OBSERVATION STAGE

OBSERVATION STAGE Task 1: The School and Learning Environment Name of School: Colegio Nueva Era Siglo XXI, Quillota Number of students: 38 Date: August 31st,2009

Class: 4 medio científico 1. The school: This school is located in the entrance of Quillota from La Cruz city. This is a relatively new school in the city but with a good reputation in the community mainly due to its great performance in the last national tests SIMCE. In this school there are approximately 432 students from kinder until highschool level. ‘Colegio Nueva Era Siglo XXI’ was established and inspired by the principles and values of the Christian Humanism, what implies mainly in this case the acceptance of people as unique and their quality of goodness what this school practices with the students. The most important values considered to develop in the community are: Love, truth, justice, freedom, tolerance, reponsibility and honesty. The fundamental of the school is to promote an integral educational process letting students to find their role into the society creating a good learning environment to reach it. 2. The classroom The classroom is constituted by double tables for students, ‘regular’ school chairs, good luminosity from the outside with big windows and a medium size whiteboard. Since there are lot of students in the classroom it turns as a small place to learn with no classroom materials and few equipment. There are some problems with the air in the classroom since it is pretty cold when you open the door or the windows. One of the biggest problems in the classroom is its cleaning due to students are not worried about this issue, so you can see a lot of papers on the floor and tables dirty and lined. 3. The activities & resources a)Most of activities developed by the guide teacher are traditional tasks put on the board focused significantly on grammar exercises without a rich context. Students are not really interested in the class since while the teacher is writing on the board, most of them are listening to music, playing cell phone games or talking instead of working. When the teacher finishes writing she must put them under pressure so that they start working. Another important aspect in the class is the utilization of the time, since the teacher uses just few minutes to develop it talking with some of the students in her desk and let the others ‘alone’ making a big noise and a mess in terms of cleanliness. I consider that if the teacher improves the time of class development and finds other methodologies to teach the class would have a better performance. b)There is no use of other resources more than the board markers and the exercises put on the board; although, there is available a projector and a lab to develop other activities. Moreover, a great number of students say that they like watching visual aids in the class but they neither use the two English books provided. Task 2: Student´s learning 1.The learners Students would feel motivated just when someone wanted to do it because most of the time they are receptive students that only take an active role when they have to develop an exercise on the board. The class is not student-centered so I saw that some students with a good english knowledge help the other students but these ones don’t develop their own abilities to improve their learning.They are not waiting that the teacher do their homework, some of them wait that the best ones tell them the right anwers instead of go on alone with their own learning process. 2.Behaviour during classroom activities. I would like to say that students are encouraged to participate but it really doesn’t happen in the class. As I said before the classroom managment is only controled by the pressure that the teacher put on them, but this is not in a good way since the teacher must say the tasks and control the order talking very loud because of the noise that students produce. There is a student called Omar that presents a special need, but the teacher guide didn’t know what kind of dissability he has. Some of his classmates bother him so as to make Omar reacts badly since he is very impulsive; in spite of everything he is a pretty good student in the English class. +Observations clear & well informed:LOW+Demonstrates understanding of social and educational factors:LOW +Objective & factual information:MEDIUM +Evidence of active search of information:NOT OBSERVED +Use of English expression clear: MEDIUM