OBSERVATION #1: Attending to the learner.

During this observation I had the opportunity to observe a class in the 6th year of primary school. There were 30 students in the classroom. Before coming into the class, the teacher warned me about Mateo's behaviour, one of the children. She told me not to expect anything from him since he would only try to distract his classmates during the class.
Some of them sat at the front, while the others sat near the end of the classroom. Something not so important that I found peculiar is that, as the teacher allow them a free choice of seats, boys chose to sit with boys, and girls with girls. There was just one exception in this class. At first I thought this could mean something, however, then I thought it could be just a coincidence. 

I don't think the gender of the children was relevant to the distribution of teacher attention but I do think that the seat arrangement lent itself to a particular spread of the teacher's attention (See the seat arrangement in the image below).

I feel that the students sat at the back of the classroom did not get the equal attention compared with the students in front. What's more, one of the students sat at the back didn't even open her activity book during the whole class. I suppose the teacher never noticed it and if she did, she never took the initiative to do something about it.



About the image above, I would like to say that every point mark has its explanation.
In this case, the attending strategies used by teacher were the use of abundant student's names and eye contact with her students. Also the occasional use of nodding and smiling.
As she had already warned me, Mateo talked and tried to distract his classmates during the whole class. The teacher said his name two times combining the last time with reprimanding look. The children's response wasn't positive, he laughed and eventually kept doing what he was doing.
As Serena, another student sat behind Mateo, wouldn't stop complaining about Mateo's behaviour, the teacher decided to move Mateo from his seat and put him in her own seat so that she could monitor him better. Even though the boy still kept talking and making jokes, I feel the situation changed (a little) for the better.

In some cases, the teacher asked questions about the activities given and the students (randomly chosen by the teacher) replied. For example, in the case of Lucia, the girl could reply to the question she was asked, the teacher nodded implying it was fine and Lucia nodded as well.
Another children, Braian, replied to a different question and the teacher smiling told him it was fine and he literally screamed of joy. I realized later that he was competing with the classmate sat next to him to find out who could get more correct answers.

The teacher never touched any of the students under any situation but she did give only one reprimanding look to Abril. In this case Lucas, who was sitting in front of Abril, had been bothering her during the whole class. In only one occasion, the teacher called his name but he kept doing it anyway. Seeing that the teacher wouldn't do anything to stop him, Abril said something rude to him and the teacher called her name and gave a reprimanding look. Abril's tone of voice suggested that she was mad and she even said to the teacher that she misunderstood the whole situation but the teacher asked her to behave properly.
As a whole, I feel the boys' behaviour is more challenging and requires more and special attention from the teacher.

What I would like to apply to my own teaching from what I learned from this teacher's attending strategies would be to try to give equal amount of attention to students. In this observation, I felt the teacher only asked questions always to the same students.
I would have encouraged students in the back to participate, sometimes it seemed as if those in the back felt inferior, unequal or as if they had obstacles to learn.