4.3 Classroom Observations
4.3.4 Lesson observation 4
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(Teacher Moliehi then instructed them to sit on the mat, each learner on his or her cushion. She then introduced me to the learners and told them that I was visiting their class because I was interested to observe how she helped them to learn mathematical concepts. Teacher Moliehi then reminded them that they had discussed the sub-theme for the day earlier that morning. She told them that they would continue with a mathematics activity. She then called upon a group of learners known as the ‘Cats’ to come to the front. The ‘Cats’ rushed to the front.
The teacher then gave them a bucket with objects of different colours and shapes and also a plastic bucket filled with empty milk, juice and soap containers.
Teacher asked two learners from the Cats group to sort those objects according to colour. Two learners whom the teacher had chosen sat on a mat and started to sort objects. The rest of the group members and the other learners were observing as the two learners performed the activity. Without asking learners questions such as “Mention the colours they have discovered as they sort the objects” in order to check if they understood the activity, the teacher asked two learners to look at the categories of different colours and then to sort objects from those categories according to their shapes. The two learners continued to sort objects according to their shapes and they were struggling to differentiate between shapes so they took a lot of time doing the activity. Most learners lost interest; their attention wandered and they started playing and making a lot of noise.
The teacher ignored them and when the two learners had finished sorting objects according to their colour and shape, she then ordered another group named the
‘Kittens’ to take their turn to sort other objects (blocks, empty boxes of spices, milk) which were left on the mat. Two learners were randomly selected from the Kittens to sort objects according to their shapes. No questions were asked. The learners were told to return to their seats after the participants had completed the activity.)
Teacher Moliehi (shouting): Keep quiet, please! Stop going up and down in the class like this. Thato, come back.
(Learners started to get settled; the teacher then told them that they had learned to sort objects according to their shapes and colour, so tomorrow they would learn to order things according to their height. Learners were then released to go
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outside to play so they all ran out of the classroom. The lesson ran for fifteen minutes.)
The above observation indicated that teacher Moliehi’s understanding of the teaching of mathematic had a very limited influence on her actual teaching of mathematics because she had planned and taught a lesson which was not developmentally appropriate to her learners’
development level. First, it aimed to teach two categories (colour and shape) in one lesson.
Some of the materials which were to be sorted such as empty boxes of soup, milk, matches, sweets and drinks had a combination of many different colours and that made it difficult for learners to decide in which categories to place the containers. Moreover, the shapes of the containers were too different (solid shapes such as cubes, cylinders and flat shapes like squares, triangles of varying sizes), so it was a challenge for learners to sort them. She did not explain the main points of the lesson or asked questions after objects had been sorted so that learners could understand why particular objects were sorted together. Teacher Moliehi was challenged by not presenting activities organised sequentially; the introductory activity to review prior knowledge of learners and concluding activities which would lead her to assess learners did not occur in this lesson. She did not assign enough time for the activities so her lesson took approximately fifteen minutes.
Teacher Moliehi was limited in her use of teaching strategies. She wanted to use group work but she only identified two learners from the two groups which she selected to do all the activities, and she ignored the rest of the learners. As a result, there were behavioural challenges but she did not have any strategies to manage learners’ behaviour. Moreover, her activity did not cater for different learning styles. The Visual learning style – colour and shapes; kinaesthetic – touching concrete objects were catered for. However, only a few learners involved.
Teacher Moliehi’s classroom was small but she managed to arrange it by partitioning it into five corners namely book, block, fantasy, art and discovery corners. I learned that those corners were used to reinforce the content of the theme which was being taught throughout the week. So learners were allowed to play in these corners during free play or structured play. She had a discussion area where learners sat on a mat in a semi-circle. There were learners’ tables and benches which were arranged in the middle of the classroom, probably because along the classroom walls there were different ‘corners’. Even though there were no posters displaying mathematical concepts inside the classroom, the arrangement was good but
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the classroom was too small for learners to freely explore mathematics such as allowing them to sit on the mat to do sorting individually. The limited light due to school bags that hung from the windows created a dark atmosphere which demotivated learning in all aspects. She used concrete materials which were locally available like empty containers and bottle tops to teach mathematics, but her teaching did not integrate mathematics with any subjects.
4.3.5 Lesson Observation 5