Fatma Davulcu & Barış Karakoyun Week 9-10 Final Report

Fatma Davulcu & Barış Karakoyun
School Experience
Observation Report
Week 9-10 (Final Report)


OBSERVATION

A) Week 9

In this week, we observed the use of blackboard in a language classroom.

What did the teacher use the board for?
The subject of the lesson was the next step of ‘’Like and Can’’. The teacher wrote some sentences which included ‘’can’’ modal verb on the board.
Did he or she use it effectively?
The teacher used the board effectively; however, she could have used it more effectively. The teacher used the board for only once. We thought that there were some reasons why the teacher used the board for only once.
What were these reasons?: Classroom size was 27 and it made difficult checking whether students understood the subject or not because there were not enough time for taking care of each student. Checking for understanding took a lot of time. If the conditions of the classroom environment were better, we were sure that she could have used the board more effectively.
How did he or she organise her work?
Firstly, the teacher wrote some sentences which included ‘’can’’ modal verb on the board. While the teacher was writing the sentences on the board, the students were copying them on their notebooks. After the teacher finished writing part, she wanted students to repeat the sentences with her instructions. Then, the teacher practiced Q-A activity. It was the most difficult part of the lesson because the students had a difficulty in understanding and comprehending the subject.
What were the students doing while the teacher was writing on the board?
While the teacher was writing the sentences on the board, the students were copying them on their notebooks. Generally, they were silent. The teacher warned only a few students.
What have you learnt from this observation?
We have observed that using the board without any visual material makes a lesson boring for young learners. If we want to engage attention of the students to lesson and us, we should use visual materials while we are using the board.


Week 10

In this week, we focused on oral correction techniques our mentor used in language classroom.

It is just as important to praise students when they are doing really well as it is to point out their mistakes. Teachers can show their appreciation or disapproval through the use of facial expression and body language. Which of these does your mentor use?

The teacher corrected students’ mistakes automatically. The teacher did not prefer to use other correction techniques such as self-correction and peer-correction. Its reasons were insufficient time and crowded class size.
The teacher did not use her body language effectively and specifically because she corrected students’ mistakes automatically. Her facial expression was sometimes sincere, but sometimes authoritative. It was balanced.
If the conditions of the classroom environment were better and students’ desire to learn was high, we were sure that she could have used her body language effectively and specifically.

Discuss with your mentor why he or she chose to correct in the way she did and write down what you learnt from this observation.

We could not discuss with our mentor why she chose to correct in the way she did because she were busy on the breaks.