Caitlin CO #2

Date/Time: January 11th, 2016 2:00-2:50pm

Topic/Skill: Listening Level 2/ "This I Believe" essay reading and racism

Teacher Presentation: The teacher started the students with a vocabulary review of terms from the audio recording that would be played later on in class. He had the students break into small groups to discuss what they thought each word meant and afterwards, called on individuals to share the answers their group came up with for the word definitions. Special emphasis was placed on phrasal verbs because their homework for that night would involve that grammar point. Then the instructor played the audio clip for the first time, telling the students that they could take notes if they wanted to and to "be patient." Once the essay reading was complete, the teacher had the students summarize what they heard by prompting them with questions. We all read the comprehension questions together and listened to the recording for the second time. Then, everyone tried to answer the questions about the listening practice's main ideas. Class was ended with a student self evaluation of how much their listening improved from the first to the second play-through.

Classroom Management: This class was very talkative and willing to participate. At times, I would have described students' talking out as disruptive but it seemed to work really well in the class. The teacher rolled with it well enough that instead of hindering the class, he used the students who spoke up to further his explanation of a vocabulary term or answering a comprehension question to be even more successful! I was very surprised by this aspect of the class but I think that it would take a special kind of teacher to properly handle such a lively class.

Materials: workbook pages that corresponded with the audio recording, audio recording of the "This I Believe" essay

Student Participation: The students all were very willing to participate. There was some great discussion and many laughs together. Everyone gave their best answers and even if they were wrong, they would not lose their confidence. They would still try to answer other questions afterwards.

Feedback Provided: The teacher was constantly giving encouragement to they students using phrases such as, "This is it, _______" and "Well done." Also when a student was reading a question out loud and made a pronunciation error or read something incorrectly, the instructor would respond with, "What?" until the student fixed their mistake. Students were definitely guided to the correct answers instead of just given them.

Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: I couldn't believe how good of a rapport the instructor had with the students! It made the class so much more fun since everyone felt comfortable and their affective filters were quite low. The amount of student participation just blew me away! The lesson I learned was that taking the time to get to know your students may be a bit difficult and tedious but absolutely worth it in the end.