Twelve students in a Primary Education Program at the Corozal Junior College for the A.C.E. program were observed for about two hours. The course entitled Language Arts Methods for the Primary Classroom II is geared to exploring theories, models and strategies for teaching and learning Language Arts in primary schools. We, as a group, were primarily interested in how three theories specifically those of Pavlov, Skinner and Bandura had influence on the lesson being performed by Ms. Rosali Cruz and her students.

            The lesson started out by the teacher’s welcome and by signalling the students with her hand action that it was time for the lesson to begin. The class started with a ten minute USSR (Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading) period. Each student was supposed to have already a novel for them to be reading. The teacher pulled a chair to the center front of the classroom and then sat with the novel she herself had been ready. As she was pulling her chair each pupil in the classroom took out their novel and began reading. After the ten minutes the teacher instructed them to mark where they had finished reading for the day. She then continued on to explain the final assessment that shall be completed using the USSR strategy. The teacher went on and asked the students what they think is the purpose of the activity they are presently doing and how will it benefit them as future teachers. Responses she received were, for example, that they as students enrich their vocabulary, it is relaxing, and that they do not rush the reading they are doing so as to promote understanding of the content in their novel. The lecturer responded by telling them “The more words we know, the more words we can teach with!” 

            The lecturer continued with her introductory activity, here a ‘picture box’ was put into place. A picture box is sort of like a dice but instead of having numbers on the each side pictures are placed instead. The teacher asked for a voluntary, but nobody was willing to participate therefore she called on a random person in the class. The pupil was to take the picture box and throw it in the air and leave it to fall on the floor. Next, the individual would take the cube and show the face on which it landed up to the class. The lecturer instructed the student to tell the class about the image. But in the case of the student she just merely said it is a girl giving her dog a bathe. So the teacher insisted for the development of a short story through a sentence or two by prompting the student to integrate a little creativity into her speech. The situation then became “What is the girl’s name? Paige, When did she give her dog a bathe? Thursday, What’s the dog’s name? Scrappy” Until the complete sentence was built such that then the student said “Last Thursday Paige gave Scrappy a bathe.” This was repeated with about five more classmates but as a new person performed the activity a little more was expected of them so as when the last participant went up he could look at the picture and tell a short story because he knew what was expected of him. Again the teacher came back to the rest of the class and asked for both advantages and disadvantages of this activity through their own point of view.

            The development of the lesson was based on determining whether outcomes are related to either the academic or social language of their students. Interestingly, students had already been seated in a formation whereby it is easy for them to work in pairs. So therefore when the teacher said the following work is to be done in pairs, they only moved a bit closer to each other. The teacher provided clear instructions and then told the students the time that is allotted to them to perform this activity. After the activity in pairs was completed the teacher began asking simultaneous questions and therefore creating atmosphere for class discussion to occur.

            To conclude the lesson the teacher provided students with a clear and concise image of what is both academic and social language. Then she went on to explain the contents of their assignment to be completed for the following class.

            We can clearly see that the theories we went out to observe were alive in this lesson format and play. From the beginning of the lesson the student were already aware that when the teacher signals them with her right hand it is meant to notify them that the class is to be begin or that they are misbehaving. This was followed by the lecturer’s actions of pulling a chair to the middle front of the classroom where she sat down to read. The students already knew this is meant for them take out their novels to commence their USSR. It caught our attention to see that even by seating arrangement these students are prepared for any activity the teacher has prepared for them. So as a fact we can say that conditioning does occur within our students and also behaviourism because just by having an attitude of I don’t want to volunteer these students undergo these theories.

 

            From my personal point of view, I believe that the lesson performed by the teacher had very good influence on the pupils. It was noticeable that students were in tune with her lesson throughout the course of the two hour class. Her usage of USSR is very much pleasing to see because the student teachers need to have an enriched vocabulary so that they can teach students using their wider range of vocabulary. Her playing with the picture box was a very amusing. Students were in a way forced to open the creative aspect of their storytelling skills for their future students.

            Relating to Pavlov and Skinner’s Theories, I clearly saw conditioning with the students as the lesson when by. First in seating arrangements, in the USSR time period and in the hand action the teacher performed. At the first instant the teacher raised her right hand with fist closed; that is the only aspect where I must disagree because I believe that that symbol can be misinterpreted by some students and should not be something that teacher students should develop as a habit. 

