Final preparation

Well, today is the final practice day before the observation team comes to sit in the lessons tomorrow. So far I have planned the lessons and prepared all the materials and teaching aids. All I have to do now is just to wait for tomorrow’s announcement on which class will be observed and shadowed.

These days, I have practised doing the group work with my students, telling them how to repsond to the teacher, how to work with their partners, how to finish their work, how to present their work and how to give feedback.  This week, we have done a lot of work and preparation which we may never do in our teaching lives, and the result is good of course.

Students like to have group work, like to be praised (with stickers) and I have found that after I’ve done all these, the learning atmosphere improves, students are more interested to learn. And the relationship between me and my students turns better too. When the students see me, they are trying to behave in a good manner under my encouragement and they are hoping for activities during which they can get stickers if they did a good job, and on the other hand, I tend to be closer to my students, to know them more in their group work and to have more praise on them.

After all these, I realized that observation is a good thing to us no matter what the result will be. These weeks, we have done our best, we have done the best teaching in our lives which both teachers and students enjoy. I agree what people say "Pressure makes progress". If there is no observation, I think everyone will just do their own jobs without having any new teaching ideas or thinking how to improve their teaching. Therefore, I think observation is good in this sense.