On August 1st, I observed Vickie teach her group
2 class along with Angel Rios’ class, as he was unable to attend. The subject of the day was how to make “inferences”
while reading a text. Vickie spent
a small amount of time describing “inferences” and why they are useful to a
reader. Then, she immediately went
to the CIES book and asked for a volunteer to read aloud. The students participated willingly and
a number of students volunteered to read.
After the reading, Vickie modeled how to make an inference based on the given
text. Next, she asked the students
to work in groups and complete a worksheet designed to give students practice
at making inferences. They read
the text to themselves and then began discussing the possible answers to the
listed questions. Vickie invited
me to sit at a table with the students in order to be involved in the
lesson. I happily obliged and on
occasion answered questions the students asked about new words and their
meaning. Vickie was flexible in
her lesson and showed much enthusiasm, which the students responded to with
participation and smiles.
Something that just dawned on me: things like "inferences" are almost certainly a common thread amongst all languages. So we don't really have to teach these things to our students, but rather, give them enough examples until they can say "Oooooh, in my language we call that 'xyz'. "
ReplyDelete