September CO #1 January 12, 2016

This morning, I observed classroom , group 3 , grammar

I arrived 6 minutes late, for which I am truly sorry.  I had lost my keys that morning

When I arrived, the teacher was having the students do fill in the blank on sentences.  They then had sentences where they corrected the grammar as a group.

an example of one of the fill in the blank sentences was ,"I am more thank happy to ________ _________ __________ an absent teacher."  the answer was "fill in for."

other short phrases they worked on:

live up to
catch up with
without delay
left it out
figure it out
work up to
brush up on
come up with
cut down on

A student asked why we can't use "cut down on" when referring to weight.

The following activity was in small groups of 4 and lasted roughly 7 minutes:
The teacher handed the students small pieces of paper with words on them.  The students had to share sentences with each other using the words on the papers.  While this was happening, the teacher went around the room and took notes on errors.  

After going over errors as a class, the teacher did a short lecture on present perfect.  The lecture was interactive in that she would pause every once in a while to ask a general question to the class.

The class broke up into small groups again and discussed the worst storm they had ever been through.  Where were they? What country?  What were they doing when the storm hit?  Describe the experience.  I was closest to a group of gentlemen who were from India, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia I think.  I heard them discuss sand storms, tsunamis, and many things we do not have to deal with in the US.  Again, the teacher recorded errors while walking around.

The class was told that they would be watching a video about a natural disaster that had happened here in the US about 12 years ago.  There would be certain low frequency words in the video, so the teacher went over them first:  storm risk reduction, levy, floodgate, hurricane, dam

A video was shown from You Tube. It was a news reel about Katrina, ten years later.  How the city has rebuilt itself.  They classmates were required to make notes to discuss after the video was complete.

In small groups, the students discussed what the city of New Orleans has implemented since then.  Incidentally, the city has implemented new medical and healthcare systems, a new education system, a "great wall" in the bay, a new levy system and some other large scale and very expensive things.

Another small lecture moment about past perfect: "By the time you had turned 18, what are two things you had done?"  break into small groups to discuss.  One student asked why one turns 18 rather than becomes 18.

What is past perfect used for?  Describing an action completed in the past.  By the time I turned 18, I had already sung the national anthem at 5 sporting events and sung for foreign dignitaries.

While the students talked about their childhood achievements, the teacher went around and put a piece of paper on each desk.  The paper had a sentence with blanks where the appropriate verbs needed to be conjugated correctly.  The students reconvened and read aloud their sentences one at a time.

The last activity of the day required the students to get up and roam around the room asking each other student their sentence, but in the form of a question.  For instance, one student's paper had ,"By the time I went to bed last night I had read three chapters in my book." He had to go around the room asking, "By the time you went to bed last night, what had you done?"