Report 1 - Abubakar Suleiman, Füsun Çeliker

OBSERVATION REPORT

Week 1 & 2

Abubakar Suleiman -2012177150

Füsun Çeliker- 2012177030

4N3- English Language Teaching

2015/2016- Fall Season

Celalettin Sayhan Primary School

Yasemin Özdemir, Yonca Özkan

In our observation experience, we observed the language task and interacions task in the first week and the second week in our practicum. These tasks’ objectives are listed in below:

• ·       Collecting information about classroom talk, teacher talk and student talk
• ·        Answering the questions such as ‘Who made the utterance?’, ‘Which language were used?’ and ‘What was the length of the utterances?’.
• ·        Observing teacher- student interactions,
• ·        Collecting information about teacher’s question and its type, teacher’s wait time, student’s response, teacher’s feedback and students’ responses to the feedback.

 TASK 1

We  would like to draw a general frame what’s going on in our class, the daily routines, the students’ mode, then we would like to answer the questions briefly ‘Who starts the conversations  in the classroom, the length and the kind of the utterances and finally ‘in which language were used?’.

 The teacher started the lesson with a short greeting, then she moved on reminding what they did in the last lesson. She wrote a dialogue on the board, called the students to perform the dialogue, all of the students were interested in. They were alive.

The teacher called two students each time to perform the dialogue:

T: ‘Okay, A. Come here please. B, okay, you go and stand in front of the door. (The students came and read the dialogue silently, then they went to their places.)

S1: (Knocked the door) May I come in?

S2: Yes, you may.

 This dialogue was repeated several times with different students. After this dialogue, the teacher asked a question: ‘May I eat the hamburger?’ and reminded the students giving answers negative.

 She gave chance to the students answer the questions. She gave some situations and asked students to form the question first, using ‘May I ....?’ Then all of the class helped each other forming the questions together, when they needed help, helped them using her gestures and intonations properly.

 Afterwards, she asked them to open their books, page 10. She gave instructions first in English, then Turkish. There were six pictures in the page. The teacher asked them to find the picture says ‘Give me the apple please.’ , then she wrote on the board.

 She didn’t give the Turkish equivalents of the words, asked from students. When she wanted to remember them ‘rubbish’, she went to the rubbish bin. She gave different sentences for same meaning. For example: ‘Hold up your hands/ Raise up your hands.’

To sum up; we can say that the teacher made the most of the utterances in the classroom in greeting, reminding what they did in the last weeks and she directed the activites by giving instructions. Most of the time she used English to conduct classroom, asking questions to the students or giving them commands. When they needed help, the teacher helped them using her gestures or repeating the question or command again. When this tecniques failed, she used Turkish.

The length of the utterances were mainly short. Most of them were less than five words like ‘Please be quiet.’ or ‘Eveet, duyamadım cevabı?’

The students were active and alive, they talked all the time, most of the this talks were in Turkish. But they managed to answer the teacher’s questions in English. Sometimes, they had problems in following commands, but they asked their friends’ help or the teacher helped them.

TASK 2

This task’s objective is listed below:

•                Observing teacher-student interactions by teacher’s question and its type, teacher’s wait time, students’ response, teacher’s feedback and the students’ response to the feedback.

The teacher started her lesson with a greeting, wanted one of the students clean the board. She gave the instructions in English, the students responded her with ‘yes/no’.

 The teacher asked questions to remind the last weeks lesson. ‘May I take your pencilcase?’ she asked.

‘May I take your sharpener?’

‘May I take your book?’

 She waited a little bit, after each question. When the students couldn’t remember the name of the object, she helped them showing the object or asking a question such as ‘What is a pencilcase?’ to another student, let him say ‘Öğretmenim, kalemkutusu demek.’ With this help, the first student could understand the question and answer it.

 One of the students ate in the classroom, said to him: ‘This is not breakfast time, please put it in your bag.’

 She gave instruction ‘Close your books, open your notebooks.’ One of the students got confused, said: ‘Öğretmenim açalım mı, kapatalım mı?’ She answered in English. At the end, when she saw the students confused, used Turkish.

 She wrote some questions on the board, then asked ‘Kim bu yazdıklarımı anladı?’. She asked this to check understanding. Afterwards she asked: ‘Peki bu sorulara olumlu cevap nasıl verebiliriz?’ Some students gave right answers. She wrote the right answers on board.

‘Yes, you may.’ , ‘Of course.’ , ‘Sure.’ . Then she asked for negative answers.

 ‘No, you may not.’ , ‘Sorry, not right now. ‘ The students wrote these on their notebooks. When she wanted to clean the board, she asked: ‘May I clean the board?’, the students answered: ‘Yes, you may.’

 As a summary; we can say the teacher and the students have a good relationship. She uses English in the classroom, and the students can follow her instructions. She is using questions for two reasons:

•        Checking understanding (display questions)
•        Giving examples of real usage

 Most of the time, she waits for the students answer the questions. The students help each other. They are willing to answer the questions. They learn better when they listen answers from their friends. The teacher knows this, she is letting them to teach each other.