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Report 5 - Week 9&10 - Ozan Berk & Hilal Cemre Altıparmak

Week 9-10 / Report 5

Hilal Cemre Altıparmak & Ozan Berk                                                                

School: Celaleattin Sayhan Primary School
Class: 4/D - 4/E

Yonca ÖZKAN

Yasemin ÖZDEMİR

Task 1

This week we observed how the teacher used the blackboard in the classroom. The teacher uses blackboard to help her explaining grammar structures to the students. She also uses the blackboard to introduce the new vocabulary items as well.

In the lesson she firstly talks about the topic in English and also in the mother tongue when students have difficulty in understanding the general idea. Then, in order to make the students see the structure and new vocabulary items she writes them on the board. 

She needs to write them on the board because even though they have a projector in the classroom they don’t have a computer to work with and because of that they can’t use technological devices in the classroom and the teacher needs to rely on blackboard, books and worksheets while giving a lecture. As she relies on blackboard a lot she uses the blackboard effectively.

On the 10^th week the teacher used the blackboard to introduce usage of “like” and “don’t like”. She drew an ice cream, an apple and a boy playing football to teach the word “like”. She also drew a smiling face to indicate students will use those terms with “like”. After that she also drew a banana, a can of coke and a girl skipping rope to teach the usage of “don’t like” and to indicate students need to use those terms with “don’t like” she drew a pouting face. Then she wrote some examples with “like” and “don’t like” on the board. She wanted the students to write down those examples to their notebooks. We noticed that while she was writing something on the board she didn’t give any work for students to do.

We observed that students were bored while teacher wrote something on the board as they didn’t have anything to do. We learned that we should plan our lessons considering we might spend too much time on writing something on blackboard and prepare something for students to avoid making them get bored of the lesson.

Task 2

In this week we were supposed to observe the oral correction techniques used by the teacher. The teacher as we said in the week 7/8 - task 2, uses activities aimed at accuracy and perfection that’s why most of the error corrections are immediately corrected.

Teacher usually corrects the mistakes automatically while using peer correction time to time. She sometimes signals for self correction as well but she corrects every mistake made by the students one way or another. As she focuses on accuracy it can be expected for her to correct mistakes immediately. She tries to teach Standard English and gives importance to being native like.

During the lesson she corrected students several times. For example, a student said “driving” instead of “drawing” and teacher corrected it herself using her body language. She acted as if she was driving a car and said “This is driving” then she acted as if she is drawing something and said “This is drawing”.

We have read some articles about this topic, oral correction, and we have found that there isn’t a consensus about this topic. While some scholars like John Truscott say that we should abandon oral correction even going as far as saying “available evidence suggests that oral correction is ineffective” (Truscott, 1999) , some scholars say that they disagree with him and on the contrary, oral correction is quite effective (Lightbown, Lyster and Spada, 1999)

We think that oral correction should be used moderately in classroom but instead of usually correcting students directly we should give importance to peer correction and self correction to make our students more autonomous and motivated.

 

 FINAL REPORT 

We learnt that the blackboard is the most important material to cover the lesson and demonstrate , so we must know how to use blackboard in an effective way . As for the teacher, we observed she used the blackboard to cover the topic and showed some critical points . However , mostly she used it to make the students prepare the TEOG exam. F or this purpose , she just copied the exercise and activities from the coursebook , workbook and worksheets . She had the students  written  the practices from their resource book. Thus, they are spending so much time when they are writing or copying the exercise on the board . Teacher can not cover the lesson because of the lack of the time and this decreases effectiveness of the lesson.

Our mentor gives some information about the previous lesson in order to activate the students schemata. And then , she asks the questions to check what they learnt. After that she covers new topic gives examples and wants from the students to give new examples. In other lesson she makes them test about what they learnt . Another scenerio is that she chooses a student to write activity on the board . Furthermore , while the tacher is wirting on the board the students who don’t have the books are waiting for the teacher or the students who have the book are doing activities.

We observed that there are oral correction tecniques . According to us the most important of them is emphasising wrong answer by using body language. Our mentor is very good at using facial expressions and body language ,while she is showing her appreciation or disapproval.

