Observation Stage

UNIVERSIDAD DE PLAYA ANCHA FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES EARLY ENGLISH TEACHING PRACTICE 2009 OBSERVATION STAGE Name of student teacher: Karla Calderón Yévenes Name of School: Liceo Ovispo Antonio Castro Number of students: 37 students Date: May, 10th, 2009 Class: Fouth and third highschool grade

First Task: The School. Refer to the general background of the school in a clear and brief way. Describe: Physical location The name of the school I am attending to is “Liceo Ovispo Antonio Castro” which is located in Crucero Ajak Street N 18, Cerro Cárcel. Organisation Principal: Mr. José Luis Villanueva, UTP Department: Mrs. Ximena Espinoza General inspector: Mr. Juan Carlos Astorga Orientation Department: Mrs. Karen Marín. Student population There are 178 students enrolled on the school. School rules. The students are not allowed to smoke, to drink alcohol, to consume drugs, to sell or to buy any kind of goods inside the school. They musn´t use mobile phones or any kind of device which implies using headphones. Second Task: The classroom. The atmosphere of the room General speaking, according to my experience in third highschool grade the atmosphere of the room is good. In spite of the fact that there are very noisy students, the majority of the class behave in a respectful way when Mrs Carol is trying to explain the subjects. However the fourth highschool grade pay less attention than the third grade to the teacher.

The levels of engagement in the room Although these two classes are not disrespectful, they don´t have high level of engagement in the room, there are just a few who show a real commitment to the english as a foreign language and the rest of the class devote their time to other assingments from other subjects or they use to talk between them while other are listening to music. Students seating, space and whiteboard location Students seat in double desks, there are two lines of desks in every classroom which are large but not wide, I could say that are narrowed classrooms, though the third highschool grade´s room is a bit larger than the room of the other class. The students seating is almost the same everywhere; the noisy ones are seating down into the last two desks behind and the students who pay more attention are siting down in front of the whiteboard which is at the front of the classroom. I think that dstribution is a desadvange to the teacher, since the room is very large and the most problematic students seat behind it is difficult to her to manage them. Classroom equipment. There is a laboratory room in the school, where students are able to use the computers on their breaks but any of the days I have attended to they had being there. Therefore the only available equipment for the english class is a dictionary “english-spanish” that it is found in the library. Third Task: The teacher Classroom routine The teacher develop her classes in spanish all the time, she always give general instructions about the taks and the students make the exercises given afterwards. She asks the students to create a lot of dialogues which must being made in formal and informal style. Motivation activities performed. According to my observation the students do not feel very motivated with this kind of activities because they usually talk between them about other things and they can hardly develop a sentence in present tense. There are not motivational activities performed in her classes. The only “kind of motivation” I have seen from her take place when she is correcting tests and she informs students whose grades are reasonably good. Learning activities conducted and stages of the lesson She developes a unit and then she writes in the whiteboard all the vocabulary in it and explains its tense forms, then she writes sentences and exesices like “Filling in the gaps” or “answering questions”. The rest of the class the students need to develop this exersices. She is teaching them the passive voice now. Material resourced used. Since I start going to classes the material used is created by her. There was only one time that she brought some sheets of paper with a list of exercises to the students (and they have to pay for them).

Fourth Task: Things that help to create conditions for effective learning and the aspects that play a part in preventing learning

How motivated are the learners? Why? I do not see a strong motivation in students when they are in class. I have talked to a few of them and they have the knowledge that english is important, as a matter of fact they have told me that they want to make an english course after graduation, however they do not pay attention in class. Actually, the majority of students use headphones when it is time to develope the exersices guide. Are they taking part in their own learning? How? Since the second class I started helping them on their own desks and some of them seemed to pay interest and attetions to the tasks. I can see that they tried to make a lot of effort in understanding english forms, but unfortunately they represent the minority in comparison to the rest of the class. Are they expecting the teacher to do the work for them? Some of them try the teacher do the work for them, sometimes they called me and want me to do the exercises for them. But at least they have an interest for learning, the students I am worrying about are those who never ask for help and they just stay there lookink at the front, talking between them and making jokes. Do they like to participate in group work? If so, how do they behave? They are used to do dialogues, therefore they have to work in pairs or trios, although most of the time they demonstrate lack of interest in front of the activity . What I want to mean about this is that they devote that time to listening to music or talk between them instead of creating or rehearingl the dialogue. What kinds of learning activities do the students like the most? What do they like the least? I have no knowledge of the kind of learning activities students like the most as a group, but I have talked to small groups and a student named Marfil who likes english very much told me that he would like to learn english performing scenes because he thinks theatre should help them to loose their fear to english. According to what I have seen as a group and what I have being told by individual students, what they like the least is to develop exercises guide, they found them very boring.