Observation in the Classroom

Every day our classroom environments include big experiences when we start a lesson. Sometimes what students expect in the English class changes; sometimes it grows or sometimes it reduces in certain way, and because of that we have to deal with different attitudes, reactions, thoughts and feelings in the day-to-day classroom practice. It can be said that observation is an important part in the everyday teaching and learning process.  As teachers, we always try to observe what our students do, how they react towards certain topics, how they use the material provided, how they interact during the group work, etc.  Also, it is important to say that Teachers assess what students have and have not learned, they assess the effectiveness of particular teaching strategies, they determine which materials and activities students enjoy.

 Class observation is necessary in the teaching-learning process  due to the fact that “it provides a basis to know and understand what is happening in the classroom and is a guide to know what should follow, it is important for planning instruction of a unit, lesson, or course in the future.” (Genesee and Upshur).  Classroom Teachers, unlike many other people, are engaged not only in teaching and classroom management but also in trying to observe and make sense of their students’ learning process and what it encompasses.  Classroom observation should be concerned primarily with those language skills and language objectives.  It is important to identify the aim of our observations, some of the reasons for doing so are: a) To determine whether students are progressing as planned and are ready to move to the next unit, b) To identify difficulties that particular students are having so that appropriate instruction can be planned for them, c) To assess the appropriateness and usefulness of a textbook, among others.

One to the many tasks that a teacher needs to do is deciding how to record the observations of their students in the learning process and in the classroom.  Like information collection itself is an ongoing process, some record techniques are necessary for the information to be useful such as a) Anecdotal Records, which is a good way to record observations about instruction and students all times of the day, even during recess or lunch time; those anecdotal records can be made on file cards, adhesive labels or clipboards with note paper, etc; and b) checklists and rating scales,  which are relatively structured formats  or lists of items that describe specific aspects of learning and teaching with predesignated categories for recording observations.

To sum up, classroom observation is important to all forms of evaluation and is part of the everyday routine of a teacher.  What is really challenging is to plan a relevant and useful  observation and recording keeping to benefit  the instruction process and the student learning process.