In this observation we learnt that we must use facial expressions and body language instead of saying that your answer is wrong . Furthermore , not only disappeared but also appreciation must be shown.  

Ömer Faruk DİLAVER 

Tuğçe ÖNGE

OBSERVATION REPORT OF 9/10 WEEK 

SCHOOL ATTENDED : Petrol Ofisi Primary School
CLASS : 2/H
Yonca Özkan - Seray Çiçektakan

Dilem Berk & Gizem Papatya Uğurdil


OBSERVATION TASK 1

     For the 9th week of our observation, we were tasked with creating observation angle in logical framework that reflecting on the use of blackboard in a language class.

     On greeting students, not to lose students’ fleeting attention which can be linked to age of them, she immediately led in the subject of  ‘Colors In English’. When the teacher turned the blackboard to write down new vocables, students started to talking among themselves. After a short warning, as though the teacher wanted to show us how versatile the board is, she used it and colorful markers. The letters were large enough for students from every position.

     However it is criticized by many colleaques, the teacher preferred putting down equivalents of colors indicated with arrows. Throughout this process the teacher didn’t totally turn her back on students. After every line, she switched to verbal lecture; so the students gained enough time to copy down the board. In the same breath, she was permanently talking along writing. The students apperantly seemed to be engaged but the most visual learners were making progress.





               Here it is the instantshot of the board.

     All along the teacher was writing on the board, she was checking by asking ‘Is my letter small ?’, ‘Everybody can read this ?’, or in first language ‘Bu kelimenin anlamını biliyor musunuz?’, ‘Herkes bu bölümü yazıyor mu?’, and adding some facts like ‘In the same time, orange means a fruit name’. The forthcoming period the teacher gave references to what she was introducing from the board ; for instance ‘You shouldn’t say /lɑɪ/ for the word ‘like’ in sentence ‘I like red.’, we say ‘/lɑɪk/’ please look at the board to see correct form.’

     In conclusion part of lesson, we accepted that how soever old it is, may be from sixteenth century, in terms of price/performance ratio, undoubtedly blackboard is the most versatile one in schools, especially in the third world countries.


OBSERVATION TASK 2

     For 10^th week, our observation task objective is to focus on oral correction techniques a teacher uses in a language classroom.

     At the beginning of lesson, there was no unusual situation. For greeting, the teacher and students used reciprocally appropriate phrases. Along this, some students made mistakes in replying ‘How are you today?’ question. They said correctly ‘I’m fine today’ except ‘fine’ that pronounced as written. The teacher tended to reteach but suddenly recanted not to interfere with comprehension. According to us, what the teacher thought of was that over correction can be obstructer if the aim is to encourage. Along the way students’ learning of colors, there was no problem apart from pronouncing of ‘Purple’. The teacher corrected that right away, because in this stage accuracy was more crucial. In addition, she wore  sporadically a face of confusion, sadness or perplexity to signal error students made, instead of oral correction.  As the end of lesson approached, the teacher started to paying more attention to fluency. But there was still incomplete knowledge about making a full sentence in target language so she compared two languages to express structural description.

    

Report 4 - Week 7&8 - Ozan Berk & Hilal Cemre Altıparmak

Week 7-8 / Report 4

Hilal Cemre Altıparmak & Ozan Berk

REPORT-4                                                                    

School: Celaleattin Sayhan Primary School
Class: 4/D - 4/E

Yonca ÖZKAN

Yasemin ÖZDEMİR

Task 1

This week we were supposed to observe conditions and situations related to the classroom, the activities, the teacher and the students which may enhance or hinder effective learning in the language classroom.

In the classroom there are some technological devices which the teacher uses to aid with their language acqusition process. There are smart board and projector. Unfortunately there isn’t a computer in the classroom so they can’t use these devices. On the walls there are many paintings made by students and some learning aids like a map and some hints about various lessons.  Classroom isn’t too crowded so every student has chance to participate into the lesson.

Two students share a desk so it is easy to implement pair work activities in this classroom but unfortunately the teacher doesn’t prefer to do that. She usually doesn’t apply group work activities either.  Students bought a supplementary book named “Marathon” and she uses this book instead of the book provided by government. She usually uses activities from the book.

