This practical text provides competencies that prepare pre-service teachers, student teachers, and first year teachers for classroom observation. The author presents observation skills according to eight areas related to positive outcomes in learners which include: learning climate, classroom management, lesson clarity, instructional variety, task orientation, student engagement, student success, and higher thought processes. Observation skills are combined with patterns of effective teaching practice for each of the eight areas to help students observe what happens in the classroom and use what is learned to improve their own teaching. This book can be used as a companion volume to Borich's Effective Teaching Methods, fourth edition , as a stand-alone text for an observation course taken before or during a methods course, and as a resource during student teaching.