Observations

1. Name of the school: IMA
Courses and year observed: Second grade A and B.
Subject: English.
Themes of the class: weather conditions, the body, numbers, colours, moods.
Last Wednesday was my first observation practice in Maria Auxiliadora's Institute. My
friend and I arrived 15 minutes before the lesson started. I felt a little nervous and
anxious, but at the same time I really liked being there because I spent my whole
years of school in that Institute. After a few minutes the teacher arrived and she told us
to go with her to the classroom. We entered and some of the children asked us why
we were there and so we explained them that we were going to observe the class.
Then, the teacher, called Paulina, told us to seat wherever we want, so we went to
the back of the class. There were three rows of seats with two seats each where the
children were placed boy and girl. There were also a lot of posters of the alphabet,
the numbers, the rules and also a huge poster above the blackboard with all the
students' names. Before starting the lesson, the teacher greeted them in English
and they answered her. After that she ordered the students to keep all the things
which did not belong to the English class, so all of them started to keep their things
and when they finished the teacher started to sing a song and the kids mimic
Paulina dancing with a lot of enthusiasm. When they finished singing and dancing
they all started to play a game which I could immediately realized that they already
knew it because they were very excited and they all understood Paulina's
instructions. I think that the game was called "One potatoe, two potatoes"
because the girls had to raise their hands and all of them had to count in English
the number of girls of the class so they started saying "One potatoe, two potatoes,
three potatoes, four, five potatoes, six potatoes, seven potatoes, more". In that
moment I supposed that they knew how to count up to 10. After that, the teacher
asked them who has never been a helper before and those who has never been a
helper received a kind of flashcard which the kids had to wear as a necklace. So, the
teacher chose two kids, a boy and a girl, and they seemed very proud of being a
helper because they had to go to the front of the class and ask the others how the
weather was like. They showed the flashcards that they had with the different
types of weather (sunny, rainy, cloudy, windy) and the rest of the class had to
answer in English "Yes, it is" or "No, it isn`t". Then they stood up and sang a
song of the weather while they applauded. However, some of the kids, 3 boys and
a girl were bored and were doing other things like playing or doing homework for other

2. subjects. After that the teacher had a yellow ball which she threw to some kids and
she asked them: "How you fell today?", so they had to answer if they were happy,
sad, very happy, angry... All of them were very excited and in one moment a girl said
that she was sad and then she explained in Spanish the reason of her sadness to all
the class... Most of them are very extroverted!! Then, Paulina told them to take the
book and go to page 6 where they would do some activities. The page dealt with
numbers and colours, so the teacher asked them what colours and numbers were in
that page. In order to do these activities the teacher helped them and they all worked
together talking in a loud voice. After that, they made a listening activity in which they
had to listen to a song and sing. Some of them danced and sang, but others did not do
anything. Then, the teacher asked them about the monsters which appeared in the
page of the book, so they told her who were they. Then, she asked of which
colours the monsters were and they all participated. After that they listened to a song
which described an activity that one of the monsters was doing, so they again stood
up, sang and danced. At that moment of the lesson I was so surprised and happy at
how dynamic was that class and at how well all the kids participated! The 90% of the
class was engaged in every activity that they had to do. Well, after doing the
listening activity they went back to another activity of the page in which they
had to count how many monsters were in that page, and they had to write the
number at the bottom of the page. Obviously, Paulina explained every activity in
English with a grading language and all of them understood very well. That was
the last activity of the day so they finally sang another song, a "Goodbye" song,
so they stood up again and waved their arms saying goodbye.
I really liked the lesson and also the way in which Paulina motivated them, because
they were all the time moving, dancing and singing, but at the same time they were
learning! There were 40 lovely minutes which I would like to repeat for the rest of the
year.
GRADE: VERY GOOD. TRY TO EXPLAIN WHY THE CLASS WASSO SUCCESSFULWITH
METALANGUAGE(THEORY READ DURING THIS COURSE) We will do that in class today.