The teacher uses her body langauge effectively. Adding to that she uses her voice, mimics and intonation professionally. She sometimes doesn’t act professionally in the classroom. She sometimes acts more aggressively than she should have been.

The students are fourth graders and for us it is very normal that they are making some noise during the lesson. They have difficulty in focusing on the lesson because they are young. Sometimes noise level raises so much that teacher has to give a warning to them. Students usually come from middle to high socioeconomical background and thats why they can afford some supplementary books and some of them are taking English private courses.

Task 2

In this week we were expected to observe whether the activities in a specific lesson are oriented towards fluency or accuracy. We have found out that the teacher usually uses accuracy oriented activities and gives more importance to writing rather than speaking.

The teacher prefers to use the supplementary book named “Marathon” instead of the coursebook provided by the government. She says that the supplementary book is well prepared and we also agree with that notion. In this book the activities are focused on accuracy rather than fluency.  The teacher teaches standard English and aims for perfection in accent and grammar.

In this lesson we observed that the teacher used repetition, fill in the blanks, writing, matching and true/false activities. While repetition activity was in spoken form other activities were in written form and they were all accuracy oriented. Goal of the activities were to teach grammar rules instead of teaching English for communaciation purposes.

Balance of the activities were heterogeneous. While she was giving too much importance to writing she disregarded speaking. If we want our students to be fluent and intelligible in English we should give more importance to speaking and teach it in a meaningful context instead of only using repetition.  Teacher mostly uses writing activities which are based on accuracy and those activities act as settle down activities. We can say that the teacher uses insufficient amount of stir up activities while using wide range of settle down activities. We think that the teacher needs to use more stir up activities in order to spice up her lesson.

We found out that those accuracy oriented activities are very effective on the learners as teacher only had to use error correction two times in her lesson. It seems that students are motivated to be more accurate but we can’t say that they are motivated to be more fluent.

REPORT 5 / BLACKBOARD AND ERROR CORRECTION

AYTEN PARİN

WEEK  9- 10

 Petrol Ofisi Primary School 

Task 1

          This week, I observe the use of  the blackboard in a language classroom. One of the materials which is used the most commonly is the board as there is no many different materials to be used in the class I attended for the intership,  As It is the white- board, it cant be used for the multi- purpose.  The teacher usually uses the board for introducing the topic of the unit at the pre-stage of the course, to write the words or the phrases of some activities for repetition. Although it is used the most widely, it doesn’t have a positive effect on students’ learning. Because while the teacher is writing anything on the board, the students are busy with doing something else or talking to each other. It doesn’t provide anything other than making the student repeat what the teacher write on it.  The things are written on the board don’t catch their attention as the board isn’t used in a different way, the things on the board are very ordinary for them or the board is not suitable for a different use. So the lesson may be boring due to their age. However, that a lot of equipment have been brought to the class with the advanced technology both facilitates the teachers’ work and supply the course pass more pleasant in terms of the students. Also English lesson which is one of the lessons requires the use of different materials and equipment that are computer, projector, audio- visual player, smart board etc… Lecture on the white or black board may be spontaneous and boring especially for YLs.  It may cause the students to dislike the lesson and to give their attention to the other things.

 

Task 2 

         My last observation is about oral correction techniques. As many of us know, making mistake is necessary while learning anything. Even when errors are properly corrected, it contributes a lot to students’ learning. In this course as far as I observe, the technique used by the teacher is almost the same.  This week, students are taught to count the numbers 1 to 10.  The teacher firstly writes the numbers on the board and asks them to repeat after him. When  they individually say the numbers on the board, they make  mistakes especially on pronunciation. As they are YLs and learn this course for the first time, it is one of the expected mistakes.  Also sometimes they confuse the order of the numbers. While the teacher correct the order mistakes automatically without  allowing them to make self-correction, he rarely stands on their pronunciation mistakes.  For example, when the student say ‘ fay or et instead of five and eight’  he most of the time ignores their mistakes. Then for the next, he calls a boy and girl to the board to play a game on counting the numbers, then from the reverse order. But when the students can’t say or say wrong the numbers from the reverse order, they are seated without  being corrected  about how to do it. Also when they give correct answer, he praises them  like ‘ You’re winner, aferin,  super , ’ but when they do wrong, he says ‘ you’re wrong, go your place’ instead of  giving time for correction.  What I learn from this observation is that the students are not given opportunity for self –correction or peer-correction. They are corrected very quickly. So they just repeat the teacher correction mechanically. It doesn’t ensure to learn from their mistakes. He doesn’t use his body language for correction, appreciation or giving the cue to the students to correct themselves. . Of course it can’t be expected to stand on each correction one by one but the mistakes made very frequent may be permanent if not being corrected enough in a right way.  

