Task 1: The School and Learning Environment
Name of student: Paulina Rojas González
Name of School: Colegio Carlos Cousiño
Number of students: 39
Date: From Class: NM2
1. The school:
Describe the general background of the school including the physical location, organisation, student population, philosophy and educational and behavioural policies.
Carlos Cousiño School is located in Retamo 650 in Valparaíso. It is a Catholic institution that gives moral values to its students based on the message of Jesus Christ, and all its teacher are Christians as well.
Carlos Cousiño is dependent on “Sociedad Formadora de la Infancia y Adoloscencia de Valparaíso (SOFIA)”.
Girls and boys are separated from each other, this means that there are only-girl and only-boy classrooms, and they also have their breaks at different times so that they do not mix with each other; the students have contact just for some common activities such as anniversaries. I asked the guide teacher about this decision and she told me that this was a decision of the SOFIA.
The educational and behavioral policies of this school are not different from other institutions in the Chilean system. In general, all the rules point to generate a good school environment and to promote values like respect, responsibility, and good manners.
Some of the main behavioral policies students from Colegio Carlos Cousiño must follow are:
Be respectful and correct in their behavior.
Respect themselves and their classmates.
Keep a good relationship with the school staff and classmates.
Be responsible in their duties and commitments
Carlos Cousiño school has a population of 62 teachers and 890 students: 626 are girls and 264 are boys. This school has k-12 education for girls and there is only secondary education for boys .
Some of the authorities are:
Rector: Mr. Sergio Ramirez Peñafiel
General Supervisor: Ms. Ana Maria Rodriguez Gómez
Primary Education Coordinator: Gabriela Bayola
Head teacher of the 2nd grade: Luisa Espósito Cancino (biology teacher)
You can find the organization chart of the institution and the class list of students on my blog.
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
From what I have observed the atmosphere in the classroom is good, all girls seem to have a good relationship with each other, and despite of the fact that you clearly can see that there exist some groups based on interests and personal characteristics they all seem to be very close and I have not observed any rivalry.
From my perspective most of students seem to be engaged with the school specially in non academic activities such as the school anniversary, “Chilean independence celebration” or the “tallarinata”. But I think that regarding the English class the girls are not aware of the importance of learning English, or they do not see the purpose of it, it is just another subject, the most part of the class they are talking or doing other things.
The classroom is very comfortable, the light and ventilation are good; the girls sit in 3 lines in front of the whiteboard, above of it there is an image of Christ; what I like about the classroom is that the teacher desk is on a platform so that the teacher has a good and broad view all the classroom.
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
During the observation stage I noticed that the guide-teacher has a very good relationship with all the girls and she usually makes use of the sense of humor. Despite of the fact this is a good and important characteristic for the learning process I could also observe that sometimes the girls lose respect and it is a little bit hard to have them in silence.
Another thing that I noticed is that the teacher has a teacher-centered approach; she explains the subject and then gives grammar exercises; in one of the classes I observed she gave a puzzle for the girls to solve, they were working on that one entire hour, then she called some girls to check and gave a "summative"mark and after that she corrected it on the board; and that was all the class.
b) Describe the resources used and the materials available within the school. How are the resources used in the classroom?
I talked with the guide teacher about the resources and materials available in the school. She told me that they have radio, television, DVD; data show with laptop, and a photocopier available for teachers to use for their classes. On the other hand, students have access to the library and the computer lab to use.
From what I observed the teacher does not make much use of these resources, because she said that it was a little bit difficult to ask for the data, so she usually gives guides to the students and just uses the whiteboard.
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?
During the observation stage I could identify there is a group of girls that really like English and are very fast at doing the guides the teacher gives, they always participate in classes and ask questions because they want to know more about the language, they really take part in their own learning.
Leaving aside this group, I think that most of the students do not see the importance of learning a foreign language like English, because they are talking about other things most of the time or they do other things, they do not do the activities and just copy on their notebooks the things written on the board, and wait for the teacher to correct the exercises. In the last test there were a lot of low marks, and the test was about the same things they were supposed to be doing in classes, it was not a hard test.
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?
I think the English classes are very traditional and teacher-centered, despite of the fact the teacher-student relationship is very good, most of the students do not seem to be engaged in the learning of the language, I think the teacher does not do many things to engage and motivate students, the only way I observed students were encouraged to participate in activities was by giving them marks for their work, in this way she encourages students to work in class, because otherwise the girls would be talking and laughing all the class. There are no students with special needs.
3. Discuss the learning styles and levels of English in the classroom.
I think it is a little bit difficult to find out what the learning styles of the students are in just two weeks, but from what I have observed so far and also from the surveys I carried out I would say that most of them are visual because they always want the teacher to write instructions or words on the board and they like when the teacher draw to explain some vocabulary words.
In the suvey I carried out I asked about favourite subject at school, the profession they would like to follow in the future, the things they like and dislike about the school and about the English class; I also asked about the things they would like to do in the English class, among other questions. From this information I can say that there are many students that like "Humanist" subjects, so I would say the predominant styles are linguistic and visual. The survey is available on my blog.
Regarding the level of English in the classroom, I would say that the girls manage a great amount of vocabulary and they know a lot of basic grammatical rules, they are very good at understanding written information but I think there is a lack of spoken language in the classroom, it is hard for them to understand spoken English.
