REPORT NUMBER 1

A report for lesson observation of a fellow teacher

I have observed a fellow teacher only recently, as part of the pre-planned annual activities
for continuous professional development. In collaboration with my colleagues we have created a
list of criteria for lesson observation, based on the national standards and requirement set by the
Bureau for Development of Education and the Ministry.
The observation form consists of four main parts that are very detailed and include all the
sub-criteria (lesson preparation, presentation, classroom management and atmosphere and
materials and resources). Usually for conveniences sake we use a rating scale from 0-4, which
means that the teachers performance can range from poor to outstanding with good and fair in
between. Afterwards I and the teacher have a discussion on the observed lesson. However, in this
report I will include more in depth explanations for all the lesson parts.
The lesson I observed was taught with twenty 14 year- old -students, in the primary
school where I teach. The aim of the lesson was to revise body parts (pronunciation, spelling,
meaning and use) and introduce idioms with body parts, explain the meaning and the contexts in
which they are used.
The first criterion is the lesson plan to be clearly discernible and to contain feasible and
applicable aims. Her plan met this, in my opinion, basic criterion and the used teaching
strategies were in line with the lesson aims. The learning outcomes were well- defined and
feasible.
In the introductory part, a song was used as a warm up (skeleton song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS0W4M4Uuno).The students were asked to listen to the
song and imagine what the accompanying video might be. They were also asked to write down
all the body parts then can remember. On second listening they check whether the video ideas
were right and whether they managed to list all the body parts.
As a warm up exercise it activated students schemata on learned vocabulary and lead
them into the topic. Even though the teacher didnt explicitly mentioned what the lesson was
going to be it was obvious.
The main part consisted of several activities that were logical and with gentle transition,
geared towards the main aim which was introduction of body idioms. The first activity, organized
as a group work, checked students understanding of the written target words by placing them
where appropriate on the body drawn on a large piece of paper. Each student got 3 words and
among them they had 15 words to glue on the paper. The time allotted for this activity was wellcalculated and they managed to finish in 5-7 minutes as planned.

This activity served as a quick revision and set the pace of the lesson.
Afterwards in pairs, the students got fill-in the gap worksheet. The teacher encouraged
them to guess where to put the words (body parts) in order to form idioms. The biggest strength
of this activity was that those were not random sentences but the teacher went through the
trouble to create a text that was meaningful and interesting. Once they finished, the teacher
checked the answers and typed the students suggestions. The text consisted of 10 sentences so
each pair got the chance to have a go. The teacher noted their answers and then showed the
original text next to the students work, so that they could compare and correct the mistakes
themselves.
The first activity from the main part, was structured to gradually introduce the students
to another non-literal use of the words they had previously revised. The transition was subtle and
logical.
The following activity, mime the idiom came as a follow- up and further practice. There
were representatives from each group who came up front and mimed and idiom and the rest of
the class tried to guess it.
This activity, which is fun, involves movement and is slightly competitive, enhances
understanding and active participation.
Next the students, individually, were instructed to illustrate an idiom they were given,
within one minute time limit. Then they swapped drawings and their partner had to write the
idiom next to the drawing. Once ready, the teacher blue- tagged the drawings onto the board and
asked students to take a look after class and decide whether they guessed correctly.
The instructions the teacher gave were minimal and straightforward, the language
effective and appropriate for their level and needs. Furthermore she left space for the students to
do the activities without rushing them or intervening, except in cases where they asked for help.
She moved around the classroom in a purposeful way, monitoring and silently observing, helping
when necessary, without being obtrusive. Students felt motivated and the working atmosphere
was evident. There was a good balance between structured and more open -ended task, and the
activities, even though simple, were effective and to the point. So were the chosen materials.
For the final activity the teacher read short paragraphs with specific situations which
required that a certain idiom is used appropriately. They were supposed to only write down the
idioms which corresponded to each paragraph. They signed their names on the paper and handed
it over to the teacher.
The final activity was more focused and demanding and the aim of it was for the teacher to get
feedback to what extend the students understood the meaning of the idioms and learned how to
use them in context. This meant that on one hand, she provided an opportunity for the students to
use the idiom in a real life situation and on the other, the teacher got feedback on what was
learned and what the most common mistakes were, so that she can work on this in the future/

For homework she instructed students to check their Edmodo profiles (she had Edmodo
group for the class) for the homework task. Namely, each student gets one word and they should
find a few idioms with that word. In the next few lessons, they all get a chance to present their
findings giving instructions, presenting and choosing their own activities and tasks.
The purpose of the homework was to raise students interest, and set a challenge for them to
do their own research into the topic and present it to the class. Additionally the teacher
announced the flipped classroom instructional strategy and he students were familiar with it,
which meant that the students were accustomed to student- centered learning mode.
All in all, the observed lesson reached rather high standards in instruction, presentation,
performance, balance in teacher and students talking time, plausibility and real expectations in
aims and objectives fulfillment.

REPORT NUMBER 2
Report for lesson observation number two

The lesson I observed as part of the observation plan explained above, was taught in a
class of 23- fourteen year- olds. The general topic of the unit was Holidays and the focus of the
lesson was reading a short text and presentation of irregular verbs.
The lesson plan had the main aims, activities and tasks listed. Those were:
-the students to be able to read and understand the text
-the students to familiarize themselves with irregular verbs
-the students to be able to use irregular verbs for expressing past tense
And the activities were reading, listening, answering question, fill-in the gap activities,
practising grammar, making sentences and writing a short text on a given topic.
The teacher prepared a lesson plan that included all the things she wanted to do (even
though there were a bit scattered and unclear),she had the aims of the lesson stated so I was
intrigued to see how she planned to achieve those, because they seemed quite a few and very
broad.

