observation

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OBSERVATION REPORT TRAINEE BELEN DE LA CRUZ
OBSERVATION REPORT:
LESSON PLAN Nª9
Trainees: Belén de la Cruz
School: School 180
Course: 6th forms C and D
Mentor teacher: Joana Herrán
Textbooks: not today
Date: Monday, October 9th,2018.
Topic: The Magic Bag Project
Teacher Educator: Estela N. Braun
 What went well: First Group.
Belén is a committed and well-organized trainee teacher. Her lesson plan
for this Magic Bag project was prepared well in advance so it allowed for
translation from Spanish into English, recording by a native speaker and
implementation at school. The strongest point about the story is that she
used a literary piece (short-story Chubby by Maria Inés Falconi) to deal
with the topic of bullying.
Belen is an experienced teacher already so her classroom management
skills are excellent. She is self-confident, makes use of a loud, clear voice,
never shouting but demanding attention just with her presence. In the first
group children were sitting around long rectangular tables.
The stages in the lesson were neatly developed: she hung the title of the
story on the board. Then, she distributed attractive copies of the story
which she made for each child. Surprisingly, one of the boys complained
about the format instead of thanking the teacher.
Then, they listened to the recording of the story by a native speaker. First,
only a few students answered to the general questions the teacher asked
but then they started talking about bullying, not about the story. Suprisinly,

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all of them provided ideas though they were in Spanish. The trainee guided
the debate about bullying in an effective way. She was a wonderful
mediator. Children expressed ideas like: “Querete vos misma y llamate
como vos quieras”, flaca desabrida example. Some children expressed
instances of bullying they had suffered or people calling them names:
“enano te va a pisar la suela; hobbit”. Good solutions were provided.
Suggestion: you could have provided them with the language they
needed for the conclusions in English: Accept yourself, avoid violence,
respect others, ask an adult for help.
Then, first they completed a great story map and finally they worked with
the bullying poster: should/shouldn’t . At this moment she explained new
vocabulary very well: mocking people, calling people names, punch or
kick,etc.
 The approach used:
Teaching literature with young learners in order to enjoy English but also
to develop positive citizenship values.
 What could have been improved:
With the first group, the trainee made them listen to the story as a whole,
which made it very difficult for children to follow it. My suggestion was:
“Listen to the story in chunks and explain each paragraph because
otherwise they won’t understand and will feel lost”. Belèn put this into
practice with the second group.
You should always pay attention/ listen to pupils’ voices: “no entendimos
nada”, “cuando yo iba por acá el audio iba por allá”,etc.
Second group:
The lesson started in an effective way with a catching song, questions
about the weather, the time and she appointed a helper. Her teacher roles
were various and she excelled at them: she created her own materials to
teach this lesson, she was a creator, organizer, planner, controller and an
effective mediator when leading the debate. Students sit in pairs in this
class and this kind of organization seems to be better for this kind of
lesson.

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The trainee paid attention to every comment made by the teacher educator
in the short conference after teaching the first group. Apart from hanging
the attractive title, she also presented the students with pictures as a
warm-up for the story and she elicited predictions: What kind of text is this?
This time she dealt with the story in shorter chunks and explained each of
them. She explained it more slowly and clearly, although the meaning of
chubby was not fully exploited.
As a result, children could understand a lot and they participated all the
time. Some pupils helped the others understand by translating.
Comprehension was outstanding for some of them.
The trainee helped students complete a most colourful and originals tory
map. It was interesting to notice that severals tduents in this class are
overweight and the topic of Acceptance/ Love yourself as a value became
strong. Then, she dealt with bullying: “Have you ever suffered bullying?”
Por que creen que pasa? There was a great deal of participation, thus
there was not time to work with the anti-bullying poster but she reminded
pupils to bring it the following class
GRADE: 10 (Ten). Congratualtions!
Questions for your report:
 Whatare the advantagesand disadvantagesof using a project
aboutshort-story telling-literature with YLE at school?
 Whatdid you enjoy aboutthis lesson? What would you have
improved?
 How are you going to assess it? Is it going to be included as partof
formative assessment?
Images of this great lesson for your edublog:

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