Observations in a nutshell

For most of us, autumn is the season of unfiltered Instagram-worthy photos, Halloween lesson plans and decorations. As I am writing this, my social media feed is overflowing with witches and imps, ghosts and ghouls and skeletons of different shapes and sizes.

However tempting, writing about the ‘top 10 Halloween activities your students are going to love’ will have to wait another year, as I am gearing up for two weeks of observations as part of an in-house professional development programme.

This is certainly not the first time I have observed teachers, but it is the first time I have returned to this particular school in the ‘official’ capacity of observer. I am now in the interesting position of having to observe former colleagues, recent trainees and people I have not yet met. And although I can preach that observations are not a ‘test’ but an opportunity to learn and develop, nerves and ‘observation-fright’ are real and something to be taken very seriously. 

So, in preparation for those couple of hours you’ll be spending with an extra body in the classroom, madly typing in the corner, here is a review of the basic and advanced points I’ll be on the lookout for this season.

The basics

Classroom management is all about  managing three things: instructions, monitoring and feedback. Mastering these three skills allows us to facilitate and manage learning in the classroom.

Classroom learning is fostered through a sequence of tasks. But even the most thought-out and clever tasks can fall flat if the instructions are not clear.

Instructions should be simple - but this quality can be quantified in different ways. Simple instructions are:

• short, usually consisting of an imperative followed by please; if a task requires a longer sequence of instructions, it is often useful to break down the task into sub-stages (i.e. students receive instructions for and do the task in parts rather than receiving all the instructions ‘in bulk’ at the beginning) - this helps reduce the cognitive load and lessens the strain on working memory as students only have to remember a shorter sequence of instructions.
• linguistically accessible, meaning that the language used to convey them is simple enough for even the weakest students to be able to understand them.
• logical, meaning that students should be able to work out the outcome of the task and the process associated with it easily.

Next, instructions should be checked. Often, teachers complain that asking ICQs (instruction-checking questions) can be perceived as patronising and ‘asking after the obvious’. They are right - but that only means that they are using ICQs wrong. 

We should not focus our ICQs on the obvious part of the instructions (e.g. Are we speaking? when the task is clearly a spoken one), but rather we should be checking the bit that might cause problems (e.g. double-checking that students take notes of their partners’ answers in a spoken interaction if this is needed for an upcoming task).

The easiest way of checking an instruction is by demoing the task. I find it helpful to project the task on the board and invite the class to ‘do the first one together’ or demonstrate the spoken interaction with a more confident student. Different tasks will require different ways of checking instructions, but the aim is to be swift and effective.

The second aspect of classroom management that is worth being more aware of is monitoring. Here, I distinguish between three types of monitoring:

1. Unobtrusive monitoring, which is characterised by discreetly making notes on  who has interesting / correct answers and planning your upcoming feedback stage (who to nominate, what areas need to be further checked and how to do it).
2. Active monitoring or ‘getting your hands dirty’: this means prompting students when they are struggling and making a note of what they struggled with so you can clarify it in the upcoming feedback stage;  adapting the task according to the needs of the learners (e.g. dealing with early finishers; scaffolding tasks for less confident students etc); pen and paper in hand, making notes on the students’ language output or helping them with their emergent language, as necessary.
3. Inconspicuous monitoring, by choosing a spot where you are likely to cause the least disruption (usually while students are doing a listening or reading task).

Effective monitoring is inextricably linked to effective feedback, for nothing that the students say during feedback should come as a surprise for us. The more information we collect during monitoring, the easier it will be to provide helpful and effective feedback. In effect, monitoring is the teacher’s ‘cheat sheet’ - it prepares us to deal swiftly and effectively with problems during the feedback stage.

Last, but not least, every task we set is followed by feedback. First, we want to give students feedback on the content of the task - on their ideas, performance, efforts etc. During content-based feedback  is when genuine communication takes place as students share ideas, agree, disagree and ask for clarification. In simpler terms, there is a lot of speaking that can take place in this stage and that means more language that we can help our students with.

Sandwiched between content-based feedback and the next task is the language-focused feedback, which I like to call reactive language feedback. If all has gone according to plan, the students will have produced quite a lot of language that can corrected (the go-to type of language feedback that every self-respecting English teacher excels at), expanded and naturalised (e.g. alternatives found, linguistic options explored, interesting teaching opportunities exploited). 

This is the stage that often ends a lesson, but I’d argue that it is best used when followed by another communicative task, where students can apply the newly acquired information. There is much debate on the usefulness of reactive language feedback - that is why I advocate for a shorter feedback slot followed by more opportunities to practice. 

Advanced points

A truly communicative lesson must make the difference between the topic of the lesson and the context of the lesson. 

Topics are ideas, unit titles, areas of interest, e.g. sports, fashion, technology, leisure activities. 

The context is these ideas translated into real-life (probable) tasks that students might engage in, e.g. agreeing on a sports event to go to with the class; deciding on the best / worst dressed celebrities at the Met Gala; making a sales pitch for the latest smartphone model; suggesting hobbies to a friend. 

An interesting, engaging context will make for a meaningful, purposeful lesson and will help us decide what tasks and language should take up more time, effort and practice. Once we work out what the context of our lesson is, we can plan ‘from the end’ and build a sequence of stages that will ensure a communicative outcome to the lesson.

Observations - in a nutshell

Naturally, there are many other factors that can determine the success of a lesson. However, I find that the more we narrow our focus to but a few, the more successful we will be in identifying an area truly worth exploring and improving. 

Imagine, if you will, your lesson as a nutshell - you can’t really fit that many things in there. A simple, checked instruction, some active monitoring, maybe some more helpful and reactive feedback and a context that is interesting to your students.

That’s it.

That’s all you need.

Good luck!