Observation in the classroom

Since classrooms are a mixture of several aspects, the one related to observation could not be forgotten, instead, it should be mentioned and explained spacially when talking about assessment. It is unavoidable to observe what happens inside of our classrooms and during our classes, due to the fact that they are never static or empty... on the contrary, we are always dealing with different ways of behaving, different strategies and with our own thoughts as well.
Observation is a useful tool that teachers use in order to analyze, understand and improve the practices and happennings inside the classrooms, it is fundamental at the moment of assessing the students, the groups, the activities and the plans made at the begginning.


Through observation teachers can assess what students have learnt, the students' learning strategies, the effectiveness of the teaching strategies and the materials that are being used, which is fundamental in the day-to-day practices; in this way according to what has been recorded decisions can be made and solutions match to the needs that have been identified.


In order to find observation useful and practical it should be organized with reference to specified language objectives, since in this way he attention is focused on the part of language learning that us relevant to and the instruction is organized according to the objectives. All these obtained inferences and observations help teachers to explain what happens inside their classes and to look for new ways of dealing with students, instructional plans and practices.


Finally, observations can be made through anecdotal records, checklists and rating scales, all these ways are different among each other, but in general what should be decided in all of the cases is the purpose of the observation, the kind of observation that will be used, the way in which the observation will be made and the information will be collected, which methods for record information will be implemented and finally the preparation of report forms in which the explanations are exposed.


I think observation is crucial in every classroom we enter... From it we can infer how students feel, theways they use to try to overcome their problems with the language, their thoughst and reactions towards the activities we take them and most of all we can get to know their personalities and the multiple intelligences we can help them explore and explode in our classes.