Peer Observation (as observer) #1

Peer Observation (as observer) #1

Today was the first of my peer observations and I was fortunate that J (one of my most experienced colleagues) allowed me to observe her for this first step. J has 16 years of experience teaching in EFL and has taught in both the UK and South America. She and I have been working together for over three years and we have had the chance to observe each other in the past, however the last time I observed one of her classes it was an IELTS preparation class and I was intrigued to see how her ‘high-structure approach’ is applied to a general English class.

This class was an hour and a half long at Upper Intermediate level, with a lesson focus on intonation to show surprise or interest. The area of focus I was interested in was interaction patterns and instruction giving (with an overall focus on classroom management).

From experience I know that smaller classes can be challenging (this class had four students) regardless of the level, particularly if the majority of students are particularly quiet (as was the case with this class). It can be difficult for teachers to activate student interest and engagement, however from my observations of this lesson, I could see that my colleague’s experience really came through in this regard.

The lesson began with a focus on the examples in the coursebook as a model; a conversation between two friends using echo question forms to show surprise, with a particular focus on rising intonation.

It’s always difficult observing a teacher who is far more experienced than yourself (particularly when giving feedback!) and in this case J has four times the experience that I have. However, I think it is important for those with experience and those with less to open a dialogue, as both parties can learn something as the nature of language teaching is constantly evolving. These are the areas to which I paid particular attention.

 

Areas of strength

 ‘Hot correction’

This is something that I have personally struggled with, as I favour the D.E.A.F delayed feedback approach. I have always run communicative activities in groups, listening in and offering prompts when required and making a note of errors in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation but rarely correcting the student ‘in the moment’ (unless it impedes communication or understanding with the rest of the group). After the activity is over and general feedback has ended, I would then select errors and mistakes anonymously, board then and then encourage students to work in pairs to make corrections.

J had a more instantaneous method that was simple yet effective. For example one student was talking about their weekend in a warmer activity and thee interaction went as follows:

Student: “Well I had a really nice weekend. I went in to Churchill Square and I /bəʊt/ a lovely jacket.”
J: “And I… and I….”

Student: “…And I /bɔːt/ a lovely jacket.”

This was a simple way of encouraging students to be mindful of their pronunciation and the student was aware of their mistake and swiftly corrected themselves. This small interaction really struck a chord with me because I have been set in my ways regarding student corrections, which I probably attest to my CELTA training where the DoS of that particular school heavily scrutinised ‘hot correction’ and this has probably had a lasting effect on me. It’s important to correct the students when appropriate, but there is always a part of me that feels that offering feedback is good but should not be done if there is risk of embarrassing the student (which was not the case in this instance).

Managing expectations

There was a particularly interesting incident at one of the earlier stages of the class at a point where the students were not entirely engaged with the lesson aims. A particularly strong student was repeating the echo questions back to her partner almost farcically when she questioned J about the learning outcomes:

Student 1: “Why we must use (sic) this way to speak? It’s really unnatural, it sounds kind of fake.”

Student 2: “Yes. Why do we need intonation? You can understand me fine without it.”

J: “Well for one thing your conversation will sound very boring. And also people won’t know what emotion you are trying to convey. Are you surprised? Upset? Sarcastic? I’m sure you use intonation in your own language, don’t you?
Student 1: “Yes, exactly. You’re right.”

The ability to effectively diffuse situations in which students question your motives or the usefulness of a task is for me, what separates a novice teacher from an experienced one.


Areas for continued development

Technological management and transitional stages 

An area for improvement that was actually raised in our feedback session was the use of technology in the classroom. There were several instances where J had issues with playing audio on the interactive whiteboard as well as difficulty flipping between the whiteboard application and the mirrored PC screen. This did cause significant disruption to the ‘flow’ of the classroom, though the students did seem understanding.

I suggested that she might prepare some transitional stages of her lesson to include activities to keep the students working autonomously while setting up the next technology-based activity. This is a technique I personally use in class and it helps maintain those smoother transitions from one main stage to the next.
J found the suggestion very helpful and is looking as to how she could incorporate this into her own teaching repertoire.

 

Concluding thoughts

This was a useful lesson to commence this round of peer observations as this was what I would consider to be a ‘high-structured’ lesson broken into clear stages. It was insightful to see someone with such experience teach a speaking-focused general English class and I believe we both came away from the experience having been able to exchange ideas and suggestions as how to develop ourselves in the future. It is comforting to see that even the most experienced teachers have an appetite for self-improvement and I hope to be able to apply this mindset moving forward.

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One thought on “Peer Observation (as observer) #1

  1. A very positive experience and one that I believe benefitted from you entering the observation with a focus in your mind and that you made time to have a post observation conversation. I particulary like the way you have noted down exact interactions that happened in the class to exemplify your point. This makes your comments far more evidence-based. It’s interesting that you note that a difference between novice and experienced teachers is in their ability to diffuse potentially awkward situations. I would say that experience does help in this area but some teachers have a natual instinct for this skill early on and those that hone it over the years are becoming expert teachers not just experienced.

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