MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE WORLD ORGANISATION

IN-SERVICE CERTIFICATE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

DIRECTED PEER OBSERVATIONS

OBSERVATION REPORT NO. _2__

Candidate’s name: ____________________________________

Date of the report: _____________________________________

This form is intended to help you focus your attention on some important aspects of a class. Do not
interrupt the class or participate unless the class teacher requests a contribution.
Teacher n/a (video shot by Macmillan)
Observed:
School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niel3vqgwrU
Course Intermediate
level:
Number of 9 Average age of 16 to 20 (Approx)
students: students:
Date of the n/a Main aim of the Skills lesson
Observation: observation (Task no.) (listening)

Reflection upon the aspect(s) observed

The lesson adhered to the framework of a Text-based presentation for

language-teaching in which it was easy to observe the following stages:

 Lead-in
 Reading / Listening
Orientation to contents
Pre-teach vocabulary
Content focus
FB on content
 Focus on language from text
Clarifying and checking meaning using the context, highlight form and
pronunciation, and drill
 Controlled practice of TL
 Freer practice of TL

as shown on the “Raw Observations” section below...

nevertheless, the lesson was something beyond awesome provided that for
the “listening ” part a whole framework for a listening lesson was provided as
“it should be” and at the end there were:

 Production activities (discussions)

so,
it was actually a double-framed lesson which achieved goals for both:
listening skills development _and_ language (Grammar) awareness; this
seems an excellent idea for a quite long lesson (1 Hr.) which came to be
very productive...

Considering the most particualr aspects of this leson I’d like to highlight that:

 the topics and activities were very well joined from the beggining to the
end...

 part of the freer practice was settled as a homework so Ss were going

to write a reflection upon 6 of the marker sentences...

 for sure the techer intended to connect that current lesson with the next

 a very well framed receptive-skills lesson...

 all the delivery and transitions happened in a very natural and relaxed
way so that I can tell that the teacher’s excecution was simply great.
 “Raw Observations”

\Lead in\

---"we'll be taliking about "making difficult desicions..."

\Gist\

The teacher had Ss see a projected picture of a pair of persons,

she said the names of each of them and asked:

---"How do they know each other?"

[the names of tje characters appeared "marked" on the sides as "Alex" and
"Chris"
under the picture there was a text displaying 3 questions:

How do they know each other?

Waht has just happened?
What are they talking or thinking about?]

The teacher elicited answers to each of the questions,

tT elicited the right way:

prompting the Ss to talk;

showing appreciation for their answers;
turning or re-directing their answers in a very subtle way, giving more
options...
as most the literature suggest "eliciting has several functions, one of them is
to verify Ss competence
and understanding and to have "approach" to the topic but teachers must
never expect to obtain the right ansers from the Ss not even applying
the Socratic method; we must consider that on this stage Ss are getting
ready to learn and therefore we must NOT expect them to know beforehand
what's the answer that the teacher expects..."

by such elicitation the teacher presented 2 or 3 facts about the "story" behind
the scene and about to be told...
the teacher also had Ss notice that the characters were dressing formally
(probably in order to reinforce the previously clarified idea that they were
colleagues.)

tT had Ss have pair-discussions for 2 minutes about the displayed

questions...
then,
tT had Ss about their discussion...

\warm up\

tT said "---"we're about to listen to their dialog..."" and had Ss notice more
elements of the picture
with more elicitation (like, ---"What's Alex holding in his hand... ? (A wallet!)")

\\Pre-teaching lexical set I MPF\\

tT setup and drilled some expressions about the

---"it's a very old wallet" / \wallet\ plus IPA phonemes and some choral
drilling/
tT said: "We'll come back to that in a moment..."
 \\Pre-teaching lexical set II MPF\\

What is this?
/a new picture was projected displaying a red cross and the acronyms
UNICEF and WWF ("world wild life")/
tT setup context and meaning for the word /charity/
tT introduced the sentence:

---"he gave money to charity" / \charity\ plus IPA phonemes and some choral
drilling/

\\Pre-teaching lexical set III MPF\\

tT brough a chair to the front closer to the Ss,

tT sat and displayed an even more familiar attitude to the Ss and started to
tell a brief story:

---"I want to tell you about my sister..."

Tt said a short story in no more than 5 sentences highlighting all what her
sister does while she's driving...

tT made some elicitation asking what kind of driver her sister is...

tT introduced the sentence:

---"she's a careless driver..." / \careless\ plus IPA phonemes and some choral
drilling/

/Listening for specific information/

Tt summarized the conclusions and assuptions from the gist activity and
announced "we'll now listen to th story"
and asked Ss and be attentive to find out the answers to the displayed
questions...
so,
while ss were listening to the recording the initial picture with the 3 questions
were still projected on the board...

the piece of listening was a dense dialog between the two charaters, which
by tha way lasted just about 2 minutes.

tT had Ss discuss their impressions for 1 min.

and then,
she had Ss share their answers to the dsplayed questions...

/Listening for detail: 7 possible things to spend the money on.../

after elicitation and clarification about the right answers tT setup a new
inquire:

----"So, Chris is talking about what he would like to spend the money on..."

and,
she displayed a set of 7 pictures pictures (as a collage) showing different
things like "a red cross," "a group of people dancing in a party," "a mobile
phone..." etc.
so,
she got Ss ready to settle a prediction about this new question...
then,
Tt had Ss listen to the story ONE more time...

tT had Ss discuss their impressions for 1 min.

and then,
she had Ss share their answers to the dsplayed questions...

this time the teacher had Ss share thir impressions in regards to the
possibilities of each of the pictures,
the teacher repeated one of the key-sentences of the dialog in regards to
each of the "pictures" which did NOT provide any answer
but,
it provided the idea from which Ss could make inferences...
Ss voted for a /YES or NOT/ for each of the options....

tT clarified and summarized the answer within its context in the story...

