OBSERVATION ESSAY WRITING TIPS

First of all review what you observed and noted (use your field notes) during your observations. Make sure you give yourself ample opportunity to observe many behaviors that relate to the chosen topic and the object of learning.

If you are writing an Observation Essay about learning, you need to keep in mind the following things: Differences in student maturation; gender differences; student conditioned responses (to teacher behaviors); pre-operational thinking or concrete operational thinking; and student learning modalities. If you are writing an observation essay on physical objects like buildings, you need to focus on the physical looks of the facility, the materials used to create it, the color palette, the location, the texture, the purpose of the building.

The body of an Observation Paper should roughly be composed of 4-6 paragraphs. The paragraphs should connect observed behaviors, events, interactions, or learning contexts to the developmental and learning principles you have been studying. Always be clear about the events and behaviors you observed that led you to make the inference about some facet of thinking or mind. The key here is to "Tell them" about your experiences.

The introductory paragraph of the Observation Paper should state in general terms the phenomena or the objects you observed and the ideas you will be connecting. ("Tell them what you are going to tell them.")

Your concluding paragraph should provide a general synthesis of what you have explained in the body paragraphs ("Tell them what you told them in the body part of the essay."), and it might also indicate how the experience influenced your learning or thinking --a concluding thought..

It may seem odd, but I do recommend writing your intro and conclusion only after you are finished with the body paragraphs.

Review the format of your Observation Essay to see if it complies with proper referencing standards (usually students use APA), prepare you cover sheet, and voila, you are done.

All written work must be in a 12 point, readable font and spell-checked.

Writing is a critically important skill for successful students! You cannot succeed in college without writing essays well. Therefore, please carefully revise and edit any Observation Papers before submitting them to the professor. If writing is not your strong suit, write, edit, edit, re-write, and then seek some assistance with your writing.