Language institute of Distrital University Francisco Jose de Caldas

Instructor: Yeferson Romaña Correa

Peer / observer: Luis D. Rentería Rentería
Student Population: Intermediate EFL students (teenagers)
Observation of a grammar class
Grammar focus: past simple and past continuous.

First of all, I arrived very early before the beginning of the class when neither the students nor the teacher had
arrived, some minutes later the teacher arrived and started writing the grammar concepts that he was going to deal
with, and the objectives of the class on the top left-hand corner of the board. After that, the students started to
arrive, he greeted them as they were coming into the class and then he started the class with a vocabulary game.
In the game, the students had to be organized into four groups and then they had to send a representor to the front,
once there was a student from each group, they had to be back to the board and the teacher starting writing some
words on the board and the students had to describe the word to their representor without saying it, the first in
guessing the word won a point for the group and the game continued until everybody came to the board. I really
found it funny for a class-activator.

Once all the students arrived, the teacher stated the grammar concepts he was going to teach and objective of the
class which were written on the board.

They were written as follow. At the end of this class students will be able to:
Use both past simple and past continuous correctly
Tell short stories using past simple and past continuous
Talk about events that were taking place at specific period of time in the past
Talk and write about finished actions in the past by the time we are talking.

Most of the students wrote the objectives on their notebooks, then the teacher made them organized in small
groups of four, then he started to explain the grammar rules governing each of the two grammar tenses, then he
made some few examples on the board and asked if any student wanted to come to the board and do an example
of his / her own, five or six students came to the board and did some examples correctly, then he made them open
a textbook and gave a page to work, later he went over and checked the page with the students and finally he
wrote the two tenses into some bubbles on the board and pulled out a set of cards where the usages of the two
tenses were and made some students come to the board and stick the cards next to the correct tense according to
the explanation he had provided.
Later in the class, he has some pieces of paper to the students who were organized in groups of four and gave
some instructions for them to start creating a story that at the end of the class they will have to choose a representor
to share the story with the whole class.
I could see that the teacher was assessing the students on the go, he was applying some activities as the class was
progressing, working on different skills.
The language domains that were emphasized the most were syntax and semantics; the teacher was insisting on
the necessity of the students to make appropriate use of grammar and the choice of words for their writing.
In spite of the fact that these students were not ELS, the teacher was making them work in small groups where
those who were more advance could help the lowest and besides that, the teacher brought a lot of games and
activities to motivate the students in the class. Besides that, he was paying a lot of attention to those students who
had a little more difficulty to understand the concepts, he was always called by a group who was having problem
with the activities.
Finally, I would say that, I might have altered this two lessons that I had the chance to observe, in a way that
every teacher feeling observed comes over prepared for the class and talks to the students about behavior in
advance, these classes was too mechanic that I felt that maybe students knew about it.