Zeb CO#3

    Wednesday afternoon (the 31^st) I observed Vicky Ledbetter's listening class. The agenda was written on the board, there was roll call and greetings and I was introduced to the class. The class was having a vocabulary word review in preparation for a test the following day. The students were asked how many new words they had learned in the last little while, and if I remember correctly it was fifty seven. After some word review the class was split into two teams, and each team took turns sending one of its members to sit in a chair with their back facing the marker board. Vicky would write a word on the board, and the remaining team members would give descriptions of the word and whoever was 'it' had to try to guess the word using those descriptions. They had to guess the word within two minutes to get a point. That turned out to not be difficult enough, so both teams sent a person to guess while they provided descriptions. For this variation there was somewhere around five or six words written on the board. Whichever team guessed a word first was awarded a point and that word was crossed out. This turned out to be a fun and challenging activity which appeared to very effectively engage the students' attention.

    After this there was some transcription work. First it just consisted of transcribing words which differed only in short/long vowel sound, then there was some sentence transcription. Finally, the students listened to a sound clip and then had five comprehension questions to answer.

    Vicky has a very expressive and charismatic personality, some of the things that I might should try to improve on...... From what I observed she seems to have a good relationship with her students and is able to motivate them to actively participate in the class activities. It seemed to me that the students felt a free atmosphere to engage in the learning process and to take risks and make mistakes along the way.