7/25/2019 Pop-In Observation Task Sample

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Task 1: Learner-Centredness.

Background: This task aims to evaluate the learner-centredness of the lesson being observed. Agood indication of the extent to which learners are at the heart of the lesson is to measure the timethey spend doing a task compared to the total time for a task. A task in this case is any classroomactivity that follows the pattern Instruction > Action > Clarification/Feedback, or similar. This taskhas been adapted from Richards and Thomas (2005:91).

Procedure:

Evaluation: Lessons that are more learner-centred have a higher proportion of student time ontask. Ideally instruction and feedback phases should be snappy where teacher-led. Betterexamples of learner-centredness will include learner involvement in both stages but particularly inthe giving of feedback.

Suggestions: Where instructions are overly wordy or unclear and this leads to less student time on

task teachers should be encouraged to use imperatives to give instructions; use examples and/orICQs to check instructions; simplify the activity types they are using. Where feedback/clarificationis very teacher-centred, teachers should be encouraged to investigate more learner-centredtechniques such as guided-discovery (clarification) and peer-checking (feedback). Scrivener (2012)provides good examples of different ways of doing this - teachers can borrow this book from theCPD library.

References:

Richards, J.C. and Farrell, T.S.C. (2005) Professional Development for Language Teachers.CambridgeScrivener, J. (2012) Classroom Management Techniques. Cambridge

For each stage of the lesson, note how long the students are on task compared to total task time.

Task # Total Time Student Time on Task

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