It is always great to observe someone's lesson. A) It gives new ideas. B) You get an impression of what would work and what wouldn't. C) You just see a different teaching style, a different student group. However, when we observe a lesson and critique it, it's very important to remember about the difference between analyzing the decisions and making them on 1-2-3 count before a roomful of puzzled students. I had students stumble on things I considered to be most simple, and then I had to invent a new activity right there, right then. On hindsight, some of my emergency back-up tasks were far from ideal, but they worked for the time being. So did this teacher's lesson.

In the lesson we read about, I see no major mistakes the teacher made, although I would introduce this material differently. I don't think that providing verbal definitions without at least writing them down on the board could hardly be productive. The fact that students were nodding is hardly informative. I had a whole group of students, who confidently answered "Yes" to "Do you understand?", but could not say what exactly they understood. I would probably make this a sort of double-match activity. Like giving the students sets of movie categories, category definitions and movie names with possible plot outlines.