For this observation, I observed an online mixed level class. The class pre-intermediate grammar students and pre-intermediate writing students. In total this class had eight students, but a few students were absent. This observation was of interest to me, as this was my first time observing a mixed level lesson.

To accommodate for the varying levels, the teacher separated the students into study rooms for the entire class. The teacher introduced the activities for the day to the whole group and then spent approximately twenty minutes in each study room. This use of the study rooms made it hard for me to observe all the students. Additionally, this use of the study room meant that some students spent up to forty minutes without interacting with the teacher. I think that teaching a mixed level class in an online environment presents unique challenges and that the teacher did the best that she could to address the issues. However, I do think that this particular use of the study room created a barrier for learning. There appeared to be a few students joining the class by cellphone. Unfortunately, not all the features of Moodle are accessible on a mobile device. These students were unable to use the public chat or scroll through Moodle while listening to the lecture. This impacted the success of these students in completing the required class. I think that in this case not having access to the proper technology also acted as a barrier for learning.

The teacher used several techniques that I will try to employ in my own classrooms. Specifically, I noticed that the teacher was used short concise sentences to communicate with students. The teacher also emphasized certain words to convey meaning or importance. These techniques are not ones that I have seen in my other observations. I believe these techniques were used because of the level of the class. Most of the students were new beginners. The short simple sentences enabled the students to understand the teacher. The teacher provided lots of positive feedback to the students. When a student got an answer right her tone of voice changed, and she made sure to tell them that they were correct. To access learning the teacher called on individual students to answer questions.