Teaching Tips: Active Observation

Posted on by J.J. Hamilton

If there’s one thing that teachers like to do, it’s becoming better teachers. At my school, we live by Dylan Wiliam’s mantra:

“Every teacher needs to improve, not because they’re not good enough, but because they can be even better.”

My school has followed that saying since before I started there five years ago. And every week, term, and year, we’ve had a great push on various bits of continuous professional development. It might be called CPD or CPL at your school, and it’s likely to look very similar, but with a different focus depending on your priorities. Chances are high that you’ll get time carved out, most weeks, to focus on improving yourself and each other in one – or a few – key areas.

We’ve been using some brilliant research-informed approaches recently, and I’ve been even more invested since starting to study an NPQ in Leading Teacher Development alongside my full-time job. Rather than dissecting everything that I’ve learned so far, I’d like to focus on one technique that my school has pushed recently, which I think is really helping to embolden our Teaching and Learning: Active Observation.

I’m going to give you a rundown of what Active Observation is, how to do it, and why you should add it to your arsenal.

If you’re more interested in the digital side of things, check out these posts first:

What is Active Observation?

At its core, Active Observation is the antithesis to The Lazy Teacher method. Every single moment in the classroom is an opportunity to investigate what the students know and to make note of what they don’t, to give you the opportunity to quickly feedback and plug any learning gaps.

What makes Active Observation work is rooted in our understanding of cognitive load theory. We all know that you can’t teach students everything in one go; it’s impossible. Even if I had two solid weeks of just History lessons with my year 11 group, I doubt that they’d be able to remember very much, because they wouldn’t have spent time practicing spaced repetition to recall content over time.

So, surely, it makes sense that teachers should also reduce their own cognitive load. We all know that brains are made for creating new ideas – not for storing them (that’s the whole reason that we have Second Brains), so why is it that we’re trying so desperately hard to store everything in our heads? When I’m circulating the classroom, doesn’t it make more sense to quickly jot down the misconceptions that my students are making, rather than trying to remember who got things right, how many, and what the key, common, mistakes were?

When you word it like that, the answer is clear: yes. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

How to Actively Observe

If you want to be a good Active Observer, you’ll need three things:

  1. A clipboard or tablet
  2. Print-outs or screenshots of your resources
  3. Pre-completed copies of those resources and a pen or stylus.

When we’re getting students to complete work, we need to know the right answers, right? If not, we’d be firing in the dark and unable to offer feedback securely, preventing our learners from making progress.

So, instead of storing the correct ideas in your head, make a completed Teacher Copy and keep it close at hand. You should also jot down any misconceptions students are likely to encounter (you’ll know this because you are the expert in the room and, hopefully, will have taught this before. If not, you’ll just need to add a little extra planning to your to-do list). All in all, I’d say that the time for this lesson prep will be somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes, depending on the content being taught.

Then, when circulating, have your resources on either a handout (my school provides clipboards, which the students find completely unobtrusive) or your tablet. Scribble down the initials of any students who have gone wrong or struggled with an answer which, if you’ve anticipated the misconceptions well, may fit into your pre-planned follow-up hinge questions. Make a tally of students who have done well (i.e., 13 people got question 1 correct) and also the initials of students whose answers you wish to share. That way, during feedback, you’ll have hunted for answers, rather than blindly fished, and will be able to give all students a clear indication of what was right or wrong, as well as being able to easily address misconceptions.

Why should I Actively Observe?

All teachers know that it’s important to circulate in a classroom. If you’ve just joined the profession, you’ll think that it’s to aid behaviour management. This is absolutely true, but if that’s your only reason for circulating, you’ll be getting in your allotted 10,000 steps a day without much purpose.

Active Observation gives you a clear route round your classroom to target students who might struggle the most first – including LPA and SEND students – and offer targeted support. Plus, you can make your reasoning for circulating totally transparent to give them a clear focus when writing.

In History, for example, we’ve started to refer to classroom routes as ‘laps’ (As in: doing laps around the room) and clearly labelling our laps. When students do exam practice, for instance, I’ll state, “On my first lap, I’ll be checking that you’ve all written a clear point using the wording of the question”.

This method reminds the students of their success criteria and gives my circulating a visible purpose. At the same, I’ll narrate the positive: “Great use of the wording of the question from Student X…Student Y has already finished their point and has used two pieces of evidence, nice.”

As a result, students are more likely to self-correct to be part of the positive. You can also use this as an opportunity to quickly live-mark, to reduce workload afterschool. If you do struggle with workload, check out my tips for balancing work and life here.

Do you already do Active Observation? Or has your school embodied a different method for powering up pedagogies? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

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