Peer observation

As part of the final activities needed to carry out before finish the social service period, a class observation is a must. Therefore the best option to do this was to find a colleague who was available to visit my classroom and do peer correction. This is not new to me, and I usually take part of projects that PhD students do and ask me to help them by coming to my classroom and carry out observations as part of they research. I find this very important to my teaching practice, because I can learn something from what they record or take notes.

Due to the place where my school is located, the best option to be my observer was a colleague who has been teaching for more than 12 years in rural and urban areas. I told him to be honest and that I definitely won´t feel bad is something wrong came out, because the good thing about peer observation is to learn from others, to have another opinion. It is not the same to observe yourself if you watch photos or videos recorded by us, so it means we are being both judge and interested party at the same time; then it wouldn´t be objective.

He told me that my voice is too loud and it might scare students sometimes and won´t be willing to participate or volunteer. Also regarding coverage of students, he suggested not to loose attention to all the students, don´t focus on just some and include all of them.

When giving instructions, he suggested asking students to model or repeat what they have to do, so it is a good opportunity to us the target language and focusing on the class. And something that he considered very important for the future is to avoid TTT; he told me I needed to teach my students to produce and become autonomous.

He liked the activities because it promoted interaction and collaborative work, he congratulated students because they were very engaged to the activities and always willing to contribute to the team and asking the teacher what they needed to do next.

The recommendations were to manage time between activities, because it took more than expected and it is important to manage in order to reach the objectives of the lesson, otherwise, students would be going home without a task unfinished.