Second week of observation

Hello everyone:-)

This was my second week of observation. This week the teacher was working on the first quarter final exam. She gave students the opportunity to catch up on any missing assignments before the end of the quarter. The week before the exam, Mrs. Ellen gave students an outline in which she explained to each class what to study and to prepare them for the exam (such as worksheets, quizzes, and chapters’ activities they needed to review). She also gave students a rubric to follow for the oral presentation exam. The teacher prepared three different exams for each level class. For the two Spanish level II classes the teacher gave students a written exam that contained true and false questions and multiple choice questions. She also included a section where students needed to answer different questions and fill in the blanks. For the Spanish III honors, Mrs. Ellen gave students two pages with different pictures where students had to create a story and give an oral presentation. Mrs. Ellen told me that since this was the first time students did an oral presentation, she preferred students to present to her and to other students in front of class. I had a chance to help students practice their story and I also had a chance to listen to their stories. Some students didn’t mind to have me there while they presented their stories. Also for the level III, she prepared a written exam that contained true and false questions and multiple choice questions. For the Spanish level V, Mrs. Ellen had students define different literature terms in Spanish. Students also had to analyze different poems and explain the type of poem, the tone of the poem, and what literature terms were found in the poems, etc. Students needed to give the author of the poems as well. This week, Mrs. Ellen asked me to help students with any questions they had in completing their assignments. Some students asked me how to pronounce and translate some words and I was very happy to work with them. I also feel that students are happy to have there too.

My first observation

I started my observation on Monday, October 26, 2008. On my first day, I met Julie Someone, the head of the Foreign Language Department and Mrs. Ellen, the cooperative teacher. Mrs. Ellen is not a native speaker of English. They are both very nice. So far, I have been in the classroom three times and in each time, I stayed for four hours. Mrs. Ellen teaches three different level Spanish classes and each class period is about sixty minutes long. Mrs. Ellen introduced me to all of her students. The students are very respectful and are well behaved. All three classes are very diverse.
As I observed the three classes, I noticed that Mrs. Ellen uses three different books for each class. She also uses the activities from the book to assign homework and she also used the audio tape from the book as listening activities. She has also utilizes a couple of strategies that I found interesting. One thing that I have not seen in the classroom yet is that students don’t speak Spanish. Another thing that I observed was that students speak the target language only when the teacher reviews the homework. I am very excited that I finally started going to the school because I will be working with students. I am also happy because I will be learning different strategies that I can later implement into my own classroom.