Partner Professional Dialogue

Partner Professional Dialogue

The Partner professional Dialogue was an excellent activity that let me think and reflect about my teaching about the types of community involvement, the language development and additional opportunities for students’ choice. The observation provided me a useful help to have a different panorama of what is happening in my lessons.

Without too much thinking, I asked the coordinator Prof. Joyce Viceizo to be my observer and my partner to carry out the professional dialogue. My professional dialogue and peer observation involved the following steps:

1.    Pre- observation discussion:

We had our meeting at the school library and we discussed the questions, we agreed that it is vital  to increase the amount of parent and community involvement in classroom, because if we collaborate together by exchanging ideas we can share and acquire knowledge, that will be useful for the students to connect and apply their learning to their homes and community.

Then we discussed about language development activities that were in my unit. We agreed that in the unit were opportunities for teacher-student and student-student dialogue. The way I contextualize the unit is: a unit that focus on the four skills. For me it is important to include in my lesson plan the resent topic work and ask the students about it. In that way, I could connect the content of my unit to prior knowledge and experiences from home and community.

The activities in the unit were appropriate for the intermediate level. Both of us are really interested in talking with smalls groups of students in order to connect school to students’ lives and experiences that could provide knew knowledge. This kind of  instructional conversation will be fantastic activity for the students because it is an excellent way to encourage them to have opinions, express, exchange ideas and think critically and questioningly about what they are learning. I will try to use the students’ own knowledge and experiences as much as possible.

Next, we discussed the format of my lesson plan as well as the format of the classroom observation. She considered having another observation and evaluation report that it is used on my "unidad receptora".

2.    Observation:

The day of my formal observation I was really nervous because I thought that I was having a test that I could fail. I observed, that my students responded differently when they noticed that they were having an extra person that was sitting in the classroom.

I really tried to not look at my observer but I noticed that she was making notes, following the steps of the lesson plan. I really tried to be myself and act naturally.

3.    Post-lesson discussion:

The meeting took place at the school library again; we both report our impression of the lesson. We discussed about the observation and evaluation report, the things that she observed in the planning, presentation and development, interpersonal dynamics, and class management as well as the classroom observation based on the five standards for effective teaching.

We commented about my strengths and weakness during the lesson. My strengths were the way I planned my lesson and class management. The things I need to improve were making the aims and objectives of the lesson clear to students, explain instructions clearly and make use of gestures and body language.

4.    Follow up:

I am going to follow her advice and not get lock in that kind of  ways of teaching. I am going to try out all the suggestions and ideas that we talked previously.

I am sure that the observation provided me a useful help a in-service teacher can get because my observer gave me the opportunity to get insights from a different perspective and view of point. I also think that the observation can tell me things that I can’t see.I believe that it is vital to not take anything personal, and see observation as a way of improvement. I will try to follow her advice and reflect my learning during this partner professional dialogue.
I am looking forward to do the next activity which is joint a productive activity which requires student collaboration.