TESOL Certificate Programs

Observation Notebook

Observation Report Form

Name of Observer: Geraldine Odiakosa Observation #: 1

Date Observation Environment* Class Skill/Content Level Teacher
10/06/18 https://www.youtube.com/ Teaching Conversation Beginner Chris
watch?v=2_38JfVFQoU Beginners Westergaard
at The
Language
House EFL

*Include the URL if the class was online

WRITE THE OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO THE OBSERVATION GUIDELINES:

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO MATCH VOCABULARY WORDS TO COMPLETE TARGET
PHRASES WITHOUT MISTAKES.

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO VERBALIZE ACTIVITIES PERFORMED IN THE MORNING,

AFTERNOON AND AT NIGHT IDENTIFIED BY PICTURES WITHOUT MISTAKES.

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO COMPLETE A SIMPLE CONVERSATION USING THE TARGET

PHRASES WITHOUT MISTAKES
Notes while observing:

Warm up
T introduces himself and says, “Hello my name is Chris nice to meet you”. Elicits S
response by signaling students to repeat after him by raising his hands.

T demonstrates/models by going on the floor and waking up as if from sleeping. Has

picture of clock at 7:00 with picture of sun with arrows pointing up. T points picture to S
and one S responds by saying “7o’clock”. T says good.

Presentation
T puts picture of sun and 7:00 time on the board and then writes “In the mor ___” and
elicits S to complete sentence and S say “morning”.
Points to each S to repeat “In the Morning”. S repeats “In the morning”.
T has another picture with time of 14:00 in the afternoon. T Raises hands for S to repeat
phrase “In the afternoon.”
T points to students again to repeat.
T moves on to say, “In the evening”.
S pronunciation is not correct. T repeats the word “the”.
S repeats “the” with correct pronunciation.
T points to student and says, “In the morning, I wake up”.

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Observation Notebook
T points to another S to repeat.
S says “In the morning, who wake up? T responds with yes “I wake up” (pointing to
himself) and says “good”.

T uses a lot of body language to point to self and S to elicit response. Elicits response
from students to use vocabulary words or to practice.

T points to picture of a plate of food. T points to it and says “In the morning, I eat _____”
S says “food”.
T points to S to repeat the phrase.
T gives example of other vocabulary words such as “to eat breakfast”, “to eat lunch”, “to
take shower”. Then T uses “I” to show how to complete the sentence.
T models sitting in chair, one S says “relax”. T says yes, to relax. S repeats to relax to
relax.
T models sleeping. One S says, “to sleep”.
T praises S.
T points to students each to says, “to sleep”.

Practice
T has note cards that say, “In the morning”, “In the afternoon” and “In the evening”. T
demonstrates how to perform the activity of matching phrases and action.
S have a list of phrases and students matches them to create sentences.

T walks around to each student to correct mistakes. Uses modeling to guide students to
right answer.

T asks, “What do you do?” to class.

S responds “I eat, I take a shower.
T practices question and answer. Signals student to ask each other “What do you do”?
S response with “I do _____ in the morning.”
T says “what do you do in the morning to S.
S responds “In the morning, I coffee, I eat coffee”.
T says “No, ‘I drink coffee’.
S says, “In the morning, I drink coffee”.
T walks around to listen to another S practicing

T repeats same practice but with “What do you do in the afternoon?”

T uses a lot of waiting and pauses for students to respond.
T asks S “What do you do in the afternoon?”
S says, “In the afternoon, I go to shop”.
T says, “Go shopping”. Student repeats correct phrase
T encourages students not to use notes.
T Repeats with what do you do in the evening. T puts students into groups of three.
T points to students and says “three, three, three, no notes, only dialogue.
T repeats “What do you do at night?” Elicits student to repeat after him. T corrects only
the mistake and not the whole sentence.

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Observation Notebook

Production
Now S ask each other questions and practice with no notes and only dialogue between
each other.

Final, full demonstration. T goes to student and says “Hi (shakes hand) how are you”.
S responds “I’m good, I’m fine.”
T says “Tell me about your day. What do you do in the morning?”
S says, “In the morning I wake up.”
T says, “What else?”
S says, “I eat breakfast and I go to work.”
T says and “What do you do in the afternoon?”
S continues with production but video cuts off.

T has S pair off to have a conversation. S ask each other the questions of the day.
T moves around class to listen to S conversations.

Wrap Up
Class ends with review of errors which the video did not go in much depth.
Class ends with T saying ok thank you very much and makes a joke with the S and they
laugh.

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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)

I observed an online beginner level EFL class taught in Prague, Czech Republic.

This class was made of six adult women taught by teacher Chris Westergaard. In this

observation, I focused on Teaching strategies.

It was very evident by the observation that the teacher used the Communicative

Teaching Learning theory. From the start of the class, the teacher used hand motions such

as lifting his hands in the air to encourage students to repeat after him. He also paused at

the end of a sentence as to create a mental “fill in the blank” line to elicit students to

complete the sentence.

During the warm up, the teacher used modeling and body language to

demonstrate the first sentence of the day which was “to wake up”. It was interesting to

find the teacher using the students to respond to provide answers to the modeling. This

technique gets the students to think and engage with the lesson. I liked the use of simple

pictures such a clock, sun, moon and food to indicate the time of day and the what a

normal activity would be during that time.

During the practice phase, students were placed in pairs to ask each other the

question “What do you do in the morning?” and then the students responds with “In the

morning, I wake up” or they can recall a vocabulary word to answer the question. The

teacher provided immediate feedback by repeating on the error in the student response.

This allowed the students to identify the error and repeat the corrected sentence on their

own which improved their fluency as the lesson progressed.

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Observation Notebook
By the end of the production the students were able to converse with each about

their day using short sentences. As someone who has never seen an EFL class, this was

amazing to see. The students can use these common phrases immediately at their

workplace and among new friends. The students are able to use critical thinking skills to

learn the English language that will help them develop in the classroom and in the real

world (Richards, 2006). This ESL class showed me that adult learners, at the end a short

time, can have the confidence to introduce themselves to English speakers in their

community.

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Observation Notebook
References

Richards, J. C. (2006). Communicative Language Teaching Today. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Last Updated: 3/18/2019 10:39 PM