Observation Report by Naomi Igarashi Takagi
Describe the academic setting that you observed. Include the
professional's role in this setting. What were the goals for this class or
laboratory? Were the goals accomplished?
I observed an ENGL 1## class during the second week of this semester. There were
twelve or thirteen students attending this class. This is an introductory
composition course, and the student population is a mixture of American students
and international students. The instructor's objectives for that day were to go
over the course syllabus, to discuss some invention strategies (e.g. clustering,
listing, etc.), and to do group work. All of her goals were accomplished
successfully.
Describe the instructional strategies that enhanced the class or
laboratory that you observed. Consider the degree of involvement and interaction
that the students had with each other and the professional.
The instructor's teaching style was impressive because she constantly made
jokes and made the students laugh. Actually, when she first came in, the
students were very quiet, but her being lively and funny made them more cheerful
and talkative.
She also put her students into groups so that there were one or two good
writers in each group. She was able to do this because she had their diagnostics
as her reference. Also, she made them write a letter to her at the very
beginning of the semester, so she could estimate their language levels as well
as their personality. The students will work with their group mates throughout
the semester, so today's group work enabled them to become acquainted with one
another. The students had to share things such as their favorite things to do in
their spare time or incidents that changed their lives. At the end of the class,
each group had to list twenty things they had in common and hand it in, which I
thought was a skillful way of enhancing their solidarity.
Discuss what you have learned from this observation that you would like
to include in your own repertoire of instructional strategies.
One of my ENGL 1## classes is also a mixture of native students and
international students, and sometimes it is difficult to make them feel
comfortable toward each other, especially because this is a language course.
They can be self-conscious and nervous. For this reason, the instructor's ways
of "breaking the ice" were very insightful. She was very bubbly and cheerful, so
even when she faced an awkward situation (e.g. a student made a yawn
unwittingly), she could make a joke out of it while sending her message across
to the student. I also thought her way of asking them to find twenty common
things was great because even though her students' backgrounds were quite
diverse, she made them focus on what they had in common instead of their
differences from each other.
Open-ended response - please use this question to add information not
covered in the other three questions.
Classroom atmosphere is very important for this type of interactive classes.
Sometimes, it happens naturally, but sometimes we need to make efforts to make
that happen. I thought her strategies were quite useful and insightful.