ENGLISH PEDAGOGY

STUDENT TEACHING PRACTICE

OBSERVATION STAGE

Task 1: The School and Learning Environment

Name of student: Paola Gislaine Garcia Lapaquette

Name of School: The Integrity College.

Number of students: 73

Date: August 16th – 20th

Class: First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, Secondary

Briefly describe the following aspects:

1. The school:

Describe the general background of the school including the physical location,
organisation, student population, philosophy and educational and behavioural policies.

The school is located in 5 oriente #336, Viña del Mar. The directive team is compound
by Heinrich Ziller Osorio, who is owner and principal of the school, assistant principal is
Karen Mc Leod Bravo.
The school’s level covers from First grade primary to Fourth grade, secondary, being a
total of 382 students and it has 2 classes per level divided into A and B, with the exception
of the Third and Fourth year, secondary, that as only one grade per level.
The modality of this school is private-subsidized and according to their vision and
mission, they bet for an integrated education. Usually here in Chile, students with problems
such as aspergers or attentional problems are put into special schools, however The
Integrity College admits students with this kinds of problems in order to offer them the
tools needed to prepare them to face the world in its whole.
The school’s neighborhood is which the school is located is near downtown; it can be
characterized as a residential neighborhood. Besides houses and residential buildings, a
Valparaiso University’s headquarters is located in the neighborhood in addition to an
 English institute. A square is located near the school in which lots of students gather after
class.
From my point of view, kids with problems such as the ones previously mentioned, need
special education, for example they cannot put be in a class with 40 other students, they
need to be considered differently, however they also need to get used to deal with the world
and with people who are not going to be a different treatment towards them.
On the other side of the coin, the students who don’t have those kinds of psychological
issues learn to share with students with those problems, and learn to deal with them.
Another important point to cover, regarding pedagogical issues, is the fact that the
teachers are oriented to share the contents that are being taught and at least one time during
the semester, coordinate and homologate the evaluation’s topic.
The organigrama of The Integrity College is the following:

Personal no docente Sociedad Sostenedor Organización financiera

Director

Subdirectora

Coordinación
Ed. Prebásica Coordinación Ed. Media
Básica

UTP Ed. Inspector

Ed. Prebásica UTP Ed. Media Inspector
Prebásica
Básica Ed Media
Básica

Departamentos Tutores Departamentos Tutores

Prebásica Prebásica a 8° Básico Humanista 1 Medio a 4°
1° a 4° Básico Científico Medio
5° a 8° Básico Artes
Integración Orientación
Básica Integración Media
Orientación

Alumnos

Apoderados
2. The classroom
Describe the atmosphere of the room and the levels of engagement in the room. Make notes
on seating, sight lines, space, air, light, whiteboard, equipment, etc

Regarding room’s atmosphere I can say that is not as bad as in other schools. For
example, from the school’s infrastructure and student’s behaviour the following things it
can be pointed out:

• Classrooms are not very big

• One or two windows in each classroom
• Students are distributed into 3 rows with paired desks.
• Only one radio is available and it doesn’t work properly.
• The photocopy is constantly mail functioning
• The computer room has about 10 computers which are really slow
• Students have 1 common bookshelf to leave books and classroom material
• The classrooms located on the second floor are receive very much day light,
however the ones located on the first floor don’t.
• The classrooms don’t have a bulletin board, so they stick what they want to inform
on the walls
• The classrooms don’t have a clock
• The school has a basketball court
• The school has a sort of “garden” and plastic yard chairs which they use during the
breaks

3. The activities & resources

a) Make notes on the kind of activities used, the nature of student involvement, balance
of student doing things and teacher doing things

Students usually use material specially prepared by the teacher, however they also make
use of the material provided by the Ministry of Education. Most of the activities provided
by the teacher are very creative and playful, for example: crosswords, marching, paint
squares, etc.
 As in every environment, there are students, who paste the hand outs given by the
teacher on their notebooks and take good care of the material provided either by the teacher
or the government. However there are some other students who don’t, and usually loose the
hand outs or don’t work on them. Other students are really into learning all the contents
that the teacher explains and are interested in learning more.
In relation to students work and teachers work I would have to say that the teacher is
more interested in their learning than the students in their own learning, for example: the
teacher has many hand outs prepared and books in her space inside the teacher’s room to
provide students with a variety of activities for them learn the target contents; since the
school doesn’t have a good radio to practice listening, the teacher brings her personal
computer and speakers in order to develop that skill in the students; the teacher relocates
the students inside the class so the more “complicated” students don’t distract the others.

b) Describe the resources used and the materials available within the school. How are
the resources used in the classroom?

As previously mentioned, the materials available in the school are not many; however it
is important to consider that regarding the reality of the educational system in our country,
the school’s resources are enough. For example: there is a photocopy machine is available
to make copies to the students to take with them, even though it sometimes fails; since they
have only 1 radio that doesn’t work properly, and in order to develop the listening skill, the
teacher brings her own computer to the classroom to reproduce the tracks and do listening
activities; computers available for students use are not many and they are not in well
condition; the school counts with only one data show for teachers to use; the students have
enough space to recreate themselves during the breaks, they have chairs and a court to play.

Task 2: Student´s learning

In this second observation task, you should focus on the things that help to create
conditions for effective learning and on the aspects that play a part in preventing
learning.

1. The learners
 How motivated are the learners? Why? To what extent are they taking part in their
own learning? To what extent are they expecting the teacher to do the work for
them?

