RALPH ROBLES
OBSERVATION ON TEACHER
14 AUGUST 2018
I was able to observe at Bu Yugi’s Grade 8H class with her student-teachers, Sintiya and Nurul. It was easier for me to go along with my observation since Sintiya and Nurul can translate what Bu Yugi is saying. With their presence in my observation, I was able to understand how Bu Yugi delivers the lesson to her students. For today, the class will be learning a new topic which is about the Geometric Sequence and Series.
The usual preparations are done before they start the lesson. For the first 20 minutes of the period, they prayed, sang the national anthem, and cleaned their classroom. In addition to this, the students also have the literasi. The literasi is a new program of the government that allows the students to be given time to read any book that they want. The purpose of this is to increase literacy skills and develop an appreciation for reading. This is also an opportunity for students to review their previous lesson and scan their notes.
Bu Yugi was setting-up her laptop and projector. She plugged-in the speakers and called the attention of the students to start the lesson properly. The class first had an apersepsi or recap of the previous lesson which is about the Arithmetic Sequence and Series. After which, Bu Yugi presents the objectives of the new lesson. She used the Discovery Learning (DL) which has 5 steps – Stimulation, Problem Statement, Data Collection, Data Processing, Verification, and Generalization.
Bu Yugi introduces Geometric Sequence and Series by showing a video about how bacteria duplicates. The students were asked to observe the number of bacteria every time it divides. She repeatedly plays the video to see how a single-bacteria duplicate into 2, then 4, then 8, then 16, and so on. Another video was shown about meiosis, the process of cell division, to also see the pattern of how a single cell divides continuously. With this, teaching becomes interdisciplinary which means that one topic can be connected to other fields. Bu Yugi was able to maintain the interest of the students by relating this sequence to what the students learned in Biology.
The students were able to figure out the sequence of the bacteria duplication and cell division. They observed that each term can be found by multiplying the previous term by 2.
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, …
Bu Yugi introduced this sequence as the Geometric Sequence. She also asked the students to give their own examples. After the discussion, Bu Yugi grouped the students with 4 members each. Each group was given a worksheet.
The worksheet starts from specific examples until students discover the general formulas for getting the ratio r and the nth term of a Geometric Sequence. I was impressed with how students were able to discover the general formula by observing the patterns and examples. After all the groups are done, Bu Yugi called two students to present their group’s work in front of the class.
As for the conclusion, Bu Yugi and her students generalize Geometric Sequence and wrote the formulas on the board. She also gave a 5-item assignment before the class ends.
