OBSERVATION STAGE

Task 1: The school end learning environment

Name of student: Jose Sazo Rojo
Name of School: República Del Uruguay
Number of students: 35
Date: August 27th, 2010 Class: 8th Grade



1. The School

The Republica Del Uruguay School is located at Eusebio Lillo Street #355, at the bottom of the Larraín hill in Valparaíso. It is a girl’s primary school. The main school organization is composed by the head teacher is Mr. Carlos Torres, the deputy director is Mr. Ulises Delgado and the UTP head is Mrs. Cecilia Carjaval. The school has 1150 girls from Kindergarten level to 8th grade.

The school is surrounded by a large number of old houses. The place is not the best because is surrounded by homeless and drunk people. The school is not a typical vulnerable one at social risk, but as municipal school coexist a huge number of different realities, specially, lower and middle social class with familiar and social problems which make harder the educational and teaching work.

The school facilities are quite modern, every classroom has a data show and a LCD screen to make classes more technological and entertaining; moreover, it has a complete computer laboratory.

The behavioural policies are very similar to the others schools, for instance, students have to wear uniform. They have respect to their pairs and teachers, etc. they have to respect the time of arrival, between among.









2. The Classroom

The atmosphere of the classroom is noisy and a little difficult, it is quite hard to keep students’ attention all the class, because the students do not are enough engaged with the study in general, they are girls who like speak aloud, scream, play, make up, etc. they are constantly in movement, sometimes there are many disruptions, not all girls finish their tasks in time, and most of them do not study.
In spite of the mentioned previously, it is important to emphasize incredibly that the classroom atmosphere in English is much better than other subjects, in this way I could realize that my guide teacher has a pretty good control over them based on communication and rules. Once I had a conversation with the head teacher and he told me that that grade is “culminating” and UTP head guided me saying is a “complicated class” so I had to be careful with their behaviour.
The classroom for me is a little small but girls are not in cramped conditions. It just is a little bit decorated with material and poster and almost always the classroom is pretty dirty, many papers or garbage on the floor.




3. The activities and resources

a) The contents are based on MINEDUC plans and programmes but The textbook from the MINEDUC is not used by the teacher, She does a special material for the corresponding grade such as: worksheets, hand outs, etc. the mother tongue is mostly used by the however, English is spoken but is seldom understood doing the teacher repeat everything in Spanish or make short commands easy to understand. The activities tend to be “behaviourist”.


b) In terms of technological devices, as I mentioned before every classroom has a data show (including a Notebook) and a LCD screen, every so often are used to teach.












Task 2: Student’s learning

1. The Learners


The students very talkative and unquiet and do not seem to be very motivated or engaged, one of this causes it can be because of their social backgrounds, a few group of girls are more preoccupied of being respected through their bad behaviour and their violent treatment between them, is spite of that, the girls seem to be lack in love and emotional affects, because when I talk to them in a affective a respectful way, they enjoy to talk and count their experiences.
There are students who have problems to understand what the teacher says or the teacher has to put a lot of efforts to motivate and encourage them.



2. Behaviour during classroom activities

The teacher always wasted time on trying to keep them quiet, and then when the teacher explains the class and tries to encourage students to participate, the great majority does not like to participate and refuse to do it. Sometimes the classroom is annoying, it coexists 2 groups which have behavioural disorders, and the teacher has to be attentive of their attitudinal aspect. The teacher has built a good communication with the students in order to maintain a “good atmosphere and behaviour”.
As I told before because of their level is difficult to keep them quite working, some of them are always asking because they do not understand anything, which is not problem but sometimes is consuming.



3. Discuss the learning styles and levels of English in the classroom

The guide teacher has a good level of English and she speaks it correctly, however, the class has to be in its majority in Spanish (75% Spanish and 25% English), as a diversity group exists many learning styles, Unluckily, the English level of the students makes actually hard to teach the level in which the students should be in this grade, they hardly know lexical items or the main chunks of language, such as: “silence”, “it’s going to be”, etc. obviously, there are a few group who are reserved and understand well. In the case mentioned firstly the students do not know or understand anything of English, makes really hard to have a fluid class.





TEAM TEACHING STAGE
Name of student: Jose Sazo Rojo
Name of school: República del Uruguay
Date: August 26th, 2010. 4th C

Task Nº1: collaboration activities

1. What kind of activity did you perform the first time you were asked for help? How long did it take?
The first activity was related to “Like/don’t like”. I had to check if the girls were answering and pronouncing correctly giving them feedback because they had an oral test. Then more students asked me for help, they called me when they realized that they can not pronounce rightly or did not understand something.



2. What were the students doing before you started helping out?
They were listening to teacher’s explanation about the test which was going to be taken.


3. How did students react? Describe the atmosphere of the room and levels of engagement in the room.
The students were really joyful with me inside the classroom for the reason that in my collaboration I had to improvise a kind of play about pronunciation and they enjoyed a lot. Moreover, they put much on attention on me because they asked me a lot of information (age, relatives, music, etc),



4. What other assignments were asked you to do? How often?
Day by day of my practice, I have collaborated with the teacher in different assignments such as: handing out or picking up some materials for the classes, checking activities, correcting tests, etc. There weren’t complications



5. Were you asked to prepare any kind of special audio visual material learning material for students? Were they used? How effective were they
No, I had not have to prepare any kind of special material because the teacher was the responsible of doing material for that unit.








Task Nº2: Lesson Planning

1. How did you get information for planning the lessons for your students?
The teacher showed and gave me the previous planning of the course, so I
Planned the learning activities for the students according to that.


2. Did your guide teacher give you any suggestion for planning?
Yes, the teacher explained me the main characteristics of that unit plan of that course based on Government plans and programs, in this way I planned the lessons for my students.


3. How long did it take to you to prepare learning material for your first lesson?
In general it did not take long. To be honest, prepare the lesson plan and the learning material was not so difficult for me because, but I have to say that on occasion I had some struggle about creating different kinds of activities for each course.