2018

SELF
OBSERVATION
LOG
Professor. Cristina Peñafort
This is an observation log about my assessment, based on the
questions given by the professor in my daily practice as a teacher
in the school Monseñor Jose Manuel Salcedo placed in El Bolo.
There I teach English to students who have had different social,
economic, academic, etc. problems and because of the age they
have, they are not allowed to continue in a school with normal
schedule.

Claudia Rivera Varela

ICESI University
 SELF-OBSERVATION LOG

Weeks 1 and 2: August 27th – August 31st

1. What difficulties do I observe in my class (es)?

2. What hypothesis do I have about the situation?

3. How do I face them (Approach, method and technique)?

4. What other input do I add to solve the difficulties I observed?

5. What results do we (students and i) get?

Keep in mind Action Research

Weeks 3 and 4: September 4th – September 7th

1. What difficulties do I observe in my class (es)?

2. What hypothesis do I have about the situation?

3. How do I face them (Approach, method and technique)?

4. What other input do I add to solve the difficulties I observed?

5. What results do we (students and i) get?

Keep in mind Action Research

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*With the help of: Owns memory and video recording
Context

MONSEÑOR JOSE MANUEL SALCEDO EDUCATIONAL School, has an

academic modality aimed at developing general and specific work skills, the
Philosophy of the educational institution is based on the human and Christian
promotion of the whole educational community, as a service offered to form a
community of construction people of a cognitive, socio-affective and
communicative process in a permanent analysis of the social, political context,
economic, cultural and ecological.

In the institution, I work as an English teacher by cycles (Grade 6 th and 7th is cycle
III, grade 8th and 9th is cycle IV and grade 10th and 11th is special cycle). One of the
most notorious difficulties in teaching at this school is the absenteeism of students,
the social problems of the environment, without saying the real lack of the
minimum vocabulary and interest of the language is tangible. It is important to
emphasize that the hourly intensity in the groups is 2 hours per week with each
cycle on paper; in fact, the classes are on Mondays from 6:00 PM to 9:20 PM and
Thursdays from 6:00 PM to 7: 40 PM, in this observation log I’m going to be focus
just on cycle III.

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Cycle III classroom and student’s characteristics.

I have eight students in this course but most of times I have 2 or 3 class
assistants. The students of cycle III work during the day, none have had contact
with the English not even in songs, movies or at least in any traditional way. In the
town, the people have no need to use the foreign language for example, they
don’t get the phenomenon of globalization, like using English names for some
restaurants, barbershops, shops, bakeries or any other type of culture.
Actually it is worrisome because the indexes of knowledge of the native language
(Spanish) is also precarious, which hinders the learning, knowledge and
appropriation of the grammatical structure, like I said previously, even if repetition
of short keywords or some use is made of the English language, they do not
assimilate it and lose interest. I believe that the social factor is very important
because as they say "Why will it be useful if I am going to cut cane?" or "I just
need the cardboard to work". The problems of gangs, drugs and others are
determining factors also for this difficulty.

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Purpose

To record observations of student performance or progress, and the way I teach

some classes, identifying which one is my style and how can I improve to teach my
students better, because they have different needs and difficulties. These
observations can provide evidence of skill development, progress toward goal
achievement, and areas of strength or weakness.

Process

The documentation process does not need to be elaborate or lengthy. What is

more important is the regular and systematic collection of observations that will
form a rich picture of student performance and my way of teaching English.

Difficulties I observed in my classes

I think during this three weeks, it has been quite difficult to teach them the
grammar, structure, pronunciation and everything that involves the topic, because
a lot of factors, one of them is that my students were with a teacher that spoke all
the time in Spanish and all the activities were just translations. I have been
worried about this, because despite of all my attempts, I have not been able to get
them to understand the topic even if it's 50%. So when I was asking about
another ways or opinions about this, a colleague told me about some activities for
working in classes, “the pronouns game” was one of them. I have been teaching
this topic with the verb to be tenses in cycle III without any progress, so even
though I was not sure, I tried it with my students (3) in one class and asked them
what they thought about it and what we should do differently next time. The
feedback was quite positive in terms of the activity, but the learners preferred to
learn the exact rules to be able to perform the sentences (memorization).