In the introductory part she announced that they will start with a listening activity, and
asked the students to open their books on page 30(Massages 2 course book- 1). The students
were told to repeat the words and find the things that were not shown on the pictures. The
students repeated the words and shouted out the answers of the missing things. The activity took
less than 4 minutes. The teacher played the CD again and the students were asked to repeat the
words again.
The teacher started the class with actual exercise from the book, without using any warm up
activity to lead them into the topic or retrieve their previous knowledge. The actual listening
activity was meant to lead them into the topic because of the given words and the pictures which
were related to the general topic. The students were familiar with the words, and that was
obvious, and insisting on listening to the words once again was redundant and didnt do much.
The first activity in the main part was a listening activity, and the students were told to
close their books and listen to a story. The teacher wrote on the board one question related to the
text that the students needed to find the answer to. She then played the story and asked a
volunteer what the answer was. The students answered and then she replayed the text but this
time instructing the students to fill in- the gaps in a given exercise. They needed to fill in the
names of the characters mentioned in the story, recognizing which thing was done by whom.
The text the students listened to was short enough to keep their attention, had a point and
was amusing. However, what was missing were more demanding and challenging pre-listening
activities. The students were not as focused as they would have been, had there been other
questions or information they had been asked to find or any related task they could have
performed. Moreover, when they found the answer the teacher didnt dwell on it at all, there was
not a follow -up to it and she swiftly transferred onto the next exercise. In my opinion her playing
the story again, was not a good choice because the students filled in the gaps by quickly
scanning the text. There was much more potential to this activity but it was underused. There
was not a proper strategy to ensure understanding on a higher level.
In the second part the teacher wrote five verbs on the board and asked the students to
write down in their notebooks the past forms of those. They were all regular verbs and the
students did it quickly. She then explained that there are also irregular verbs that change their
form if put in past tense. She wrote down the irregular verbs used in the text and asked the
students to underline them, and then in pairs to come up with sentences using that verb. When
they were done, she asked random students to read their sentences out loud, which they did, but
again there was not a follow- up to this.
The next exercises in the book was choose- the -right answer activity in which the
students were asked to choose the correct verb after reading a short paragraph. The time allotted
was five minutes and the majority were finished in only two and waited for the others to finish.
1 http://www.cambridge.org/us/cambridgeenglish/catalog/secondary/messages

Then the teacher checked the answers by only giving the letters of the correct answers (a, b, c or
d).
The teacher revised the regular verbs first, so as to refresh students knowledge before
introducing the irregular ones. However, she only chose verbs taken out of context and the
students just added the ed- inflection, which was mechanical and not really helpful. She then
provided the irregular verbs forms and the students were expected to remember those, actually,
recognize them in the text. Recognizing verb forms should certainly be the first step to learning
but there was not a task that could have upgraded their understanding or lead to rulededuction or actual use of verbs in context.
In the conclusion, the students were asked to write a story begging with Last year I went
on a holiday and the time allotted for this task was 10 minutes. They worked individually, but
seemed to struggle with ideas, words and phrases. The teacher provided help when the students
would ask for a word in Macedonian and she would give the equivalent counterpart in English.
At the end of the lesson she chose three students (the best ones) to read their stories while the
others listened and were asked to express their opinion on their fellow- students writing.
For homework the teacher asked the students to finish their stories.
This activity was more open ended in comparison to the others and aimed towards use
of verbs for expressing past events and activities in context. The shortcomings were that the
teacher failed to provide support in the form of scaffolding. Had there been a brain-storming
activity where they might have shared their initial ideas, or word banks or similar text drafts for
the students to rely on, they would have performed better. There was no peer review prior to
whole class feedback. The students were asked to provide feedback, but there were no preestablished and agreed-on criteria, and they relied on their judgment which was subjective and
wasnt very constructive. Furthermore, some students, lost interest because they were not able to
write or felt pressured to fulfill a task in such a short time and with not as much support as they
needed. And as far as lesson aims are concerned, they included reading and understanding of a
text, presentation of form, meaning and use of past words.
The text was listened to, and apart from scanning for information the students, never
actually read the text. They found the required information, but there was not a proper strategy
to prove to what extent they understood the text. They were familiarized with several irregular
verbs, the teacher provided explanation on how they are formed, which was good for an initial
stage. However, all the activities were more on the level of recognition and there wasnt a right
balance between closed and open ended task. The final activity required that the students
produce language themselves, but they didnt have enough support and not everyone managed
which meant that the instructions were not differentiated.
The transition from one activity to another was rather abrupt and it was a bit confusing
for the students to know what to do and when. For example there was a lot of opening and

closing of books, and the instructions were not very clear so the students asked for reassurance
from their friends and it took time of the actual work. There was not a task sequencing or
gradation and it seemed that each activity stood on its own.
The students only worked individually, apart from the pair work but there was no clear
outcome, feedback or sharing. They were cooperative, the discipline was good, but they just did
what they were told and the lack of enthusiasm was evident. The teacher helped the students
when they asked for information, but she didnt encourage open cooperation among them mostly
because there was no group work or any other collaborative research activity. The teacher didnt
provide an opportunity to check whether the lesson aims were achieved and how much students
managed to learn.
The homework applied to the students who didnt manage to finish, but excluded the
others. The teacher relied on the course book and the instructions given in the teachers book,
she took all the activities for granted, didnt modify or adapt them to serve her students needs
which showed lack of flexibility and creativity. Finally, the lesson plan lacked clear objectives
and the chosen teaching strategies only partially served to achieve the lesson goals.