ENGLISH PEDAGOGY

STUDENT TEACHING PRACTICE

OBSERVATION STAGE

Task 1: The School and Learning Environment

Name of the student teacher: Fernando Delaporte

Name of School: Escuela Básica Alemania

Number of students: 39

Date: September, 2010 Class: 8° B

1. The school: Escuela Alemania is located in downtown of Valparaíso,

specifically in Argentina Avenue # 455. In the past, this school was
located in Polanco hills but in August of 1939 they moved to downtown
so they consider this date as their aniversary. Nowadays the school has
1.041 students and all of them are boys.
The behavioral and educational policies basically have to do with
discipline, self-care, punctuality and uniform which consists in grey
trousers, black shoes, white shirt, and blue jacket but during spring they
can wear the school t-shirt. The organization is formed by the Principal
(Mr. Hernán Saavedra), a General Inspector, the UTP chief, the chief of
financial matters, the President of Parents Council, Teachers, two
secretaries and the personnel.

2. The classroom: There are enough space for all the students in the
classroom. They are seating in pairs so there are 3 rows. In the one of
the middle some students are seating with 3 partners. The classroom
has huge windows so students have fresh air and too much light so
sometimes they have to close the curtains. The equipment they have is
very good because they have wi-fi, a big whiteboard, the teacher’s desk
and obviouslly one chair and table for each one.
The engagement level is not very good. They get bored easily and
started to talk with their classmates but in their seats so sometimes they
shouted or speak so loud. In addition, they are always hit them or
making some offensive jokes.

3. The activities & resources: a) The Activities are the same every
class. He takes a text from the English book and does a vocabulary
activity despite the fact that students do not have dictionary and
teacher always speaks in spanish so students are not involved in
learning english. While students copy the words, teacher works with the
laptop in order to do the lessons planning.

b) They work with the English book which is brought to them at the
beggining of the year by the school but the mayority of students have
lost the book so teacher has to give them photocopies about the activity.
The materials available in the school are good, they have proyectors,
laptops to every teacher, wi-fi, a computer room with 45 computers,
radios and also it is available the printer and the photocopier for
teachers.

Task 2: Student´s learning

In this second observation task, you should focus on the things that help
to create conditions for effective learning and on the aspects that play
a part in preventing learning.

1. The learners: Students are not motivated because the activities

teacher does in the class are always the same so he can not catch
the students attention. On the other side, they do not realized that
English is important in their lives so they are in the classroom just for
copying from the whiteboard and that is all they do for their own
learning, ever more they do not participate in class because they do
not have the material and teacher knows that.

2. Behaviour during classroom activities: They do the activities in

pairs but they are not encouraged to do it, I think is because they are
sitting with a partner so for them it is better and easier to work in
couples. What I have seen in the classroom is that the teacher does
not use new techniques to motivate students and also students
mention in the class that they are boring. In this class there are not
any students with special needs.

3. Discuss the learning styles and levels of English in the

classroom: In my opinion, the English Level students have is a little
deficient because they can not speak or write in English, they know
vocabulary but they do not know how to make a sentence, so I
consider this is the main problem they have because they notice they
are not able to use English in their daily lifes and it demotivates
them. I think reading skill is the only ability they comprehend and
dominate very well. In terms of learning styles, I think that teacher
could use other educational techniques to allow that every single
student could learn better. For example, he could use the resources
available in the school such as proyector or computers in order to
support the matter in a more didactic way or based on the unit
teacher could do a workshop and students could work in groups.