UNIVERSIDAD DE PLAYA ANCHA

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES
EARLY ENGLISH TEACHING PRACTICE
2009

OBSERVATION STAGE

Name of student teacher: Karla Calderón Yévenes

Name of School: Liceo Ovispo Antonio Castro

Number of students: 37 students

Date: May, 10th, 2009

Class: Fouth and third highschool grade

First Task: The School.

Refer to the general background of the school in a clear and brief way. Describe:
Physical location
The name of the school I am attending to is “Liceo Ovispo Antonio Castro” which is
located in Crucero Ajak Street N 18, Cerro Cárcel.

Organisation
Principal: Mr. José Luis Villanueva,
UTP Department: Mrs. Ximena Espinoza
General inspector: Mr. Juan Carlos Astorga
Orientation Department: Mrs. Karen Marín.

Student population
There are 178 students enrolled on the school.

School rules.
The students are not allowed to smoke, to drink alcohol, to consume drugs, to sell or to
buy any kind of goods inside the school. They musn´t use mobile phones or any kind of
device which implies using headphones.

Second Task: The classroom.

The atmosphere of the room

General speaking, according to my experience in third highschool grade the atmosphere
of the room is good. In spite of the fact that there are very noisy students, the majority
of the class behave in a respectful way when Mrs Carol is trying to explain the subjects.
However the fourth highschool grade pay less attention than the third grade to the
teacher.
The levels of engagement in the room
Although these two classes are not disrespectful, they don´t have high level of
engagement in the room, there are just a few who show a real commitment to the
english as a foreign language and the rest of the class devote their time to other
assingments from other subjects or they use to talk between them while other are
listening to music.

Students seating, space and whiteboard location

Students seat in double desks, there are two lines of desks in every classroom which are
large but not wide, I could say that are narrowed classrooms, though the third
highschool grade´s room is a bit larger than the room of the other class. The students
seating is almost the same everywhere; the noisy ones are seating down into the last two
desks behind and the students who pay more attention are siting down in front of the
whiteboard which is at the front of the classroom. I think that dstribution is a
desadvange to the teacher, since the room is very large and the most problematic
students seat behind it is difficult to her to manage them.

Classroom equipment.
There is a laboratory room in the school, where students are able to use the computers
on their breaks but any of the days I have attended to they had being there. Therefore
the only available equipment for the english class is a dictionary “english-spanish” that
it is found in the library.

Third Task: The teacher

Classroom routine
The teacher develop her classes in spanish all the time, she always give general
instructions about the taks and the students make the exercises given afterwards. She
asks the students to create a lot of dialogues which must being made in formal and
informal style.

Motivation activities performed.

According to my observation the students do not feel very motivated with this kind of
activities because they usually talk between them about other things and they can hardly
develop a sentence in present tense. There are not motivational activities performed in
her classes. The only “kind of motivation” I have seen from her take place when she is
correcting tests and she informs students whose grades are reasonably good.

Learning activities conducted and stages of the lesson

She developes a unit and then she writes in the whiteboard all the vocabulary in it and
explains its tense forms, then she writes sentences and exesices like “Filling in the gaps”
or “answering questions”. The rest of the class the students need to develop this
exersices. She is teaching them the passive voice now.

Material resourced used.

Since I start going to classes the material used is created by her. There was only one
time that she brought some sheets of paper with a list of exercises to the students (and
they have to pay for them).
Fourth Task: Things that help to create conditions for effective learning and the
aspects that play a part in preventing learning

How motivated are the learners? Why?

I do not see a strong motivation in students when they are in class. I have talked to a
few of them and they have the knowledge that english is important, as a matter of fact
they have told me that they want to make an english course after graduation, however
they do not pay attention in class. Actually, the majority of students use headphones
when it is time to develope the exersices guide.

Are they taking part in their own learning? How?

Since the second class I started helping them on their own desks and some of them
seemed to pay interest and attetions to the tasks. I can see that they tried to make a lot of
effort in understanding english forms, but unfortunately they represent the minority in
comparison to the rest of the class.

Are they expecting the teacher to do the work for them?

Some of them try the teacher do the work for them, sometimes they called me and want
me to do the exercises for them. But at least they have an interest for learning, the
students I am worrying about are those who never ask for help and they just stay there
lookink at the front, talking between them and making jokes.

Do they like to participate in group work? If so, how do they behave?

They are used to do dialogues, therefore they have to work in pairs or trios, although
most of the time they demonstrate lack of interest in front of the activity . What I want
to mean about this is that they devote that time to listening to music or talk between
them instead of creating or rehearingl the dialogue.

What kinds of learning activities do the students like the most? What do they like the
least?
I have no knowledge of the kind of learning activities students like the most as a group,
but I have talked to small groups and a student named Marfil who likes english very
much told me that he would like to learn english performing scenes because he thinks
theatre should help them to loose their fear to english. According to what I have seen as
a group and what I have being told by individual students, what they like the least is to
develop exercises guide, they found them very boring.