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.
