Before reading chapter 5 of Brown’s book I used
to focus my classroom observations on analyzing the extent to which my students
had attained specific learning objectives. For me it was a matter of paying
attention to who of them had and had not completed a task successfully, or had
learned something with ease or difficulty.
Now that I have read about the topic I have
come to realize that observations are excellent tools for assessing not only
what my students have and have not learned, but also my own teaching
strategies.
Brown suggests that in order for observations
to be effective and reliable they must have a specific objective, be recorded
and kept in an organized way, and occur frequently. I remember that in many of
the occasions in which I attempted to record my observations I was not even
close to do any of those things. First
of all, I did not have clear objectives. The second mistake was that I just
used to take random notes which I almost never used again because they didn´t
make any sense, maybe the reason for that was that my observations lacked coherence and details such as the what,
why, when and who. On top of that, I wasn´t very consistent so at the end I
stopped doing them (oops, I failed! L ).
Well, the good thing is that now I have a
clearer idea of what classroom observations are, how useful they are for
improving our students learning and our teaching practices, and also of the
things I have to take into account for making them effective and reliable ways
of assessment. What was your experience?, has it happened the same to you?
