TESOL Certificate Programs

Observation Notebook

Observation Report

Name of Observer__Xi Qin______ Observation # ___3____

Date Observation Class Skill/Content Level Teacher

Environment*

10/19/201 online Advanced reading Advanced Wu xiaobo

7 course English level

*Include the URL if the class was online

WRITE THE OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO THE OBSERVATION GUIDELINES:

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE TEXT WITH 100% ACCURACY.

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS UNDER THE TEXT.
STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO HAVE A DAILY CONVERSATION WITH CLASSMATES USING
NEW PHRASES.

Notes while observing:

1.Homework checking :
Task: divide background infor (para 1-6) into two parts

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

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Observation Notebook
At first, the teacher wanted to invite some voluntary students to answer this
question, but nobody responded to the teacher. Students were all looking down
their desk and not active in the class. Then, the teacher called the name of a girl to
share her answer with the class and after that she gave the valuation of girl’ s
answer and provided the right answer in the PPT.
2. The teacher asked students to divide the first paragraph of the text into several
parts and she called one girl to answer this question. The girl said the first
paragraph can be divided into two parts and explanted the reason and meanings of
each part. The teacher was not satisfied with that answer and called another girl to
talk about her idea. The class environment was quiet and students were not active
in interaction with the teacher whose speed of rate was quite fast beyond the
understanding of students.
3. Then the teacher divided the first paragraph of the text into 3 parts and showed
the answer on the PPT. She began to analyze the sentence by sentence.

(1)The teacher asked students to compare the two sentences: “the news was
brought to me of Hitler’s invasion of Russia.” and “the news of Hitler’s
invasion of Russia was brought to me.” The teacher asked students to discuss the
difference of these two sentences, but she just assigned the task and not gave the
clear assistance and prompts for students’ discussion. Therefore, students were
bewilder and talked about in pairs or in groups, and some of boy students sat at
the bottle of the class just chatted in Chinese without concentration on the
question.
After discussion, the teacher invited three students to answer the question. Among
the students’ talking, teacher gave some evaluation of the answer and explanted
the differences of these two sentences explicitly.

(2) The teacher asked students to analyze the following elliptical sentence: “I
had slightest doubt where our duty and our policy lay. Nor indeed what to say.”
One girl was called to complete the elliptical sentence and teacher also not
satisfied with her answer and called another girl to give the right answer. Then,
the form and function of elliptical sentence was explanted explicitly by the
teacher and some related background information was introduced to students in
analyzing the meaning of the sentence. While most of student lowered their head
and seemed that they were tedious about the content. The whole teaching focus
was partial to the sentences patterns and grammar lacking instruction of the
background information, the holistic meaning of the paragraph and real
interaction between teacher and students and peers.

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

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Observation Notebook
What did you learn about teaching or learning from this lesson as it relates to the
theory you have studied in your TESOL classes? Include at least one reference (with
an in-text citation) to support your response. (250-500 words)

This was a very traditional class that strictly followed the LADO Method. The teacher
was the head of the class and the main provider of information. She led the lesson and
activities and took up a fair amount of talking time. She did, however, ask questions
regularly and turned to the students to complete the sentences in the exercises. The
students spent a few minutes asking and answering the same question amongst
themselves. There was heavy use of the whiteboard. The teacher engaged the students
equally, giving each one a chance to do an exercise. Although she answered all of their
questions and provided extra help to those who needed it, her main concern was getting
through the material in the allotted time so there were instances when she had to leave
students with outstanding questions/issues. As students were reading out the exercises
they had completed, the teacher made the necessary corrections right away. She followed
the book very closely throughout the class and referred to her teacher’s book while giving
feedback and told the students ‘this is what it says in my book’. When some students
were confused about a grammatical structure, they were told that they needed to
memorize things and do drilling activities. What’s more, I liked the teacher’s warm
attitude in general. The class was a non threatening environment and the students seemed
relaxed. There was a genuine feel of cooperation between students and teacher, and the
students were not afraid to speak up or make mistakes. The lesson was well structured
and there were different activities such as listening, games, personal discussions etc. that
broke up the monotony that an intensive structure based class can create. The students
displayed good teamwork and helped each other out. On the other hand, there was a lot of
repetition. The teacher asking the students ‘repeat after me please’ took me back to the
classes I remember from childhood. This did not seem to have much of a purpose since
the teacher could not her the individual students and therefore, could not provide
feedback. I disliked the fact that the main objective of the lesson was teaching
grammatical concepts and structures, and not working on learners’ communicative skills.

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

Reference

Richards J. & Farrell T. (2011). Practice Teaching: A reflection Approach. New

York, N.Y. , USA: Cambridge University Press.

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

Last Updated: 3/25/2018 2:46 AM