Observing staff in practice

[Guest]

Hi there,

I have been advised that I need to observe my staff in practice (for supervision).

We are only a really small setting and I find it really hard but I have been told that it could be the reason for not attaining outstanding.

Does anyone have a template that they could share, along the lines of what I should be looking for whilst I observe?

 

I would be really grateful for any advice or help.

Thank you in advance

Lucy :mellow:

 

 

[Panders]

supervision record template forum.doc

ECAT Observation of Practitioner Skills.docx

 

Hi Lucyellen,

 

Having been doing Supervisions for a little while now, I don't always stick to a format to observe - rather I choose an area to observe, i.e. how staff welcome parents and children, or how they settle children in, how they engage with children and write it in narrative form. Ofsted will also like you to do a joint observation of something in the group you think your group does particularly well, so getting plenty of observing practice in is good. What I found difficult was watching the adult, not the child because we had done that for soooo long, and then when I did a joint observation with Ofsted Inspector, rather than looking for positives she was looking for negatives and asked me about those and how I would feed back to the practitioner. I like to focus on positives, and then perhaps give one negative about trying to improve that for the future.

 

I will pop on an ECAT form which I found helpful in the early days.

 

After the observation we then complete another form which records our conversation. Obviously bearing in mind that supervisions orginally came about from a safeguarding perspective, giving staff a chance to talk to manager frequently about issues with other members of staff etc., which perhaps they hadn't felt they could do before, you will see the form is geared towards safeguarding.

 

 

 

[Helen]

Have you come across our article here?

[hopeytg]

I recently did a Joint Observation for an Inspection and agree it was hard to observe the staff member and not the child - I will definitely be doing more staff observations for Supervisions in the future but Ofsted wanted to see that I had identified 'areas for development' which I did

[BroadOaks]

We call them peer obs but yes basically the same thing and they can be very useful. You shouldn't feel bad for doing these because it is supporting your staff to improve and thus the children benefit even more. So it should be a positive experience and the staff member being observed should want all the support possible if they want the best for their key children or all children in their care.

 

Let's keep things positive and all will be great ::1a

[BroadOaks]

 

Ofsted wanted to see that I had identified 'areas for development' which I did.

 

Although our peer observations are great to help in Supervisions, a great way to identify 'areas for development' was to use analytic data for the overall Assessment information. We use Tapestry and have been using now for around 8 months and have many Assessments for our children, all now saved. You can see an overview (a pie chart) as below spoiler:

 

 

 

 

You can then identify the areas to improve overall. This an also be done for individual, or groups (any set groups, ie keypersons children) and data shown in charts. This can then identify areas of learning that might be lacking, or not accurate enough.

 

We find it extremely useful.

 

 

[Guest]

Thank you everybody, that is really helpful. Phew xxx

[Foreveryoung]

I've done peer obs for over a year and have a new format now, where I make little notes, mark a grade from what I see in that moment and then this gives me an overall teacher grade. I make points in where to improve and what was positive then staff member makes a comment too.

 

Each staff member grade goes into a table and names removed. This becomes my 'teacher on a page' review in where I see overall level of quality of teaching.

I have different aims such as ESCAL, ECAT, general practice.

These are then reflected on in 1:1's.

 

Staff who show outstanding practice in an area are offered the chance to support others and use their brilliant practice to further others x

[Guest]

Would anyone have a template for peer to peer observations please?