In the department of Teacher Education in Rauma, University of Turku, Finland, guided observations in the teacher training school are an important part of the first-year teacher students’ teaching practice period. This study focuses on how the student teachers reflect on their learning, and how they evaluate practical work during a les-son. The student teachers had attended the lectures addressed by the second author where they studied the basic theories and concepts of developmental and educational psychology. Using the grounded theory approach, 73 self-reports were read and ana-lysed. All teacher students reported that they found the guided observations much more fruitful than the observations they did alone. They stated that it was much easier to focus on one aspect at a time than to observe a lesson as a whole. In addition, they wrote that the discussions after the lessons gave them new ideas about teaching.