Observation Write - Up

 

Before starting my teaching practicum, I conducted two observations of my teacher – in – charge to have a better understanding bout the learners’ background, and as well as the school. Both the observations were done during the first week of the internship focusing two different groups as mentioned the following. In the morning school I observed the pre – grade students and there were 4 – 5 students (both males and females), and they belonged to the beginner level following the UTEL benchmark 1 and 2. The evening school was somewhat different from morning school as the teacher interacted with the students who belonged to various grades at a single time. Because of that, it was difficult to mentioned an exact number and a level of the students. Thus, the observations were conducted focusing the used techniques, teaching methods, selection of the materials and classroom management.

 

As I observed the teacher did not use any innovative and creative materials during the teaching. She just adhered to the text book and other reading materials such as Radiant Way series. As for the reason she mentioned that because of the time constraint and the need of completing the syllabus, it is really hard to implement those types of activities and materials in real classroom contexts. Apart from that, especially the evening school is a place where different students from different grades get together. So, she was expected to access every learner during the allocated two hours. However, she addressed all the four skills interchangeably. First she started with a grammar lesson, then moved on to a writing one, and finally ended the lesson with a speaking session. Also, a reading task was given as a take home activity.

 

As I mentioned in my reflective summary as well, in the evening class the teacher used both online and onsite platforms simultaneously giving the students the opportunity to make their learning easier. In contrast to that, morning classes were fully onsite. In both these classes she used mainly a learner – centered classroom, and as for teaching methods she incorporated Communicative Language Teaching and Grammar Translation Methods here and there. All the instructions were given using the target language, and it was a place where students’ L1 was hardly used. Apart from that, she was very vigilant about the time management, and she advised us to be strict about the time when teaching.

 

When observing about the classroom management strategies that the teacher used, it was noticed that she used variations in her tone to clam down and to motivate the students towards the lesson. After assigning the learners an activity, she monitored each and every learner individually. She mainly used ‘in front of the class’ as her position of the classroom, but it was changed according to the activity given.

Thus, this observation was really helpful for me to mold – up myself as a student teacher.