Taipei City Long-Men Junior High School Visit on April 1 April 7, 2008

Class Observation Notes

School: Taipei City Long-Men Junior High School

Teacher: Grade 8^th

Learners: 8 Graders

Date: April 1, 08

Opening:

It was unfortunately that when we visitors went into the class, the teacher in this class had started her lesson for a period of time. So we interrupted the class and observe it from the body of the whole lesson.

 

Body:

Name of the activity	Sequence of the activity	Patterns of interaction	pacing
Vocabulary teaching	1. T teaches Ss KK alphabets (discrete the vowel and consonant first ,and then combine them together) and leads Ss pronouncing the word. 2. T translates the word meaning, reading the sentence on the textbook, and she supples the related extra- knowledge(synonym, homonym, etc) 3. After the whole voc teaching, T leads Ss reading all the words again.	T would build the new knowledge on Ss previous one, helping them recall the old related words or sentences  taught before.Ex: “review”T departs the prefix “re-” first and take the old sentence to remind Ss such us the “site-viewing” which equal to the Chinese風景.	About 15 minute
Grammar teaching 1	1. T teaches Ss grammar application and limitation, and then lead the Ss learning the textbook’s sentence. 2. T helps Ss underlining the key word and analyzes the Gr. 3. Ss finish the exercises on the book and reply the answers on the class.	T goes around the whole class and evaluates Ss work when Ss complete the exercises. Teacher also use the activity of “九宮格”(-the neighbors of the called number of Ss need to stand up, and T would order one depending on Ss reactions) to go through the exercise checking work. Also, T gives the illustration of activity and the examples in English.	About 15 minute
Grammar teaching 2	1. read the sentence in English and translate it and explain the grammar in Chinese. 2. write down Ss translation on the blackboard and revise it with Ss(Gr teaching also) 3. Ss finish the exercise on the class.	The main method is in teacher- led	About 10 minutes

 

Closures:

Teacher in the end finished on the grammar teaching and required students finishing the incomplete sentence (one of the Ss was called to answer T’s question). Teacher also reminds students they would have a vocabulary test tomorrow.

 

Feedback:

It’s mainly a GTM, and I also found some techniques and class administration used in this class. Teacher continuously watched out each student’s action under the platform, and she would order some specific students answer the questions to attract their attentions. I also found that there had a great relationship between teacher and students. Their interaction was just like friends, and it was so natural and moderate.

I really love this kind of atmosphere in this class, and I also discovered that teacher would encourage students learning English grammar. She took the other subjects as comparison and wanted to arouse students’ interests about learning English. In addition, teacher’s examples were kind of authentic and related to student’s daily life. Teacher would use Ss’ name as example and made students laugh, intangible reinforcing students’ memories. I would treasure this experience and utilize the advantages learned from this class in my future teaching.