THE IMPORTANCE OF THE OBSERVATION

Alexander Montoya Marulanda

When people talk about a English teacher, commonly they think that is just a
person that convey vocabulary to his students and a few times they use to take for
granted that a teacher make the same stuff in every single class, but there are
many things involved to get a meaningful class in the educational action, also a
teacher has to take into account many stuffs as the learner variables where we
found the age of the students and the proficiency levels. The first one is very
important being that a teacher has to take in mind the age of the students, if they
are kids, teenagers or adults; it brings to the teacher a base where he could build
meaningful knowledge bear in mind what he has to teach in that age, and which
are the limitations. The second one are the proficiency levels, I am not going to use
quite words but the proficiency is something that the teacher consider by the stuff
that he may teach to each level. In didactics class we participate in some
observations, to be precise 3 in which we observed the pair and group work in
classroom, activities to develop critical and creative thinking and finally, the use
and adaptation of authentic materials in the classroom.
The work in pair or groups in a classroom is important for the sake of it contributes
to the students to share knowledge with their mates, in the first class the teacher
made a game of competition with teenagers, that is a good idea since teenagers
always want to win, further it provides an environment of collaboration, also we
saw another teacher but this time working with kids, it is important for kids to work
in groups or pairs insomuch as it develops their social skills, but in this part we saw
a cooperative work because everybody works whereas that in the first we saw a
collaborative work where there was a repartition of tasks to come to the main
objective that it was to win. In the second class we observed an activity where the
students had to collect information of their mates and they reported it. Then, we
saw a role play where they had to be very creative to transmit the message to their
mates through the role play; these activities show us the importance of the
development of critical and creative thinking, they have to think while their mates
were acting to get the message also the activities allow a develop in the social skill
and group work. Finally, in the third class we saw the implementation of material
that allow to the students get a meaningful learning that show them the context and
stuff that are really important to learn because it permits them to unwind in their
environment, the authentic material used with authentic activities allow that the
students get the point and to be more interested in the class.

All this observations that I did show me that the details in the educational action as
the teaching are really important to allow to the students that get the thing; to
understand their context and the language that they learn will be use in a
meaningful way, also the importance of the social skills that motivate the students.
We as teachers have to take in consideration the age and proficiency levels that
are important to a good planning of activities and to get a successful class.