Tatum CO #3

Topic/Skill: Speaking Group 2-A

Teacher Presentation: During this class, the instructor first talked briefly about 9/11 to give some context to the students about this day in history. Then the teacher had students read aloud 8 new vocabulary words. Then the students had to read sentences with the words in them and guess the definitions of these new vocabulary words in context. After the students knew the definitions, the instructor read aloud a short article and answered questions about new vocabulary on the way. Then the students answered questions in pairs and then shared with the class.

Classroom Management:  The instructor generally asked for volunteers and then called on people when no one was volunteering to answer a certain question. In instances when students seemed to get off track during their partner work sessions, the teacher would walk around and ask them questions or ask them to elaborate on the responses they had written down.

Student Participation: The students were very involved in the class as they were constantly asked to read aloud and answer questions about the passage. Because this was a lower level class, the instructor focused a lot on pronunciation and so students were asked to read aloud the vocab words and sentences. Part of the class also involved group/partner work, which ensured students were participating and getting speaking practice throughout the duration of the class.  

Feedback Provided: The instructor provided a lot of pronunciation feedback for the students. Oftentimes the students did not speak in complete/correct sentences as this was a lower level class, so after these students answered the instructor would repeat the sentence in the correct way. The instructor also walked around during the partner work part and provided more individualized feedback to students who were struggling with some of the questions. 

Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: I learned more about how to teach a lower level class. Instead of having students always create their own sentences, they were often asked to read sentences aloud or summarize sentences in the passage. This is because students grammar and vocabulary were often not very advanced so by repeating sentences they learned correct pronunciation and grammar while still using the new vocabulary. I also learned what level text lower level students might consider level-appropriate.