Greg - CO #1 - Grammar

I had a great first experience with CO.  Ms. Ramos is a good teacher to observe.  She opened the class with a pleasant and even humorous tone, doing a role call, thanking them, checking her pronunciation of their names, and not sounding negative for a no-show.  She had a positive, upbeat, and encouraging voice.

Throughout the lesson, she used their names.  (There were no, "And you, how would you answer this?) She kept the class moving, but didn't leave anyone behind, asking for questions before moving on.  She also used a lot of terms like "I would love to..." and "I am excited that..."  This, along with positive reinforcements to responses, kept the class positive for learning.

Ms. Ramos remained standing and active around the front of the classroom.  She walked toward those she called on or answered.  Once she used the placement of her body apart from the class and among the class to make an illustration of how the pronouns "you" and "we" are used.

Her activities where highly student centered.  Instead of "telling" grammar, she "gathered" grammar from the knowledge they had in them, adding to it or kindly making corrects.  This interaction was consistent throughout the class.

For evaluation, the teacher gave out a survey, explaining it with illustrations.  Students were to fill it out at the end of class or before the next class.  This survey will help her to understand the level, needs, and goals of the students, particularly helping her to discern if someone is on the verge of a language promotion to the next level.  The teacher also gave many opportunities for students to respond to her questions and to share what they knew on subjects.  This gave her feedback she needed for evaluation and how to proceed.

The class went smoothly, with no other language chatter or dominating students.  No one seemed to have anything causing their language study anxiety level to go up.

Her interest in learning Arabic was made clear in responding to a student mentioning a bi-lingual dictionary.  She was very interested in finding a good English-Arabic dictionary, showing her interest in learning language.

As far as corrections, when asking for something in present tense, several students gave examples using a different tense.  She praised them for their correct use of that tense, but reminded them that her instructions were for present tense examples.  Then she gave them a chance to try again.  When students gave correct answers, she used praise terms with an encouraging tone, such as "Absolutely," "That's right," and "OK."

Students were given opportunity for meaningful conversation in groups around the table.  There was a topic (getting to know each other), but that was all the instruction given.

Her class began with a relaxed and warm welcome and role call, flowed through the lesson in a way that made sense, and closed with a "game plan" for the coming days and the rationale/explanation of benefits for why they would be studying those things.