OBSERVATION REPORT OF 7/8 WEEK

SCHOOL ATTENDED : Petrol Ofisi Primary School
CLASS : 2/F
Yonca Özkan - Seray Çiçektakan

Dilem Berk & Gizem Papatya Uğurdil


OBSERVATION TASK 1

     In order to draw up a report for our 7th week, we observed  the class paying regard to following questions:''What is there about the classroom, the activities, the teacher and students that helps create conditions for effective learning ?'' and ''What aspects of the lesson might hinder learning ?''

     Entering  the classroom, we came across with a snapshot of a conventional public school's learning environment. Layout of desks was well-ordered and in collaboration with low number of students, we knew that wasn't the best, we thought there were enough learning space for students. Besides, positioning of teacher's table was appropriate for effective observation. Although the sources of light were sufficient, teacher wanted to take adventage of daylight. According to us, this athmosphere was less oppressive and more spacious. The space between desks gave chance students to act nimbly, in case they involved in an activity or as a result of impulsive behaviour; such as when she/he dropped pencil to the floor, she/he attempted to reflexively stoop to pick up it. In addition, near the door there was a small cabinet where the extra papers, materials, napkin, boardmarkers were stored. In forthcoming seconds of lesson, one of the students spilt water over  herself and the floor, then she automatically went towards this cabinet to take some napkin. We set forth that cabinet undoubtly was the other positive factor. Besides all this good points, there were one or two negatives like a dustbin looked like quite unhealty and poor air circulation that reduces education standard in classroom. Through the end of lesson, breathing was really getting hard.

     Activities in the classroom were conformed with replicating real-life interaction. Simulation and role-play from which students derived immense benefit were used to encourage oral fluency. In our opinion this was the most exemplary case of effective learning. The other point is about cooperative writing; using peer evaluation, the teacher provided opportunity to enhance having more than one person working on it. Generally, activities were satisfying in reflection and sense-making.

     For effective learning, predominantly the teacher was ideally suited. During whole lesson, she bolstered and tried to persuade students to think that they would be in a safe environment while they were learning. Sometimes she approached motherly to them and if we consider students' average of age, this behaviour was pretty supportive. It was obvious that she designed lessons to enjoin the idea that learning is a process and making mistakes is common part of learning.

     With the help of convenient learning climate, students took responsibility for their education by collaborating with other students, actively participating and using teacher's feedback to develop their studies, improving predictions, explanations using evidence. But unfortunately we noticed that some of them carried feeling of failure and there was lack of a sense of accomplishment. May be, teacher shold intensify beat of her positive feedbacks.



OBSERVATION TASK 2

     For the 8^th week of our observation, we beholded whether the activities in a specific lesson are oriented towards fluency and accuracy.

     Primarily, the teacher focused on decoding the words rather than having students apprehend and read a text in a fluency way. As in first language acquisition, students engaged in segmenting the speech stream in target language. She tried to be careful in use of language to explain meaning. In writing part, she used revising and editing for what students wrote down as answer of comprehension questions. But, before stylistic accuracy, she concentrated on accuracy on grammar presentations. Because of the fact that students hadn’t gained automaticity for word recognition, she needed to explain which one is short answer and what they should do to make it short, like omitting some words or phrases. Exactly meanwhile, she tried to divide sentences into meaningful chunks. After that, it was easily observed that students gained relatively chunks recognition. At the same time she employed multisensory activities to empowered word recognition such as tracing, writing words (on the board/in the air) and copying. Students were just at beginner level so rate of word per minute was not important. Rather than fluency, she studied on speeding up words/chunks recognition and making students produce grammatically correct written and spoken language.