The difficulties that I found outside those of the previously mentioned contexts,
(the hour of classes, the difficulties of access to educational Internet, lack of time
because of work, no motivation and no necessity to learn the language, among
others) in classes it is mainly that the students do not review the topic, therefore I
had to re-explain the subject or review it, as a second measure the use of English

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in classes is minimal, almost null. When I explain a sentence or a pronoun in
English, they have a hard time differentiating between how a word is pronounced
and how it is written. They have many academic gaps in the mother tongue, so
they do not know what it is for example, a plural pronoun in Spanish and what is
the difference between the singular pronoun.
Talking about me in the class, I consider that most of the time is focused on me,
although my students were motivated to participate in the board, they felt afraid to
do it alone and always looked for the solution on me and not a guide. Most of the
time when activities were to be done in class, the classroom was in completely
silent for 20 or 30 minutes since students find the activities difficult to perform
because of lack of vocabulary and tools such as a dictionary.

Another problem is that in language learning contexts, students may struggle to

understand the relevance of learning English, as they have little contact with
speakers of the language which causes negative attitudes towards foreign
language learning. One problem on the side of learners is that they are not aware
of the importance of proficiency in English; they focus only on passing classes or
getting high marks instead of acquiring English.

Hypothesis I have about the situation

I think that the method of instruction is always a discussion subject in foreign

language teaching, but is more difficult when we have students with a hard
context and real limitations, here I think there is not just implementation of one
method. I think I implemented traditional methods as like in my other classes with
my other groups being in my comfort zone, for which I consider that I need to
evaluate the population and context to be able to modify my teaching method
which is mostly focus on teaching grammar, to restrict my teaching in course
books and to receive only basic training in the underpinning theory and practical
applications. Another issue in the educational process is the learning places. The
atmosphere, appearance, size and equipment of learning places have importance
in the learning process. This can cause failure in language learning process;
because it makes difficult to motivate and get involve students in language use.

My approach, method and technique

I have a reputation as a good teacher, I am sympathetic to the needs of the

students, to try never to say an answer was wrong, but also I’m impatient and
obsessed with rules and control in classes. I think that I have a mixed, methods,

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approaches and techniques in order to try to caught the attention of my students
as much as possible. It could be said that like them, we are in the process of
learning together and identifying their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to
learning, as well as mine.
I use grammar-translation method, Audio-lingual method, the structural approach,
TPR, the silent way, task based language learning, the natural approach among
others. Is important to say that sometimes the materials were important because
the function of materials of the learning process and the forms they take in some
methods; these ones are designed to replace the teacher so that learning can take
place independently.

Other input I add to solve the difficulties I observed

After explaining the reasons for the problem, it is vital to present possible solutions
for the problem. There are some studies that focus on the ways of solving the
mentioned problems. The possible solutions are establishing a coordination
committee for the language learning problem, designing a new curriculum, revising
syllabuses, organizing in-service training, increasing the number of courses,
changing the teacher training systems and of course improve the standards and
the times for the classes. Learners and teachers of English at education context
have been overlooked. For that reason, I think is important to make a restructuring
of every academic context.

Results we get

Observing this difficulties, analyzing and trying to resolve them, I’m practicing
different activities and mixed methods in our academicals context, I did a
questionnaire template that I adapted and tailored to each class, depending on the
exam and what I know of the group’s likes and dislikes and on the results this
allows me to plan the classes more effectively and focus in on their needs. I think
that when I did the feedback of the activities carried out at the end of the class in
cycle III, the results were positive, but despite this, the lack of interest, materials,
and motivation due to adverse factors prevents that enough progress is made on
only one topic. My students feel more confident when it comes to asking questions
and participating in class. This is shown not only in better results and their process
but in the feedback that they deliver at the end of the classes. (Some examples
attached)

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Cybergraphy

https://www.coursera.org/lecture/teaching-learning-tools/action-research-
vRSDE

http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/method.htm