Fitzroy H.S

Fitzroy High School is a high school which values children as individuals, learners and contributors. The school embraces the individual differences and encourages their students to be participative and collaborative. The school operates in a humane environment. From their small class size, teachers and students are able to interact with each other and learn with confidence. The school was re-opened in 2004 and has a different curriculum and studying environment. compared to others. In classes, the tables are round which allows interaction.

The class i observed was a business year 11 class. The class contained 8 students which is a small size compared to the other schools I've previously visited. The class had round tables, and students were seated in threes. The class was working on "The barriers to communication" where the teacher created a mind map on the board for students to complete. Students each have a poster to copy the mind map the teacher has drawn on the board. The class worked together on this task through reading a textbook.

In my observation, i found out that the classroom was very interactive as students were able to participate in the class due to its size. Although the task was carried out through reading a text, the class was able to do the task together as the teacher included steps and allowed students to read aloud to ensure that all the students understood the meanings in the text. The teacher was walking around in the classroom as well to make sure that students were on task. The teacher consistently asked students concept questions to foresee their understanding of the text.

From this class observation, i think that the school is able to ensure that students are learning through their close relationships with their teachers because of the class size. However i think that although there was a lot of interaction within the classroom, i felt that the pace of the lesson was very slow and that although students were able to learn though reading the textbook together, i think that by allowing students to copy the mind map on the board decreases motivation and would not be able to help the teacher find out whether they fully understood the text.

La Trobe University International College

The La Trobe University international college is part of our immersion program in HKU to help us enhance our English Language skills as well as providing us with an insight towards the different education systems that are available in Australia. In the college, other programs and intensive language courses are held for other international students to develop better English Language skills. Some of these programs also helps international students prepare for future studies in other Australian universities

In this part of our observation, we were able to observe other classes that was held within the college. I was able to observe a pre-intermediate class 3A GEN, which contained 15 students from a mixture of different nationalities including Saudi Arabians, Turkish, Vietnam, Mexican, Thai, and Brazilian students.

The aim of the lesson was to enhance speaking skills, stress and pronunciation. I was able to see that the lesson materials were very authentic as the worksheets provided students to put their intonation skills at work. In one of the activities, students worked in pairs to work through a maze. In order for students to complete the maze they must use the correct stress. The game was very interactive and it ensured that students worked on their stress as the right answer would be able to help them find the root to the exit.

Another activity was that students to pick a problem and to role play the problem to the class. This activity was interesting to watch as all the students communicated with each other in order to create a good role play. The last activity was for students to interview each other and to find out about the culture of each others countries.

From my observation, i think that the class was very interactive and that all the students were very interactive. The teacher also uses students prior experience and uses students name to catch their attention. The teacher also sets the context of the lesson successfully through creating a problem and role playing to set an example. She also ensured that students did not stick to the same people and the same groups by randomly pairing students together. Therefore i think that the lesson i observed was very successful and well prepared as students were motivated and that the aim of the lesson was fulfilled.

Defence International Training Centre

The Defence International Training Centre is a centre that focuses on fostering personnels from the military in English Teaching for their country. There are courses available from the centre where militants are able to join. Most militants in the courses are in classes through scholarships from their government. Students come from countries all around Asia; including Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Philippines.

The class i observed was built up of militants of different ages, ranking and countries; because of this, respect was a very important aspect in the classroom. The teacher allowed classroom discussion throughout the lesson. The first activity allowed us to get to know the students in the class, the teacher gave us some questions we could ask each other and ensured that everyone had participated in discussions as students must find a new partner every time the music starts to play. In the pre-teaching of the last activity, the teacher gave the students concept questions and guided the students towards the scope of the lesson. The last activity allowed group discussion as students were sat into groups to discuss a lesson plan to teach students a word we found difficult for ESL students.

In terms of the materials and the course of the lesson; i found that the materials were authentic and that it generated on-task discussion throughout the lesson. Students were all engaged towards the tasks and understood the aim. From participating in the class, i was able to learn about the ways i could teach vocabulary and the steps i need to take. I also found that by presenting our lesson plans to the class, we are able to learn the different types of methodology we could use in our future lessons.

Glen Eira ELC

Glen Eira English Language Center is an English Center that welcomes new arrivals including international students and students whom require short term English Language instruction. The center focuses on providing programs for secondary aged students to acquire a high level of English through learning about Australia and its culture. After the completion of this 6 months program, the students are assisted into their transition to mainstream schools.

