UNIVERSIDAD DE PLAYA ANCHA

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES
EARLY ENGLISH TEACHING PRACTICE
2009

OBSERVATION STAGE
Name of student teacher: Veronica Ordenes S.
Name of School: Colegio Victor Antonio
Number of students: 16 students
Date: May 12th, 2009
Class: 2nd year of high school

Task Nº1: The school

Refer to the general background of the school in a clear and brief way.

Victor Antonio School is located in a quiet neighbourhood near to the centre of

Playa Ancha. The address is Aguayo astreet.
The director’s name is Victoria Muga and the UTP chief is Patricio Troncoso. I
really do not have more information about he organisation, I mean numbers of
teachers or the names of another important members of the school because I
did not have enough time to have a meeting with the head teacher because she
is pregnant and she was resting at home during two weeks until today.
In Victor Antonio School classes are composed by a reduced number of
students, between eleven and seventeen; there is one section for each level,
and all of the classes are composed by girls and boys. The student population
is around one hundred and seventy from first year of primary school to fourth
year of high school.
On the other side, the students do not have enough knowledge about their
school’s rules, but whatever the rules are, the students do not fail to this
regulation. They always get on time in the morning, it is not usually for them to
have negative observations, and they are very respectful with heir pairs. They
also respect rules about personal hygiene.

Task Nº2: The classroom

The rooms in the school are organized in a particular way, each subject is teach
in a specific room, so students have to move room by room according to the
subject that they have to attend to. The rooms are decorated and each one has
books, visual material, and tools depend of the subject. Teachers are very
careful with their classroom environment. There are English books from 7th year
of secondary school to 4th year of high school, dictionaries, extra material, etc. It
also has a radio and each student has their own locker. The classrooms do not
have a TV set or data show, they have to ask for it when it is required.
The English room is small and it is organized according to students work in
group of three or four. The whiteboard is located in front of the student but up o
now it is not used at all. Teachers only used it when student do not understand
some word that teacher say.
From the beginning of my attendance to the school the class was working with a
replacing teacher because the main teacher is pregnant and she had to rest for
a weeks because of some complication with the pregnancy. But today the main
teacher returned to the school and students behaved in a different way. At first
students did not work successfully, and they were not motivated in English
classes but today they work pretty good because they have a good relationship
with their teacher and the personality of the teacher motivates them to work in a
successful way.
Here the students are more engaged with English classes than in another
school that my classmates have talked about. I think it is because this is a
private school and parents incentive the students to study this foreign idiom as
a second language.

Task Nº3: The teacher

Describe the following:

• Classroom routine.

At first, the teacher salute the student and ask them how they are and if the
have had breakfast, etc. Immediately she starts with the lesson and the
attendance is taken while the guys are doing some individual or group work.
The teacher does not speak louder when she takes the attendance; she just
does it observing the class. At the end of the class she concludes it and talk
about what they are going to do the next class.

• Motivation activities performed.

During this time I have attended at one group workshop that the students had to
do in order to get a good accumulative mark. And now they are starting working
on an activity where they have to act or perform based on a movie that the all of
them went to cinema to watch it. The students did a pretty good job in the first
activity but most of them did it only because of the good mark they could get.
But, in the other hand, the acting activity motivated a lot, they think that it is a
fun way to learn English.

• Material resourced used.

The teacher used a learning book called “Global English”, this book is given by
the government and it is used for the theory, grammar and listening resources.
At the beginning of each book unit, the teacher likes to introduce the students to
it and try to find some didactic workshop, class games, etc. to do it.

• Stages of the lesson.

At the moment, I have not seen a formal stage for each class but teacher told
me that her routine involve a number of steps:
 1) The main theme and the objectives for the class is presented by the
teacher
2) Background knowledge about the theme they are going to work on.
3) Activities are developed.
4) Conclusions.

Task Nº4: The learners

In this observation task, focus on the things that help to create conditions for
effective learning and on the aspects that play a part in preventing learning.

• How motivated are the learners? Why?

Most of them are fully motivated in English classes. I think this particular
motivation is because the class team is a small group of fourteen students, the
teacher is very nice with them, there is a good relationship. Besides, this school
is a private one and in most cases students’ disposition from private school
differs to the students from public schools, in this case, the students who I am
working with thinks that English is an important tool for their future and.

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

Most of cases students try to work mith by their owns and few times ask to the
teacher doubts wich answers they can find by theirself with a dictionary for
example. They wrok with disctionaries and only ask when they feel really
confused. In this cases the teacher try to explain in different ways to clarify the
ideas.

• Are they taking part in their own learning? How?

Some of them are learning english only because they use to listen english
music and they are allways wondering what songs say, but apart from that their
learing only takes part in the class room.

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

behave?
Well, they like to work in groups and that is the way they allmays work, in roups
of four or or three. They wor pretty good, but the problems appears when the
teacher organizes the groups trying to form new work groups. The students are
living in a period where girls often hates boys, and boys usually bother girls only
for silly things. That is why they prefer to work with the same guys they allways
shared.

• What kinds of learning activities do the students like the most?

What do they like the least?
Obviously they prefer didactic activities, for exaple, now, they are preparing a
performance based o a movie. They are fully motivated working on this because
they prefer to perform and work in group than work on listening or grammar
activities from the study book.
Romina Jaqui Maltrain