My class observation today was a level 3B grammar class taught by Ms. Stringer. As students found their seats, the teacher asked them about their weekend activities. To her surprise, most students had lived boring weekends. Only one had ventured out to play. Everyone laughed about their uneventful weekend, starting class off with some informality. The agenda was on the board from the start.
Roll call was done without involving the students. The teacher would look up from the computer, see someone was there, and say, "Ramos is here. Juan is here. . . (fictitious names to protect the innocent). Personally, I think it is better to interact with the students at every possible point, even roll call.
Roll call was followed by the passing out of graded tests. She gave them a chance to ask questions about their beautiful mistakes, using the board to explain the corrections. At the end of class, I heard her explaining her policy of no make up tests to a student who had not shown up for the test.
Names were always used during the teacher/student interactions. Students felt comfortable interrupting the teacher with questions or additional comments. Once or twice, this seemed to be a negative interruption in that it caused an explanation of something being taught to have to start back at the beginning. The teacher did not show disapproval, but I could tell her train of thought had been temporarily derailed due to the poorly timed interruptions. On the positive side, some students were participating. There were a couple of students that remained silent throughout most of the class. One older student seemed to dominate a bit with questions and statements. It wasn't terrible, and maybe it was more noticeable since there were some quiet students. The teacher handled this by addressing others when she had a new question to ask.
Ms. Stringer chose a very interesting article about teen court called "Getting a Second Chance." Some cultural exchange happened at this point as students shared how teenage criminals were dealt with in their countries. As she handed copies of the article out, she explained the grammar points for gerunds and infinitives, doing some example work with these, but not much. The article had the gerunds and infinitives in bold, as well as new vocabulary listed at the bottom. Students read the article as the teacher played classical music in the background. (Nice ambiance!) Once finished, a PowerPoint was used to identify sample sentences from the article, with the grammar notes beside them. To my surprise, not a single notebook was opened, and not a single student was taking any notes. Maybe this was review material, but I would have encouraged some note-taking.
A worksheet was used, giving the students a chance to construct sentences with gerunds and infinitives. Some of their constructed sentences where put on the board and discussed. The teacher showed her knowledge of language interference as she helped a student with his sentences. She realized that sentence structure in Arabic was the source of the problem he was having as he was trying to complete the assignment.
Class moved on in a logical order and at a fairly rapid pace, ending with a preview of how they would continue the same subject the next day. No homework was given.
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