I was able to observe a language class in the English center and was very surprised at the teaching methods used within the class. The class contained 3 Chinese students as most students have left to mainstream schools. Students in the class were looking at paragraph writing and was trying to understand how to create topic sentences and separate writings into different paragraphs. The lesson was textbook based, as students were doing exercises within the book.

In this class, I was able to acknowledge that although the exercises were of primary school level, students did not understand the text. This is because the concept questions the teacher have asked did not receive an answer. Students were quiet and seemed rather clueless when the teacher was asking the questions about the text. Help and assistance is often needed in order for students to figure out the answer for each question, most of the time the teacher had to give students the answers.

Because the class consisted Chinese students, the teacher set a rule within the classroom, where students are forbidden to speak their mother tongue, and if so they were to be punished. I was able to observe this within this class, where a student made a comment to another student in Chinese and was made to stand up throughout the entire lesson. The student spoke Chinese to his friend again and was sent to the corner of the classroom where he had to stand and face the wall. However, the student did not learn his lesson and spoke Chinese again and was sent straight to the heads office.

Labeling and discouragement by the teacher was also witnessed in the classroom. The teacher consistently distinguished the student that was punished as "naughty" to the class and discouraged motivation as she tells the class that the exercises are "very easy" and stated to her students that the exercises are primary school level when students could not answer her questions.

In my opinion, i felt that the teacher was very harsh towards the students and discourages English Language learning through her methods. I think that these methods would discourage the students motivation to learn English and remove the fun out of learning the language. I also think that the teacher could have worked on better questioning skills as her questions were very complicated and not precise.

Fortunately i was able to observe another class which was able to give me a better comparison. The lesson was a vocabulary teaching sociology lesson. The vocabulary was themed based on a book they have read, and students were allowed to use their mother tongue for discussion and translators to translate to their own language to find definitions.

The teacher also catered towards individuals as students in the class are at different ages. The teacher used questioning skills effectively, asking more difficult and detailed answers in her questions for stronger students and easier for lower level students.

However, i noticed that although the class was conducted quite successfully, the teacher often searched for answers from the stronger students. Stronger students also dominated the class when it came to classroom discussions.

Blackburn English Language School

The school is a government school for teaching newly arrived primary and secondary aged students that are permanent residence and have been staying in Australia for less than 6 months. Most students who stay in the language school are eligible for a 20 week full time program. The main aims of the school is to help students develop language and learning skills that meets the educational demands of the mainstream schooling system, and to prepare students into the Australian society.

There are around 180 secondary students and 160 primary students across 2 campuses. The children come a variety of different countries including China, Burma, Korea, and are grouped into classes according to their English language level and age. Preparing students for mainstream schools, students have timetables with English language taught across school subject areas.

The first class i was able to visit was a primary 5 class with 10 students from different backgrounds and nationalities. Despite the different academic backgrounds of students, the teacher was still able to conduct a successful lesson through catering towards their individual needs. The teacher would ask easier questions for students who are not confident with the language, whilst look for harder and more detailed answers for stronger students. As well as this, the teacher wouldn't correct students if answers were not perfect, but would encourage the students by giving the correct grammatical form by slowly repeating the answer along with the student, but reshaping it to the correct grammatical form.

Cooperative approaches were used within the classroom, where students formed into groups to create their own sentences. Information gap was also formed within this process, where students would help each other and teach each other the correct grammatical form of a sentence. This enabled a very friendly and motivational environment as students not only care about themselves but the success of others as well.

Another class i observed was 2B which was a class made up of 15 - 17 year olds with a higher English ability for their age. In this class, students were to continue working on their presentations of Melbourne city in the computer room. I noticed that the teacher was consistently walking around the classroom, checking the progress of her students and making herself available for students if they needed help. Catering for individual needs was evident as the teacher made sure that every student had a task, students whom have finished their presentations would play games or word-search that is related to their topic. These games helped students with both reading and speaking skills.

Overall, i think that Blackburn English Language School has done a successful job in catering individual differences, and has helped prepare students towards the mainstream educational system by consistently taking advantage of opportunities for English learning.

Macleod College

Macleod college is a school with distinguishing school results and a strong music program. With rich traditions and an impressive range of extracurricular activities; the school has grades from prep to year 12. As well as this, the school caters to individual learning styles and provide a diverse curriculum in order to help individual students.

