Teaching practice (3) - Teaching materials

source: https://tamannakalim.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/instructional-materials/

The next topic I would like to write about is teaching materials. I observed the class on 26.01.2022 (during the first two lessons). First, I will write the most important information about the class (as it’s the same class as before) and the lessons observed. Then, I will answer the questions from the observation sheet. At the end, I will share my reflections about the topic and examples of changes I’d implement.

Information about the class

I observed the 2nd grade (students are 7-8 years old). There are 26 students in the class. Students have English lessons 2 hours each day of the week. The topic of observed lessons was reading comprehension and exercises connected with it. 

 

The aims of the lessons were:

1. pre-reading exercises (predictions based on the title and pictures) 
2. listening to the story
3. reading and post-reading exercises (completing the exercises from the workbook)

Materials in the classroom

The coursebook used by the teacher is Oxford Discover (2nd edition) by Oxford University Press. It consists of Student Book, Workbook and Grammar Book.

Considering the fact that the teacher chose to work with this book, I reckon she finds it useful and suitable for her students. One of the biggest advantages is the Grammar Book, which allows her to expand grammar topics. Also, this coursebook was chosen for students to start and continue working with the CLIL method. Students like working with this book. They are fond of the current topics (animals, friendship) and find the exercises doable and engaging. There are also funny songs and interesting video materials.

Other materials used in the classroom include:

• the blackboard and the chalk
• the computer with the audio recording of the story
• the interactive whiteboard with viewed pages from the book
• flashcards (not observed on that day)

My reflection

I reckon this teacher uses materials in an effective way. She doesn’t use a lot of them. While introducing new vocabulary, she uses flashcards provided by the publisher. Often, she shows pupils short video materials (either from the book or found on the Internet).

I don’t think there’s much I would’ve changed in the use of materials. Maybe I would use different colours of chalk to highlight the changes on the timeline (they were not very visible). Another way is to support it by pictures or drawings.

Thanks to good time management and lesson pace, the teacher finished the topic before the end of the class. She was satisfied with what was done and how fast the lesson went. Pupils make progress in text analysis - they are able to make predictions and answer questions connected to the story (e.g. about character’s age, the relationship between two characters). They still have difficulties with interpreting the information and drawing conclusions.