Class Observation Critique – Mijael
The observation I made is that the teacher really know how to plan, deliver and manage her class properly. I really believe that the technique she implemented was very appropriate. The first activity carried out (USSR) is one that we see was used for the enhancement and improvement of the vocabulary. The next activity done was the demonstration using the picture box. It was really creative for both the teacher and students as they had to have imagination and creativity to the activity. The students were already condition to the class and the teacher itself. This brings back us to Skinner and Pavlov’s theory of behaviourism and conditioning. 

We could clearly depict the level of condition the students have with the teacher and the behaviour towards the subject itself. 

A clear example of conditioning would be the teacher raising her hand and making symbols that means the class was about to begin. This made the students aware that they should be getting ready and attentive.

Class Observation Critique –Rennel Burgos
From the beginning we can see that students are aware of rules and what hand signs meant. We also saw that the classroom was an organized class as if everyone knew that there should be rows and columns rather than scattered chairs. We also noted that the teacher without mentioning took her chair and sat down and was ready with her book. This meant that everyone should know that it was time for silent reading. As a result of that students immediately took out there book without hesitating or worrying that they didn’t had a book. This could mean that if there was no book there was going to be consequences because silent reading was to be done every day and there was no excuse of not having a book in your bag. Also we noticed that in some way or other students at first did not wanted to volunteer probably because they didn’t wanted to be judged or critiqued by others with the upcoming activity, but eventually the teacher had to volunteer somebody in order to establish a safe environment for the rest of the class. Why a safe environment? This is because then students when called to participate would actually do the activity and follow instructions and share what he/ she had to say without being critiqued by classmates. 

With this we can conclude that the theories we looked at in class did relate to the observation we did. For example in the last activity social learning (Bandura) was related to it because there had to be a communication with the teacher and other students to grasp the idea of what was to be done with the activity in order for them to do the same when there time came. They were able to learn from one another. Lastly I can relate the other two theories to being conditioned (skinner & Pavlov). This can be related from the start where students follow instructions and rules and are aware of the consequences if they don’t have their books, or if they need to be called their attention twice. 

Class Observation Critique – Amira Marin
The Observation carried out took place at Corozal Junior College. Students taking the course, Language Arts Methods for the Primary Classroom II, were observed. In this classroom we could observe how the teacher made all her students participate. As we already know from Bandura’s theory, he believed that children learnt through imitation and observation; so the students were actually learning because they were observing and involved in the activities. It was clear that they were all engaged in the subject because the activities captured their attention which made them participate in class activities. It was also observed that the students behaved well in this specific course, comparing to other courses which was taught by a next teacher. This brought me to the assumption that the teacher has well-conditioned them to behave well. It could be seen that with the next teacher, the students felt more freely than with the Language Arts Methods teacher. According to Skinner’s theory behaviour is determined by its consequences, be the reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behaviour will occur again. We didn’t really observed how the teacher treats her students because we were only there for one session but we could observe that she has a well-managed class. Maybe she use rewards for good conduct or participation, but her class seemed so interesting. We know sometimes some students tend to get bored in class but I noticed that although this was a junior college activities still work. In all classrooms activities apart from engaging everybody and keeping them busy, is very fun that even the teacher participates. Overall I could say that the teacher has conditioned her students with a well-managed classroom and she wants to keep every student in track with her. 

Class Observation Critique – Emi Vasquez
The observation was carried out in the Corozal Junior College at Corozal. An entire Language Arts Method class was observed. In this project, we could appreciate three theories, namely Skinner, Pavlov and Bandura. From the beginning of the lesson there were introductory activities which had the students interacting in the learning process. According to different theorists, including Bandura, hands-on activities enable the students to expand their knowledge and appreciate the lesson, for they get to manipulate data. The lecturer, herself, gave us very good examples of these theorists. At different times, we could observe how the students were conditioned to many things. An example was that they knew already what attitude the lecturer had, so they knew what attitude they must possess. We did a bit of further investigation, whereby we noted that these same students had different attitudes in different classes with different lecturers. During the lesson, we saw an active participation on behalf of the students and lecturer. This is an essential relationship (teacher to student) because the students then have the confidence of asking for further information, clearing any doubt or even commenting things the lecturer. This may also serve the lecturer as a personal evaluation. We also want to make clear that different students behave differently depending on the situation and environment. I am pretty sure, that with more time, a more accurate observation could have been made about child behavior.