January 25, 2011

Today I observed 4 lessons. It was quite tiring. I stayed at school from 8:55 till 12:45.

First lesson was at 8:55 in the morning. It was my class - 11c with my supervisor. Today all 11 students came to the class. I was quite happy because I didn't know them all. After I saw them, all lesson I was trying to remember their names and it was quite successful. Students and teacher were discussing how to write a good review. They were doing some exercises. Also, they emphasized on Present tenses because they had some difficulties about it.

Second lesson was quite boring. It was with 10th grade students. Only half of the class came to the lesson. Teacher worked on a simple principle: gave a new topic and then - practice (doing exercises) and so on. They were trying to learn question tags, phrasal verbs with turn, word formation and key word transformation. I think, teacher gave too little time for each topic (something like 5min for each). Students were confused sometimes. Also, from time to time she was threatening students with bad marks if they won't stop talking. What is more, she was explaining everything in Lithuanian. In my opinion, it is better to say in English first and translate into Lithuanian or vice versa. All her explanations and rules were quite mixed. Students were working all the time together with the teacher, there was no individual work. Also, there was an interesting fact - in the class there was one student who didn't say anything and teacher didn't give him a chance to talk at the lesson. She was always overpassing him when students were reading sentences. It was quite strange, I didn't understand it. The funny fact was that students were correcting teacher's Lithuanian language all the time :)

Third lesson was quite ok. I was observing my supervisor's 12th grade students. Some of them were quite successful in the class. Most of the time they were checking mistakes which they have done in their tentative final English language exam. Teacher was asking if everything is clear and explaining, giving examples, answering their questions. She emphasized on prepositions, sequence of tenses, homogeneous parts of sentence and key word transformation. After they checked their exams they continued on working from the book. The topic was "appearance". They had to talk about their best friend on the spot: his/her appearance, age, outstanding features. While they were speaking teacher was giving some advises and explanations. The only bad thing was that teacher gave them HW task only after the bell rang. They were already going out from the classroom.

Fourth lesson was the best today. It was the lesson with 3rd grade students. I really liked the lesson because students were eager to learn more, they were very interested in what is going on in the classroom. Teacher was speaking very fluently in Lithuanian and then translating everything in English. They were practicing to read some text and repeating words they learned last time. They all were successful. Even though it was a late lesson students were concerned and ready to work. They checked their HW and did some exercises in the classroom. They had listening, reading, writing and speaking tasks. Everything was  coherent. I liked the lesson. It was one of the best lessons I've seen in these two days.