On the 25th May, 2023 , I observed my fifth class. The class started a little late after 8:30am because students arrived late to class. There were 9 students in the class and the classroom sitting design layout was in a semi-circle. There was a TESL student who was teaching the first hour of the lesson as part of her practicum.

The class began with a warmup activity where the teacher spoke about pizza and asked the students if they liked pizza and had prepared pizza before. Since it was a speaking class, I thought it was a good speaking activity and also talking about food makes people happy and contributing since food is a universal language. The second warmup continued with a student sharing their favorite quote from their home country and explaining why they liked the quote. 

The class continued with another activity by the TESL student who put students in groups and each group was to pick a number on a cutout paper with questions and instructions at the back of the paper and each group was to discuss and provide an answers to the questions. The students were curious and eager to participate in the activity and each student participated fully. I realized the students were excited and were enjoying the topics and questions they were to discuss and there was total participation from each student. 

During discussion, the TESL student and the teacher went round asking questions and checked if all students were participating or if there was any difficulty the students were facing in understanding the questions or instructions.

Teaching materials were provided for each student. There was a 10 minute break after which the students were put in a group for another round of discussion on learning a new language. It was at moment i thought to myself, group discussions are great speaking activity. The teacher gave a comprehension passage to students to read and an audio of the passage was played for the students and afterwards students were asked to answer the comprehension questions on the passage.

The audio played was clear and audible and it was right for the level of class. This means a lot of research and listening had gone into selecting the right audio, point noted. The class was interactive and students were confident and bold in contribution and in making their suggestions.

The teacher was always motivating students and any idea from students were taken into consideration. This, I believe should be a teacher’s responsibility because motivation helps students to be confident and help them drop all inhibitions, low self-esteem and other feelings that could be a barrier to learning a new language.

To close, the teacher taught students how to do a presentation by explaining every step and processes used in preparing and actually doing a presentation. The teacher after that gave the students a presentation assignment and explained how it would be evaluated. Presentations are good speaking activity and it’s a skill students need in their academic lessons or at their workplaces.

I liked the overall coordination of the lesson and even though the class started late, the lessons were well-paced and it ended on time. As a future ESL teacher, I have learnt that, students can be late and that can affect lessons plans but no matter what, a teacher must reorganize the lesson plan so that at the end lesson objectives can be achieved.