In this class observation, I observed an EFL class in China. There were 42 six-grade students in this class who were low intermediate level. The goal of the class was to review the vocabulary and phrases about holidays, and to practice describing the holidays. This video was only a part of the class.
The teacher had very encouraging and friendly facial expressions and gestures, which was essential for teachers to build connections with students and create an engaging learning atmosphere for students.
I like the approach the teacher used to lead a reviewing lesson. The teacher put a series of pictures that showed the vocabulary and phrases the students had learned, and the students could easily recall what they had learned in their previous class. Also, it was an effective way to increase elementary school students’ interest in learning and improve their learning performances. I will employ and expand this approach in my future teaching by making the dialogues and texts into pictures to help my students to remember the dialogues easier.
Before the students practicing describing their own holidays, the teacher showed the main sentence structures and the students could refer them when presenting their own description. This way the key sentence structures were emphasized and the students could enhance their memories about the key sentence structures while practicing. Also, I like the way the teacher expanded the reviewing. For example, when practicing the sentence “You can see many animals in the jungle”, the teacher asked the students what other animals we could see in the jungle and the students reviewed also the names of various animals they had learned before. One more approach I found great was that when teaching long words, the teacher would break the word and teach by different parts. For example, she broke the word “skyscraper” into “sky” and “scraper” and used hand gestures to show the students the relation between these two parts. The students understood quickly and I believe they would remember it easily.