OBSERVATIONS
IN THE CLASSROOM
As a
teacher with little experience, I used to observe and make notes during the
classes but I did it without a clear purpose in mind. I never set the
objectives of my observation and I never stated the specific things I was going
to observe; maybe, I did it only when I had to observe in order to assess a
skill or to give a grade.
In my
case, I think I did it because I did not know about the benefits of observing
neither I knew the steps that I had to take into account before observing. Now,
having read chapter five, I have a clearer idea of what observing means and
involves.
Observations
in the classroom are very important and useful. They can be used to gather
information about language use, students’ likes and dislikes, the learning strategies
that they use, the effectiveness of teaching strategies and so on. Besides,
observation can be of great help for teachers if they want to improve their
teaching methods; and in the same way, they can be helpful if teachers want to follow
the sequence of the curriculum and to know the right time when they can go on
with a new topic or they need to reinforce what is being studied.
If
observation is going to take place in the classroom and in order for the
observation to be successful, teachers have to make some decisions before such
as: the reasons for carrying out the observation, what is going to be observed
and how to observe. The observation can be done to individual students or to groups,
during a single session or during several sessions, during prearranged activities
or during routine classroom activities.
In
order to do a classroom observation, we can use different types of recording
procedures, some of them are: anecdotal records, checklists and rating scales.
The first ones being the most informal, taking more time to do and being open
while the checklists and the rating scales take less time and effort to
complete and are close ended.
All
this aspects that observation in the classroom involves are of paramount
importance if we want to know more about our students, and if we want to
improve the teaching methods in order to create more successful learning
experiences for our students.
As you just said Juli, Observation is very importante. I think that we observe unconsiusly, and just when we have the oportunity to read about it we realize that we have been doing so since we started to teach. An important aspect to take into account here is the fact that observation without application in practice is nothing, and that is to what we must be open, to apply any change or strategy in our teaching practice in order to check if what we observe is true and this can be done through the recording procedures you mentioned before.
ResponderEliminarI agree with both of you, I think that when we observe we should do it with the intention of trace our progress and of our students on our teaching and their learning process. I was wondering, what would be the recording procedure you use when observing a class? Which one you find more useful?
ResponderEliminarI think that all of them are very useful. However i believe that a very useful one for me at this point, when i do not have much experience, would be the anecdotal records since they are easier to do. After some more time,with more experience in designing them, i would use checklists and rating scales.
EliminarEste comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
EliminarGirls, I think that when observing our classes we can prepare a checklist or rating scales, but I think that there's always going to be something that we were not expecting from our students and then we will have to make use of the anecdotal records. That's why I think that when observing, we should combine as many tools as we can handle to get the best of that observation.
EliminarThe use of these tools also depends a lot of the number of students we have in class; for example, in a large group it will be very hard to make anecdotal records.
Eliminar
I really like your entry. Observation should be carried out not only with the objective of assessing students effectively, but also to improve our teaching methods and techniques. If we improve the way we teach, we will enhance students’ learning process, and the results we will get at the end of a course will be more significant. It is important, of course, to establish the purpose or objectives of our observation to do a better job.
ResponderEliminar