TESOL Certificate Programs

Observation Notebook
Observation Report Form
Name of Observer Han Zheng
Date
Observati Class
on
Environm
ent*
11/22/ UCR
422
2016 Extension

Observation # 05
Skill/Content Level

Reading&
Writing

400

Teacher

Reza Fiyouzat

*Include the URL if the class was online

WRITE THE OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO THE OBSERVATION GUIDELINES:

STUDEDNTS WILL BE ABLE TO SUMMARIZE THE MAIN CONTENT OF
ONE CHAPTER (THE AMIR) FROM THE BOOK SEEDFOLKS AND
WRITE DOWN THEIR SUMMARY ON THE HANDOUT.
STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO FOCUS ON
IMPRTANT EVENTS IN A BOOK WHEN THEY DO SUMMRARY.
STUDENTS WILL ULTIMATELY BE ABLE TO WRITE A BOOK REPORT AT
THE END OF THIS COURSE.

Notes while observing:

Last Updated: 12/8/2016 2:20 a12/p12

10:00
T asked Ss a question that he gave as homework last time.
What was Amirs big problem at the beginning of the chapter?
Most of the students failed to answered the question.
T gave them 10 minutes to find out the answer.
Some students knew the answer. T checked their answer one by one privately. If the
answer was correct , T would give the students an handout and asked he/she to read the
following pages of the chapter and wrote down descriptions of the three events that
appears on the book in the blank space on the handout.
10:07
T gave more specific instruction for Ss who was having trouble in locating the position of
the answer.
(T: The answer is in the first chapter of the first page.)
10:10
T explained some vocabulary to Ss while teacher was reading the first paragraph in the
Amir chapter.(The chapter is one the last three pages of this report).
1. Vast--means big. From one end of city to another end of city.
2. There--in here it reference to India
3. One among millions--- it means There are many millions of people.
10:14
T gave students 30 minutes to fill out the blanks on the handout he gave in pairs.
10:45
T checked answers with Ss by called up students to shout their answers out loud.

What did you learn about teaching or learning from this lesson as it relates to the
theory you have studied in your TESOL classes? Include at least one reference (with
an in-text citation) to support your response. (250-500 words)
In todays lesson, Mr. Fiyouzat use scaffolding teaching strategy to help students to
achieve the ultimate goal of this lesson-- writing a book report. Scaffolding
instructionas a teaching strategy originates from Lev Vygotskys sociocultural theory
and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The zone of proximal
development is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next
learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance (Raymond, 2000,
p.176). The scaffolding teaching strategy provides individualized support based on the
learners ZPD (Chang, Sung, & Chen, 2002). For level-300 students it would be
challenging for them to write a book report without help from the teacher. But writing a
book report is in their ZPD. As long as they get the scaffolding instructions from teacher,
they would be able to do it. Therefore, in order to help them to write a book report,
Mr.Fiyouzat let them read one chapter and do a summary of that chapter first. By doing
this they would learn how to summarize a chapter, how to pick up important events from
a chapter and how to omit the unimportant descriptions. Then Mr. Fiyouzat asked them to
read three chapters and do summaries of the three chapters. In this way, by the end of
todays class students can practice their summary skill and get prepare for the book
report---which need them to summarize the whole book.
The second teaching strategy I learn today is called differentiate instruction. In the
beginning of todays class, some students found the answers faster than other. Instead of
keeping them waiting for other students, Mr. Fiyouzat gave them the second assignment
he had prepared for this course. Therefore, high level students would not feel bored in the
class. This strategy is useful when there are different levels of students in one class.

Reference
Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, and
Experience & School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Chang, K., Chen, I., & Sung, Y. (2002). The effect of concept mapping to enhance text
comprehension and summarization. The Journal of Experimental Education 71(1), 523.