruction occurs every single day in every single class. With this premise, a formal IPOP observation can occur at any time. Formal IPOP observations are not scheduled or announced. The administrator can complete an IPOP at any time, including the beginning, middle, or end-of class instruction. • T here may be occasions in which an administrator enters a teacher’s classroom to conduct a formal IPOP at an inopportune time for the teacher. The teacher may request to postpone the formal IPOP observation for that day (only once per CTESS cycle). • Student learning that may not be suited for observation using the IPOP include: Socratic seminars, student-directed inquiry labs, testing, and instructional video clips. The administrator may discontinue the observation. • If an emergency, such as a fire drill or a serious behavior management issue arises during an IPOP, the observation should be discontinued and redone at another time. Administrators are the only individuals who can conduct formal IPOPs for evaluation purposes. Only formal IPOPs are used for the Instructional Quality Rating (IQR). Administrators and Achievement Coaches can conduct informal IPOPs at any time to provide feedback on instruction. IPOP Behavior Coding • This section of the IPOP is a timed, direct observation of both teacher and student behaviors during classroom instruction. Formal IPOP observations are 20 minutes in length. • The teacher and student behaviors that are coded are directly observable, well-defined, and require minimal inference on the part of the observer. • During the observation, the observer will likely need to move about the classroom in order to view, hear, and accurately record student and teacher behaviors. • Student behaviors are recorded in 20- second intervals; a different student’s behavior is coded every 20 seconds in order to obtain a representative sample of typical student behavior in the classroom. This results in the number of intervals in which a particular student behavior occurred during the observation. • Teacher behaviors are recorded as they occur in real time, resulting in a number of instances that the specific teacher behavior occurred during the observation. • To ensure fairness and consistency across observations, interval and frequency counts of student and teacher behaviors are converted to rates per hour. Focus of IPOP Observations IPOPs are focused on directly observable teacher and student behaviors and the quality of instructional strategies.

IPOP Instructional Quality •

These IPOP items include instructional strategies that an observer rates using rubrics. They include adherence to core standards, quality of engagement strategies, classroom management strategies, and

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