/CCQs/

tT displays the original picture and re-builds the story asking CCQs to the Ss
and relating the summarized and elicited ideas to more deails in the picture...
 /Text Based Presentation/

tT leads Ss to a point in the conversation when these sentences were said:

---"If I had the money, I would spend it..."

---"If I'd found some money, I'd keep it..."

tT highlighted some features of the 2nd conditional and "unreal past

tenses..."
through concept checking questions without any prescrption of rules, just
having Ss notice the functional features of the sentences...

the teacher reviews and drills the sentence

syllable by syllable, making emphasis in intonation and stress...

the teacher reviews the sentence with the Ss highlighting the features as:

---"If I'd found some money, I'd keep it..."

/ hypothetical part / unreal or imaginary consequence /

/ possible / imaginary /

tT has Ss notice and highlight the features of another pair of sentences from
the listening text:

---"If I'd found some money, I'd buy a new phone..."

---"If I'd found some money, I'd have a party..."

CCQs, tT made sure that everything was understood...

instead of summarizing tT goes to ask Ss:

---"So, how do we make the 2nd Conditional then?"

tT started building an structural scheme with tags by eliciting Ss, getting to

this:

/positive/
[If] + [S] + [Past Simple], [S] [would] + [infinite]

/negative/
[wouldn't]
tT makes a "delivery" having Ss notice how this structural scheme matches
with one of the sentences
and them some CCQs.

as a REINFORCEMENT, tT asked Ss to reherse the structure keeping the

first phrase and changing the end with new phrases
on flash cards like this:

If I'd found some money,

[I'd return it.]
[I'd buy some shoes.]
[I'd go on holliday.]
[I'd give it to charity.]
[I'd buy some shoes.]

tT had Ss drill the sentences a couple of times...

then,
they kept the 2nd phrase and started changing the 1st one:

If I'd [found 200 pounds] I'd keep it.

If I'd [won 500 pounds] I'd keep it.
If I'd [have lots of money] I'd keep it.

again,
tT had Ss drill the sentences a couple of times...

tT proyected a new structural example as:

If I had a million dollars │ │buy a house...

│ │
│ │travel round the world...
│ I'd │
│ │move to Britain...
│I wouldn't │
│ │give half of it to charity...
│ │
│ │give a lot to my family...
│ │
│ │get a porche...

then,
she ilustrated cases in which she could choose I'd and cases for I wouldn't;
so,
tT had Ss work in pairs and make sentences that could be trueth both each
of them;
tT got closer to the Ss in order to observe them while they were talking;
after a couple of minutes every Ss spoke about their parthner's choices...

/controlled activity/

tT provided the instructions for the "controlled activity" in an excellent way:

as an example she wrote on the board a complete phrase with tow blanks
and the infinitive form of the [verbs] to complete gaps:

If I __________ 1 million pounds, I'___________ a bigger house.

(have) (buy)

then,
she completed the sentence as:

If I _____had__ 1 million pounds, I'd__buy_____ a bigger house.

then,
she handed out worksheets so Ss could complete a controlled activity set
and,
she provided a reasonable amount of time for it (about 2 min.)
then,
Ss shared their answers and tT validated them...
so,
tT displayed the structural scheme again and matched it with the prases of
one of the sentences in the activity sheet.

\freer activity\

tT had Ss discuss in pairs, for a couple of minutes, what would they do if they
had a million dollars
again,
tT got closer to observe the Ss, who had kept their activity sheets handy
so,
that they could use them as a "pattern..."
[tT took the opportunity tp provide some immediate feedback and answer
some questions]
then,
tT had Ss talk about their parthner's comments...

tT took one of her sentences from previous elicitation and she wrote it on the
board as:

----"If you had some money, would you keep it?"

tT elicited a variation of this sentence and one of the students suggested:

----"If you had some money, what would you do with it?"

tT had Ss look at several

square cards of about 10 x 10 inches, [made of cardboard wrapped up with
colorful paper with with a picture (each) and down below a phrase with
blanks to be filled in with the "verbs shwon below in infinitive," just like the
previous handouts...]
so Ss solved one example under the directions of tT (again, a great way to
deliver instructions...)
then in groups of 4 Ss started to complete the sentences on the tokens...

again, after a reasonable amount of time (about 3 min.)

tT had Ss share their answers and made some feedback comments...

\error correction\

tT wrote on sentence in 2nd conditional on the board with wrong verbal forms
so,
she had Ss notice the mistake and correct it...

\closing\

tT said the Ss what their homework was

and
asked a couple of CCQs about the homework:

keep the cards and make a note telling what would you do in each of those
sentences and why...
probably she rather meant to ask:
make a note telling what would you do in each of those _cases_ and why...
she added:
----"you've been thinking about it so, now you just are going to write that
down..."

----"just about 6 sentences will be enough..."

Source:

H. (2013, April 05). Lesson observation. Retrieved February 06, 2017, from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niel3vqgwrU

Marker : Return Date:

Adapted by A. Navarro from ICELT Induction Pack – Centre’s Observation Tasks and Guidelines-
(tasks originally designed by “International Training Institute” Istanbul & “Cultura Inglesa” –Brazil)