Observation of teacher

University Degree Education and Teaching

EMOU01

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OBSERVATION

This observation was booked with the tutor a week before it took place. In a meeting prior to the observation he explained the curriculum covered within the course and the topic that was to be covered in the next session.

CLASSROOM SIZE

The tutor was an experienced and qualified teacher. This was a medium sized class; it consisted of 12 learners. However only 10 learners were present on the day. The learners were of different age groups, the age range varied from 18 years old to 50 years old. The learners belonged to different ethnic groups; there were 3 from Pakistan, 3 White British, 2 from Somalia and 2 from India. For some of the learners English was not the first language and these students were taking the ESOL (English for the Speakers of Other Languages) classes to improve their English language skills.

ROOM LAYOUT

The lesson took place in a fairly large room. The layout of the classroom made a ‘U’ shape as all the computer desks were placed around the classroom. The centre of the classroom was furnished with a large fixed table surrounded by chairs. There was smart board fixed in front of this furnished area. All the health and safety procedures were observed i.e. there were no wires and cables exposed to cause a hazard.

THE LESSON

The tutor had a comprehensive scheme of work and a brief lesson plan available. The tutor provided me with a copy of lesson plan at the beginning of the session. The topic of the lesson was ‘Introduction to Spread sheets’.

The three objectives of the lesson were

To enter the text labels formulae into a spreadsheet
To change the column widths, row heights, insert and delete rows and columns as required.
To refine the layout by formatting text and numbers.

Looking at the lesson plan it describes the teacher and student activities. ...

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THE LESSON

The three objectives of the lesson were

To enter the text labels formulae into a spreadsheet
To change the column widths, row heights, insert and delete rows and columns as required.
To refine the layout by formatting text and numbers.

Looking at the lesson plan it describes the teacher and student activities. It has been noticed that these activities involve more of individual work and does not allow students to work in groups.

The lesson was set to start at 9:00 am; the tutor arrived before the class. He turned on all the computers and made sure that they were all working properly. A technical assistant arrived after a few minutes and laid out the overhead projector for the teacher. The learners arrived one by one and greeted the teacher. The teacher responded pleasantly passing a friendly smile. Tutor recorded the students attendance in the register at 09:15.When all students were settled in their usual chairs the teacher made a movement to the front of the class and outlined the objectives of the lesson using the PowerPoint slides on the smart board. The teacher then explained briefly the tasks that were to be practiced in the session. As he went with along with his demonstration he involved the students as well. He posed the questions related to tasks and encouraged students to think and come with a proposed solution. After posing a question he would wait; most of the students were then trying to work out the answers. He encouraged the response to the questions and praised the correct answers. This Q&A session helped students to gain an understanding of the tasks and also gave the tutor an opportunity to check their learning. The students were then set off for a 10-minute coffee break.

The lesson started again at 10:10 am. The class was set to work on a worksheet titled ‘ski holiday budget’. This worksheet allowed students to create a spreadsheets to budget a holiday. The tasks included entering text, numbers and formulae into a spreadsheet. Some of the students were finding hard to accomplish these tasks as they missed the previous session. The tutor went around the class and helped the students on one to one basis.

By setting the individual work tutor gained an opportunity to go around and help the students on one to one basis. It was observed that tutor was in the centre of instructor-facilitator continuum hence the control was shared both between teacher and learner. This relationship is showed on the diagram below

Fig: The instructor-facilitator continuum (Source taken from Petty (1998) Teaching Today page no 117)

After this facilitation session lesson came to an end. The tutor managed to finish the lesson on time. However the duration given for the individual tasks took longer than expected. Tutor advised all the students to save their work on their floppy disks and complete the rest of tasks at home. The tutor also informed the class that there will be a re-cap of this lesson in the next class and encouraged all the students to come up with questions they may have about the assignment.

The tutor tried to maintain a common pace throughout the session but it proved ineffective as the class had learners with mixed capabilities. Differentiation could have been achieved in this mixed-ability learners class by splitting students into three groups based on their abilities/attainment e.g. beginners, improvers and advance learners. Then separate activities for each group could be assigned. (Source taken from Petty (1998) Teaching Today, page 33).

CONCLUSION:

The lesson was well prepared and well presented. The resources used were worksheets on EXCEL. However it was noted that for the ESOL learners the vocabulary was difficult to understand. Students work was checked a number of time during the session and corrected by demonstration. The assessment methods also included Q&A session and observations. Petty (1998) states the ‘check and correct’ phase provides vital feedback for the teacher as well. This repeatable feedback cycle must continue until mastery of the learning has been achieved.

Reflecting upon the observation it was noticed that the students with weak English skills were a bit shy to communicate with the teacher and were talking among themselves on how to work on the tasks given. This cross talk created a bit of disturbance in the class; it was noted that although the teacher was explaining the tasks using simple language, he considered the ESOL students to be the less able ones on the communication ground. Research shows that teachers have stereotypes like ‘girls are not good at maths’, boys are not good at art’ and so on. Likes, dislikes, prejudices and stereotyping would matter less if it were not for the effect of the teacher’s expectation on a student’s learning (Petty, 1998). Students should be treated equally and their efforts to learn should be acknowledged and judged without being bias. Although the lesson plan did say that the needs of ESOL students would be taken into consideration but the tutor did not take any practical step to address their communication problem. Different resources such as use of flash cards could prove useful to teach the IT terms.

REFERENCE

Petty, G (1998) Teaching Today.2nd Edition. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes (publishers) Ltd.