TESOL Certificate Programs

Observation Notebook

Observation Report Form

Name of Observer_John Quinteros__ Observation # __1 __

Date Observation Class Skill/Content Level Teacher
Environment*
7/8/1 Online Kindergarten Kindergarten
7 ESL Lesson Allen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2tGtw1_W_E
*Include the URL if the class was online

WRITE THE OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO THE OBSERVATION GUIDELINES:

-STUDENTS WILL FOLLOW ALONG WITH THE TEACHER AS HE SINGS THEM DIFFERENT
SONGS
-STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS FROM THE TEACHER WHEN ASKED
-STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY DIFFERENT PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES WHEN SHOWN
A PICTURE OF SAID ACTIVITY
-STUDENT WILL BE ABLE TO ANSWER COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS BASED ON THE
VIDEO SHOWN IN CLASS

Notes while observing

Pre-observation
-Throughout the classroom, various different objects (such as the whiteboard and the
television) are labeled with big, bright pieces of paper which feature the English word of
said object.
-On the whiteboard are cartoon pictures featuring people performing different physical
activity.

Warm-up
0:11 Teacher grabs the students attention by singing and song and using hand gestures
pointing to himself (i.e. Look! Look! Look at me!). Students are following along,
matching the words and hand movements as the teacher performs them.

1:26 Teacher then asks the students where is he from? The students answers he is
from England. The teacher then asks where are the students from? to which they
answer China. The class then segways into another song Where Am I From?, using
the different country flags hanging from the ceiling.

2:29 Teacher begins another song, Reach Up High! Point to the Sky! Throughout the
song, the students are following along, using the same hand movements as the teacher.
Last Updated: 8/19/2016 2:38 PM
 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

3:09 Teacher begins another song, What Do We Do?

Vocabulary lesson
3:51 Teacher walks over to the whiteboard, where different pictures are taped to it. As
the teacher points to each word, the class responds in unison what is depicted on the
picture (running, swimming, crying, laughing, and baby).

4:16 Teacher turns on the television. On-screen is a still image of a scene at the beach.
Teacher points to a person and asks what that person is doing. The class responds, using
the vocabulary words they had just learned (i.e. the baby is crying, the person is
swimming.)

5:44 Teacher shushes the students and reminds them to listen to him.

6:15 When the class starts talking loudly again, the teacher goes to the board and moves a
small magnet from the happy face closer to the sad(?) face. The class immediately settles
down.

Comprehension lesson

6:59 After asking some more comprehension questions, teacher then begins to play a
short video related to the still picture. The class is attentive and quiet as the video plays.

8:02 After the video, teacher begins asking the students questions related to the video (i.e.
What happened? Why is the baby crying?). This time, the students raise their hands
and the teacher chooses one student at a time to answer.

8:58 Teacher then moves on to another activity (the fish game)

Last Updated: 8/19/2016 2:38 PM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook
What did you learn about teaching or learning from this lesson as it relates to the
theory you have studied in your TESOL classes? Include at least one reference (with
an in-text citation) to support your response. (250-500 words)

For this classroom observation, I focused my attention on how the teacher

interacts with the students and what teaching strategies were used in not only teaching the
lesson, but also managing the classroom. As this was a Kindergarten ESL class at
Suzhou Foreign Language School in China, the students were all very young children,
presumably from the local area. It is difficult to gauge what English skill level the
children were, but they knew enough to keep up with the teacher during the lesson and
songs and answer questions. The teacher is from England, as it is mentioned in one of
the many songs he sings during the warm-up part of the lesson.
The teacher seems to be utilizing the Direct Method with his students. As defined
by Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2011, p.25), the Direct Method has one very basic
rule: no translation is allowed. In fact, the Direct Method receives its name from the fact
that meaning is to be conveyed directly in the target language through the use of
demonstration and visual aids, with no recourse to the students native language. True
to the definition, the teacher speaks in English only, but to aid the students with the
learning, there are many visual aids used throughout the classroom, from using the
pictures on the board to labeling the objects with the English spelling. The students are
able to understand and learn the vocabulary even if they may not fully understand the
English meaning.
In addition, the teacher uses many hand gestures throughout the lesson, such as
when the teacher needs to grab the students attention, he points to his ears, signaling that
the students need to listen. Another example is during the vocabulary lesson, when he
makes gestures related to what he is pointing to, like rocking his arms back and forth for
baby or doing a jogging motion for running. The teacher also sang many songs
during the warm-up portion of the lesson. Because the songs used the same lyrics over
and over and involved some more hand gestures, the repetition helped the children grasp
the English lyrics and what they meant.

Last Updated: 8/19/2016 2:38 PM

 TESOL Certificate Programs
Observation Notebook

Anderson, D. L.-F. (2011). Techniques & Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Last Updated: 8/19/2016 2:38 PM