Class Observation Form

Faculty Member Observed: Mr. Jeremy Palmer Observer: Basma Abdulla

Class Observed: Foundations Level 4
Date and Time of Class: 14th September,2014 8:30 10:20
1) The goal or outcome for this class session is:
- Prepare for a typical IELTS reading test
- Go over type of questions that could come up in an IELTS reading test
- Go over vocabulary that is common in an IELTS test
2) Describe what happened in this class session. What was done by the faculty
member and/or the students? What teaching methods did you observe? How
effective were these activities and methods in achieving the goal or student
outcome that the faculty member had set out for this class session? Explain.
1) Small chat about weekends as students come into class
2) Start with a warm up iPad activity on the iPad
3) Play a vocabulary words matching game in groups, where students are given
cards and they have to turn them over until they can match terms with their
meanings, and keep those cards.
4) The first group that finished did a quick teaching session about some of the
vocabulary words
5) To correct, the teacher went over examples that can be used with the vocabulary
words
6) Students then had to add their vocabulary words and meaning to a vocabulary
app
7) Students were assigned a reading text to complete as homework (that had the
same vocabulary words)
3) What worked particularly well during this class session?
What worked really well was how well students played the game together in
groups and how much they tried to help each other. They were also all familiar
with the vocab app and so knew what to do as soon as the task was asked of them.

4) Was there a point during this class session when the faculty member lost
student attention? If so, what do you think caused it? How did the faculty
member react, what did he/she do to regain student attention? Were the
faculty members efforts in this regard effective?
There was one students who would not stop talking. She seemed distracted or had a
lot to say but most of it was just talk and had no value to the lesson. The teacher
just waited for her to finish and tried to sum up her ideas in a sentence. Eventually
he just nicely asked her to stop talking till he finished what he was trying to say,
but used a joke so that it didnt make her feel bad. That worked well since she
waited for him to finish before she started talking again.
5) How did the physical surroundings or environment of the class session
affect the learning experience, if at all? (For example, the temperature or set
up of the classroom, the time of day, number of students in the class, outside
noise, lighting, problems with equipment or technology such as VCR, COW,
etc.)
-The morning timing seemed tiring for these students, the teacher joked about what
kind of Sunday mood they were in. But the bright sunlight that was allowed in the
room seemed to help the environment. The classroom seemed spacey with lots of
room for the teacher to move around.
6) What suggestions do you have for the faculty member you observed in
terms of expansion of particularly effective teaching strategies, improvement
of teaching strategies that didnt work well, solving problems you observed,
etc.?
Since the class did really well and seemed to understand most of the lesson, I
might add a small reflective segement at the end of the lesson for them to reflect on
todays lesson and on their behavior.