First Class Observation                                                                          Date:  January 30^th, 2013.                                           

Advanced English II

My first class observation was with a teacher who teaches a large group of advanced English students. First, I have to say that it was great to observe his class because I could see how most of the strategies and methods that we have learned during the major were applied during his class.

Greeting on time. As students of the English major one of the first things that we learn is that we as future teachers have to be on time in the classroom and he was not the exception because I observed that he was in the classroom 10 minutes before the classes started. As result, while his students were coming in to the classroom, he received them creating a positive and relaxed atmosphere since the very beginning.  

Spanish is not allowed. Another thing that I could observe was that some students were speaking in Spanish at the beginning of the class and to deal with it the teacher called the students´ attention in a funny and creative way pointing out that it was not permitted to speak Spanish. By doing it in such a positive way, he got good results because since that moment until the end of the class I did not listen any of them speaking Spanish again. I think it was because the teacher encouraged them in a positive and funny way.

The warm up activity. After that, he asked them if they had worked in their homework however he did not check it in the moment.  First, he developed a short warm up activity. As we know it is not necessary to develop a game during the warm up activity. In this case he prepared a vocabulary review from the last class. To be fair during the activity, he initially asked for volunteers. Some of them were eager to participate, but after a moment no one wanted to pass to the front so that he started to choose the ones who were going to continue developing the activity.

The "warm up activity" ends and the homework review comes. I think that in order not to lose a lot of time the teacher decided to review the homework in an oral way.  In this way students could practice their speaking skill and at the same time check their answers and solve their doubts.

Practice in pairs. At the time to develop the class the teacher decided students should work in pairs, but he asked them not to work with the same person as always they do.  By asking that, they could interchange new information with other classmates.  When they were working in pairs, he was observing them walking around them and not staying in the same place, trying to solve their doubts.

Organized participation. The teacher asked the students to be organized when they wanted to share and opinion or to ask for something by raising their hand and waiting for their turns at the time to speak.

At the end I could observe how the teacher deals with many unexpected situations and how he solved every doubt during his class. I just hope not forget everything I could observe here during my first class.

Second Class Observation                                                                    Date:  January 31^th, 2013.                                          

Advanced English II

In my second observation class the teacher only gave one hour class because he had a meeting or something like that, but in that hour he started his class as he did in the last class. He started by greeting his students and having a short conversation with some of them. Then he presented a speaking activity. He gave them some copies and the directions about what they have to do.  What the students had to do according to his direction was reading the pieces of paper which contained information about different estrange foods around the world. Every piece of paper had different information so the teacher asked them to read it individually and pay attention to details. After the students finish reading it, the teacher asked them to look for someone who had not the same information and explain to that person what the information they read was about. They finished sharing opinions between them so they come back to their sits. After it, to complete the activity, and continue with the class the teacher requested to some of the students to share their information to the whole class because by doing the first activity every student only knew about two of the six different estrange foods. At the end the final task was that every student learned about the six different estrange foods that the other classmates had read and also it was to develop in the students their speaking skill. Something important that I could notice during the activity was how the teacher solved students´ doubts because the information included a lot of new vocabulary.