Sept 28/2020
For this observation, I watched 3 condensed videos of longer classes. The first was a grade 6 class in China, the second was an adult beginner class, and the third was a class that was an intermediate orientation and placement class for international students at a university.
The topic of the grade 6 class in China was the past tense within the context of what happened on vacation. The teacher progressed the lesson from general areas of the world to visit, highlighting different climates (cold/north, jungle, beach, city), and moved to discussion in pairs about what the students did on their last vacation. Much of the lesson was listen and repeat, spelling, identify and repeat exercises. What kept the students engaged was that the teacher used photos of herself, from her own vacations. The physical setup of the classroom did not allow for the kids to be up and moving, so there was no physical portion to the lesson. Assessment was done by having a list of sentences on the screen that had been learned previously that each student took a turn to stand up and say 1 sentence from the list. The only thing I would do differently is ask the students about their vacation while still in the whole class group. The only time the students spoke about their own experience was for a brief time in pairs.
The adult beginner class was a functional class in giving advice. The classroom itself was very small, with only a white board to use. The teacher maximized the space by putting the students in a U-shape around the edges of the room. When the teacher wanted the students to see images, he took his tablet around the room. Leaving the centre of the room empty allowed the teacher to have the students up and moving in different groupings for the communicative parts of the lesson. While students were having discussions, the teacher would pause the action and write a sentence on the board and either correct it or discuss its use or pronunciation, then have them go again. Feedback was pertinent and immediately used. The teacher used himself as an initial example of needing advice for his cold. He went through phrases to use when asking for and giving advice; he gave feedback, correction, and praise; the students were engaged and participating throughout, and he never let them sit for more than a couple of minutes. I thought this was an effective class.
The topic of the intermediate university class was “free time”. This video seemed to be a “what not to do” for classroom management. The teacher did most of the talking and the students were not engaged. The students were chatting amongst themselves, trying to get a date, and playing on their phones. The teacher was asking the students about how many hours of free time they had in their home country, but it was only as part of a response to survey. There was no asking the students about what kind of activities they did or what their interests were, it was multiple questions where the only possible response from a student was to spit out a number. Due to the lack of any relationship between the teacher and students, it seemed intrusive and out of place for the teacher to talk about partying and the beer the students would be drinking. All in all, a complete disaster of a class.