Partner Professional Dialogue Follow Up.

Post-reflection Dialogue Report, Part 1.

It has been a while since I had carried out my lesson plan towards promoting collegiality and professional dialogue to improve teaching.  I had been waiting  for the second part of the observation, which will be after  watching  the video. Due to some  family health problems  my dialogue partner has been  facing,  it has not been possible. Here it is part one of the follow up posterior to the class I presented. My partner stayed only during     the introductory part of my class ( it was fo  about 30 minutes), and we agreed that we would get together in a later time to watch the video of the whole class.  

The day after the observation, I was very anxious to learn about her comment.  I chose this partner because she is very critical, professional and has a good eye. I would have preferred she would have written a formal comment, but instead she gave me feedback though a chat the day after  she observed the class. It is good that she has a good memory too.

She said that the format we got form coordination did not convinced very much to be use during her observation, so she took out some informal notes   she wrote during the observation and said that first of all she thought I had done a pretty good  job with the lesson planning content, that is was very specific and involved lots of  oral production and students interaction with each other. She also said that during   the beginning of my class, she had noticed I had been  a little nervous, but that I had managed to get over it soon. She liked the way I welcomed students at the beginning of the class.

On the other hand,  she pointed out some  issues with regards the  fact that I didn’t  make emphasis on the Can Vs Can´t pronunciation. She also commented on that my introduction to the unit content  created certain level of confusion in students probably due to the presentation  and short meaning explanation of other verbs  used to express abilities ( Be able to and  know how to) together with Can. I totally agreed with her observation. Next day, I worked fixing the issues observed by not bringing out any other verb form in the   unit that wasn´t Can and Can´t   -it´s use and   pronunciation, along with the use of the new topic, adverbs.

The unit content was covered pretty well, mostly due to the amount of speaking interaction and to the gradual increase of level of difficulty in the presentation and use of structure.  I have been aware for  awhile that I need to improve  how I manage information  on the board, on how I distribute it and on how I addressee it . Now, I am looking forward to close this activity by finishing watching the video with a colleague.  My dialogue partner has not recovered completely, so,  for the second  Saturdays on the row,   I have scheduled an appointment with my boss to watch the video and have her commenting on it.  Tomorrow Saturday is the day! I hope.

Thanks  for reading and take care.