Today I observed Marilyn's group 3A reading class. She was absent and so someone else was teaching the class today (although I've forgotten his name...). The lesson was very straightforward and seemed effective. The point of it was to practice summarizing, which is difficult for students. In addition to the difficulty of translating and understanding a text, students of English have trouble getting the hang of the structure of an English summary (for the same reasons that essay format is difficult).
First, everyone was given a short story (about two or three paragraphs) to read. There were two stories. After reading and taking notes, everyone was paired up and had to explain their story to their partner, using only their notes and what they remembered. Since there were an odd number of students, I participated. My story was about a disabled woman with a helper monkey. Obviously that situation was difficult to describe in simple English, and it took a little while to explain it. When my partner explained his story (which was in the first person - a man talking about himself), he also used the first person. He seemed to have difficulty switching between the 1st and 3rd (e.g. he would say "My name is Scott. The other day I..."). When I asked him questions in the third person he answered correctly ("He went to the restaurant first."). He also had this problem when asking questions about my story (he would ask "What was your monkey's name?").
After we had explained our stories to each other, we were given worksheets to fill out about the story we didn't read. Finally, on the back of that worksheet, we wrote a summary of our partner's story using the information they gave us. I tried to help my partner with the format of it, describing how the first sentence should introduce the main character, and then the next should start explaining what happened, etc.
I liked the format of the class in that it focused heavily on one topic (reading and summarizing) but did so in several different ways, incorporating reading, writing, and speaking. Everyone was fairly engaged and the class went quickly.
First, everyone was given a short story (about two or three paragraphs) to read. There were two stories. After reading and taking notes, everyone was paired up and had to explain their story to their partner, using only their notes and what they remembered. Since there were an odd number of students, I participated. My story was about a disabled woman with a helper monkey. Obviously that situation was difficult to describe in simple English, and it took a little while to explain it. When my partner explained his story (which was in the first person - a man talking about himself), he also used the first person. He seemed to have difficulty switching between the 1st and 3rd (e.g. he would say "My name is Scott. The other day I..."). When I asked him questions in the third person he answered correctly ("He went to the restaurant first."). He also had this problem when asking questions about my story (he would ask "What was your monkey's name?").
After we had explained our stories to each other, we were given worksheets to fill out about the story we didn't read. Finally, on the back of that worksheet, we wrote a summary of our partner's story using the information they gave us. I tried to help my partner with the format of it, describing how the first sentence should introduce the main character, and then the next should start explaining what happened, etc.
I liked the format of the class in that it focused heavily on one topic (reading and summarizing) but did so in several different ways, incorporating reading, writing, and speaking. Everyone was fairly engaged and the class went quickly.
I think it's pretty interesting that you got to observe a class when the teacher was not in. I know that I would have assumed that like in middle school the class room would have been taken over. It's definitely refreshing to see that all of the students stayed on task and took their learning seriously.
ReplyDeleteHa! Even better - there was TOEFL testing in their regular classroom so we had class in the hallway! Definitely worked out better than expected.
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