Adam CO #1

Today I attended my first of three class observations. This one was a speaking class taught by Vicky Ledbetter at 1:00 p.m. In Room 409 today. She seemed very enthusiastic about teaching her class, and the students seemed eager to learn. Most students seemed to already have an at least working grasp of English conversation, as evidenced by their conversations amongst themselves. The teacher made sure to frame her lesson around a particular topic. Today the students learned about rooms in a house. In addition to teaching vocabulary, this would also have been a very good opportunity to explore an aspect of culture. While the teacher did not address differences between the features of houses in different cultures, students did comment on what features thei houses did and did not have. The teacher gave students a worksheet in which they were given a visual of a house and had to identify its different rooms and features. While most students at least partially understood the vocabulary, about half of the words were unfamiliar to most students. The teacher was careful to ask which words were familiar to students and which ones were not. She then gave a detailed explanation of the words that students had told her they were unfamiliar with. The teacher later assigned students into pairs to discuss th features of each others' houses. One student would describe his or her house and the other student would draw a picture of it according to the instructions. During the lesson she also assigned students into pairs and asked them to describe their houses to each other in an improvised dialogue. Students were given a handout that included sample questions they could include in their conversations. The teacher modeled both of these exercises by practicing these exercises with the Teacher's Aide, so that she could demonstrate what students were supposed to do. She was careful to catch student mistakes, and wrote a few examples of common "beautiful mistakes" on he board so that students could discuss them. However, she did not focus solely on what students were doing wrong, and in fact often gave praise and encouragement to students, such as saying "good job!" Ad "keep up the good work!" to her class.
The teacher used a positive, student centered approach. She grouped students into pairs and kept up a n enthusiastic, conversational manner of teaching. The presence of a teacher's aide allowed her to effectively convey instructions to students, as the teacher used her interaction with the teacher's aide to model dialogue and practice conversations.