Class Observation 5

 Teacher: Raul
Program: carving
Time observed 6 hours
Date 2015-05-14

This session was on the third floor in an open classroom with a group of students that are taking a complementary course of emerald carving. In the interview with the teacher he comments that the objective is to prepare the students to a field trip to the most important zone of emerald trading in Colombia.

The class

It began as an informative lecture leaded by the teacher where he explained some of the most important aspects to take into account when travelling to Muzo. But then it turned different when he started to explain the way o trading and bargain with emeralds because it included the active participation of students, and turned into a forum where everybody gave opinions and ideas on how to act, what to buy, and what to do. The first three hours finished with the T proposing a deeper investigation from students.

The next day they continued with the discussions but with clearer information, and then the T again took the lead of the conversation and presented some other clues to take into account including the transportation and the housing there.

DO’s

It was interesting to see that the teacher transformed a lecture into an open discussion, he used an activator that was bringing samples of emeralds to the classroom and it provoke the immediate reaction of Ss. T promoted the discussion and encouraged Ss to participate actively in it.

The strategy of giving the Ss time to investigate and go deeper was very successful and helped to clarify some assumptions from the same Ss.