There are some learners who are very motivated, they are interested in go deeper in the
contents and usually ask: “how can I say .....?” or ask the teacher to correct what they did
during the class, they participate a lot using the contents learnt in class to spontaneously
utter original sentences, however there are some others that literally don’t care, they are just
sit on their chairs drawing, not paying attention or anything, and one could presume that
they don’t understand, but if they are asked if they did or if they want any help to complete
certain activity, they reject the help.
Regarding their own effort at building their learning I could say that those students who
work during the class are really putting lot of emphasis on constructing their own
knowledge related to the English la language for example, they ask the teacher to correct
the hand out given and if they a mistake they revise where the mistake was, or they ask:
“when do I use this?”, to me those are signs of them putting effort at trying to learn and
take advantage of the teachers knowledge regarding English. However there are always
students who wait until someone else had completed the activity to copy it, or wait until the
teacher correct the activity on the whiteboard, which shows that they are expecting the
teacher to do all the work for them and are not very interested in building their own English
knowledge

2. Behaviour during classroom activities

Describe the ways students are encouraged to participate in activities. Are there
any particular strategies for managing issues and motivating students? Are there
any students with special needs?

Students are particularly encouraged to participate in activities by giving them positive

annotations, which I believe helps a lot to motivate them into complete an activity. Another
method that the teachers practices is the use of happy faces when they complete the
activity, which also seems to work out.
The other technique that the teacher uses is to ask students about the previous learned
contents, I realized that it was a perfect way to involve them in the class and make them
paying attention to the class.
 Yes, in the first grade are 2 students who have the asperger syndrome who always sit in
the first rows, always complete the activities and both of them seem really interested in
learning.
In spite of the fact that the teachers tries to encourage students participation in the class,
by bringing into the classroom special material previously prepared by her and all of that,
most of students do not take care of the material provided either by the teacher or the
institution, in addition students tend to talk a lot and make a lot of noise not paying
attention to what the teacher is explaining, however 1/3 of the class (more or less) does.
In spite of the fact that the students are very restless and talkative they are not sassy.

3. Discuss the learning styles and levels of English in the classroom.

The learning style is not as grammar based as I thought, the hand outs used by the
teacher are more focused on games, such as word find, guessing something from a reading
passage, identifying by colouring specific grammar structures from a reading passage,
listening a song and complete the lyrics with the missing words, etc.
Students are not very encouraged to talk extensively in the language, however there are
certain things that students are asked by the teacher to say in English for example may I go
to the toilet? Or specific words in order to increase the learners’ vocabulary. In spite of the
fact that students are not given many opportunities to talk in English, they have some
linguistic resources to produce sentences, they know how to create coherent sentences, and
they can originally used the contents taught in class to produce language or their own. I
would say that comparing to other schools, their English level is good.
TEAM TEACHING STAGE

Name of student: Paola Gislaine Garcia Lapaquette

Name of School: The Integrity College

Date: August 23rd – 27th

Task Nº1: Collaboration activities

For the following questions describe as accurately as you can how you have collaborated
in school assigned:

1. What kind of activity did you perform the first time you were asked for help? How
long did it take?

The first time I was asked to help the teacher checking an activity which had been
previously sent as homework, however not all the students had completed their assignment
at home, reason why the I also had to help explaining students certain contents that weren’t
clear, as a total everything took about 20 minutes, I organized and put together some
photocopies to be given to the students which took 10 minutes.

2. What were the students doing before you started helping out?

The students were finishing completing their assignment; others were correcting what I
had pointed out as incorrect and others came for me for help regarding the contents. I also
tried to encourage those students who were not working on the assignment, into start
working on it.

3. How did the students react? Describe the atmosphere of the room and the levels of
engagement in the room.

Some of the students weren’t very untruthful regarding my assistances related to the
contents, in other words they doubted if what I had pointed out as incorrect was incorrect or
not and went over the teacher to confirm my observation on their answers. Others (third
grade students and second grade students) started saying that they wanted me to stay as the
teacher because the teacher was always in a bad humour, which made me feel very much
uncomfortable since the teacher is very devoted to the pedagogical labour.
Some students were working on their activities others just talking to each others;
however I could say that 75% of the class was working on the assignment.

4. What other assignments were asked you to do? How often?

The assignments that I had to do were all related to the teaching activity, things that
escape from the pedagogical activity were not asked by the teacher.

5. Were you asked to prepare any kind of special audio visual material learning
material for the students? Were they used? How effective were they?

No, I prepared a study guide without the teacher’s order, which I had to write down on
the whiteboard and it was complemented with one that the teacher had also previously
prepared. It was effective, at the end of the class at least 3 students could spontaneously
make used of the contents learnt in coherent sentences.

Task 2: Lesson Planning

Answer the following questions and explain how you planned the learning activities for
your students. Be as precise as you can.

1. How did you get the information for planning the lessons for your students?

In terms of contents, the teacher sent me the monthly unit plans, which I used to guide
myself regarding the contents that were supposed to be learnt during the months. I also used
material provided by the Ministry of Education like the “Programa de estudios”. Regarding
type of activities I was influenced by the originally of the activities provided by the teacher
and also considering what the students seem to like (facebook, music, technology, etc.)

2. Did your guide teacher give you any suggestions for planning?

Yes, she told me to prepare a lot of activities in order to make them work, because they
had to be constantly given things to do, otherwise they started talking.

3. How long did it take to you to prepare learning material for your first lesson?
 Since I like to finish what I start immediately, when I started planning the first lesson I
planned the first two months for all the courses. Off course not all the activities were made
immediately, however the activities for the first two weeks were made immediately to
string the contents and the activities together. So everything took me like 3 days; 2 hours, 5
hours and 8 hours, respectively. After the corrections made by Mr. Rodrigo, I had to correct
the mistakes which took me 3 hours, give or take.