The school also recognizes that students of the 21st century grow up with diverse technology and therefore understand and respond to their students as "digital natives". Students within the school are exposed to using computers from the start of primary. Their response was recognized during my school observation where the school would cater the artistic and creative needs of the students by imposing MAC computers around the school. Students are able to use technology in order to finish tasks. In a grade 2 class i observed, students used laptops to type up their own plays for their own fairytale play.

Students were also able to learn to cooperate with each other and working in groups in order to foster a friendly and motivational environment. In senior classes, I noticed that students were willing to help each other although tasks for each student were different. The environment and setting the school has created has allowed students to help each other. The school has imposed a spacious environment for students to work, allowing students to do their tasks freely. With the spacious environment, I was very impressed by the way teachers conducted their lessons. In all the classes i have observed within the school, teachers made use of the setting by conducting lessons around different areas of the classroom, instead of using the traditional classroom setting. Because of this, i would expect there to be a lot of off task behaviour, but because the teacher is continuously moving around the classroom, most students seem to be very focused on their work in discussions. Although there are pro's and con's about the setting, i think that Macloed was able to take advantage of the spacious classrooms and their setting, which has greatly influenced the students education.

When i compare Macloed to Hong Kong schools, i feel that Macloed's use of communicative learning approaches and cooperative learning would greatly benefit students in Hong Kong. Their acknowledgment of students as "Digital Natives" have made their students more interested in their studies and have created a more innovated learning environment.

Sacré Cœur - International School of the Sacred Heart

The international school of the Sacred Heard is a Catholic Independent school which values its rich traditions. Founded by Madeleine Sophie Barat the school values both their community and achievements. As one of the top Catholic girls schools in Victoria, their main goals are to have faith in their society, deep respect for intellectual values, building a christian valued community, have social awareness that impels action and to develop personal growth in a wise free environment.

The school has a good environment with both old and new architectural buildings. The school has about 700 students in which around 500 students are in secondary and more than 200 students from prep to primary 6. Sacre Coeur allows their students to travel and exchange from around the world; and cater their students in terms of academics, extra-curricular activities as well as individual and special needs learning.

The class i observed in the school was a revision lesson as most students were preparing for their exams in the next double period. most of the students were self-studying, where the teacher was walking around the classroom, making sure that students were revising and helping them understand maths exercises they are unsure about. During the lesson, the teacher allowed students to have discussion; although there were a lot of off-task discussion, students often helped each other when they needed help; thus peer-tutoring was reinforced throughout the lesson. Students were all very energetic and motivated within the lesson.

In my opinion, i think that Sacre Coeur is a school that is able to give motivation towards their students when studying. Although students have told me that there are some spoon-feeding in lessons, their teachers allow their students to have group discussions and peer-work. Students in general feel very motivated in both extra-curricular and academics.

Melbourne Senior Grammar School

Melbourne senior grammar school is one of the most prestigious private schools in Melbourne. There are two sections of the school in order to meet the needs of both middle and senior students. Creswick House for Years 7 and 8; whilst Perry House and School House are for boys in Years 9 to 12. Evidently, the school is an all boys school which accommodates for approximately 700 students; in which 70% of this are European and 25% - 30% are of Asian origin. The school focuses greatly on academics and leadership. Sportsmanship is also greatly welcomed.

In terms of the schools' environment, the school is surrounded by nature as well as large football fields and both old and new architectural buildings.

For the classroom observation, i have observed 2 language classes - Latin and French. The Latin Language class contained 15 year 9 students. Tables and the seating arrangements are like most public Hong Kong schools where students are seated in columns and in pairs. The teacher makes use of this by walking around the classroom and in between the rows of tables in order to check and keep an eye on students. However, the lesson followed a very traditional style of teaching, where the teacher constantly spoon-feeds the students. Students often communicate to each other in English with a lot of non-work related conversations. The teacher often have to repeat himself and tries to discourage any discussion made within the class. More than 90% of the lesson was in English despite being a language lesson. I also felt that the lesson was rather sexist as the teacher stated in one of the learning task questions that "men are better than woman".

The french class contained 19 year 11 students. The seating arrangements and the lesson was similar to the Latin class. However, more code switching was made in the lesson, but English was still the dominant language in the lesson. The lesson plan was very exam orientated, where worksheets are made based on the exams, however English was still used in worksheets and students are often left to work by themselves without any aims or preparation given by the teacher.

Overall, i think that Melbourne Senior Grammar school has a very nice and big campus with a good environment for education; but the way the language lessons were conducted used a very traditional style of teaching which can be comparable to some of Hong Kong's public schools.