TESOL

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Observation Notebook

Observation Report Form

Name of Observer Hsin-Yu, Hsu Observation # 01

Skill/
Date Observation Class Level Teacher
Content
Environment
UCR Karen
Listening Listening &
02/01/2017 Extension 400 Lindwell
& Speaking Speaking
Room 441

WRITE THE OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO THE OBSERVATION GUIDELINES:

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to

- recognize advanced English words and sentences used in discussions in the
listening test
- adapt advanced English words and sentences into classroom discussion about
success and failure
- participate actively in the group discussion and be responsible when being a leader
- apply questioning sentences for making clarification and maintain speaking
fluency during the discussion

Notes while observing

12:55-13:00

1. Teacher drew a chart about the job that each students take part in for the discussion

yesterday.

Leader Participant

Student A/B/C/D E/F/G/H/I etc.

2. Teacher re-arranged the students that those were in the same group would no longer

be group members today.

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13:00-13:10

3. Teacher guided students to elicit what were they discussing yesterday. She wrote

down topic on the whiteboard.

TOPIC: Who is the most successful person in your .

Every group will talk about different context such as in your family, country, school
etc.

4. Teacher then drew another chart on the whiteboard as students elicit about the

characters that a group leader and participants should have during the discussion.

What would the leader say if they want to ?

What would the participants say if they want to ?

She asked the questions above to help students elicit languages used during the

discussion. She also reminded the students that those languages might be tested

during the speaking test on Friday

Leader Participants

- starts the discussion - listen to the direction from the leader

- asks participant to talk - listen to other participants sharing

- gets back to the topic - make clarification and paraphrase

- asks for clarification ideas

- ends the discussion by summing up - speak smoothly

all the ideas

13:10-13:12

5. Teacher wrote down the topic for todays discussion. Then she gave direction about
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the discussion.

TOPIC: Who is the most successful person in your group of friends?

6. Teacher asked some comprehension questions regards to the instruction she just

gave.

- How many reasons should each person give? Answer: 3

- Can you talk about your cousins or other famous people? Answer: NO!

- Who is going to speak first? Is the leader going to start talking first? Answer: No,

the leaders share their answers last but he/she has to pick up the first person to speak.

(Additional note: each participant and the group leader will have one minute to talk

about their answers for the topic)

13:12-13:17

7. Teacher wrote down four new discussion topics on the whiteboard.

Then she asked each group to pic up a new leader and a new discussion topic.

TOPIC 1: Downsides of successful

TOPIC 2: Goals that lead to success
TOPIC 3: Measure of status
TOPIC 4: Determination

She reminded the class that all the leaders have to practice asking questions for

clarifications and getting participants back to the topic.

13:22-13:32

8. The new discussion began, teacher wandered around and took turns joining each

groups discussion, and she sometimes guided the group leader to make clarifications.
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(Additional note: there was one group finished quickly and the teacher encouraged

them to keep talking)

9. Teacher went back to the front and asked all the leaders to sum-up their discussion.

13:32-13:42

10. Teacher told that the student sit on the leaders left side was now a new leader of

the discussion. The new leader should select a topic from the four that they hadnt

discussed yet to become their new discussion topic.

11. A new discussion began; teacher wandered around and joined the discussions

again. She found that there was one leader who didnt know how to ask for

clarification, she told the leader You can ask Excuse me, what do you mean by

12. There was another group found that the discussion topic Measure of Status

difficult and they asked the teacher to explain what are they going to share for this

topic.

13. The instructor told the class in a more serious tone that those four topics were

come from their textbook and she had assigned all the students to read what were

those topics talking about for homework yesterday. They should be familiar with

those topics.

13:42-13:45

14. Teacher asked who hadnt lead the discussion in each group, he/she would be the

new leader and picked a new topic for the new discussion.

15. To make sure every students understood the meaning of each topic, teacher asked

student one question. What does it mean by determination?

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16. After some students gave the definition of determination, teacher asked another

question Do Olympic contestant and people who receive A+ on test have

determination?

17. She seriously told students again that she realized some of the students didnt do

their homework so they failed to discuss fluently. If they didnt take the discussion

seriously, they might also fail the speaking test on Friday.

13:45-13:50

18. The last discussion began. All the groups only have five minutes this time.

19. As the teacher found out that one group had already finish their discussion, she

joined the group and talked about a new topic Dreams you gave up when you were

young.

13:50

20. Teacher assigned homework for today and told students to be prepared for the

speaking test on Friday.

Class dismissed
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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)

After the class is over, the teacher, Karen, told me there are several important

ideas to us as language teacher to keep in mind when we are arranging students into

group.

- Re-arrange groups often and make a balance of strong and low students

- Students personality plays an important role when arranging groups

- Always take students strengths and weaknesses into concern when designing or

selecting in-class tasks (especially speaking and writing tasks)

Those suggestions were really helpful for me since I always believe that

classroom arrangement is important no matter what age of students we are having in

class. Besides, Karen told me that she did the re-arrangement for all tasks. Though

sometimes we cannot perfectly make the arrangements to reach those goals, students

still have opportunities to work with different classmates. I realized that this technique

could also benefit the teacher to create authentic communication in class. In real

life, we would often talk to different people on different topic. As language teacher,
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we should let our students to build up their communicative competence with real-life

communication environment. By constantly changing students group, they will be

able to use the target language properly and naturally.

The class I observed today was talking about language we need for maintaining

group discussion. This was an example of functional-based learning, students elicited

the language they need for group discussion and then use those languages for different

discussion topic. The class reminded me of the idea that Communicative Language

Teaching focuses on not only linguistic but also communicative competence. With

functional-based practices, it can reach the idea that knowing when and how to say

what to whom (Hymes 1971) Although theres a saying that CLT is fuzzy in

teachers understanding (Larson-Freeman and Anderson 2011), the fundamental

approach beyond the method (communicative approach) is still very practical for

language learning and teaching.