Akira - CP #1

Nasser and I had a great time for our first conversation partner session. Our plan was to meet at a Starbucks on Tennessee St., but we both forgot that there were two Starbucks's on that street. I ended up going to the one near campus, and he ended up going to the one near Chik-fil-a. When we finally met up, we had a good laugh about it. Nasser and I had met once previously during one of my observation sessions, so I was used to his English fluency. The most memorable moment from the session was the story of how Nasser arrived at the United States. The whole trip from Kuwait to the United States takes 24 hours. He did not speak a word of English, and did not end up eating anything the entire trip. He also nearly missed his flight when he was in Chicago. It was a really funny story, and I'm looking forward to the next conversation session.

Akira - CO #3

Today's agenda for the speaking class was to go over feedback from their oral quiz and discuss house vocabulary words. Ms. Stringer was a good instructor, and all the students were engaging enthusiastically in the class discussions. After going over their quiz, we started to go over house-related vocabulary words. The students were then asked to draw a simple sketch of their hometowns. We got into groups and compared each others' sketches. My group was really friendly, and I found out that one of the members in my group was my conversation partner! For our final activity, we compared their pictures to Tallahassee. Overall, it was a great experience, and I'm glad I got to interact with the students for the majority of class time.  

Rachel McDonnell CO3

My third class observation was a level two listening class. After attendance, the class was instructed to find a partner in five seconds and review vocabulary. The professor walked around the class during review. The professor then showed pictures of all the terms and quickly reviewed the terms. The students were then instructed to read the questions they were about to be asked and then listened to a clip of dialogue involving people at a soccer game. They were given two chances to listen to the clip, then two minutes to answer the questions, and then an opportunity to listen one more time to check answers. The professor wrote new terms from the clip on the board and began a class discussion attempting to define them. The class was then instructed to get into partners and discuss answers. If the students had any questions about terms, the professor would look up terms on dictionary.com. It became interactive when the professor told the class to wave and then do the wave. The class was ended with expectations for next class and an announcement about a trip to the planetarium.

Rachel McDonnell CO2

My second class observation was of a level 2 speaking class. The students were instructed to give a short presentation on their partners previous to class, so the beginning of class was a ten minute practice for the presentation. They were to talk about their partners using the simple present tense. When presentations began, the students were not aloud to read their presentations. The students stood in front of the class and were given a lot of encouragement. After all of the presentations, students were to edit their speeches with teacher help. The professor walked around the class and then wrote common mistakes on the board (for example, to wash --> washes instead of washs). Feedback was then handed out from the presentations.

Rachel McDonnell CO1

My first class observation was a level four reading class. The professor began the class by handing out a past quiz and an empty reading log for the students to fill out in order to self-reflect on how much the students are actually reading. The students were required to read an article about biocriminology in their textbooks. The professor then separated the students into groups to answer two questions: what do you think biocriminology means and how do you feel about crime. The class reread the article and were instructed to underline words that the professor had written on the board, such as "rehabilitation", "assumption", "tied in with", and others. The groups then discussed the definitions of these words which was followed by a group discussion about the full meaning of the article. The professor then dispersed worksheets which had comprehension questions. The class ended with more discussion.

Gavin Byrd CO #2

Classroom Observation #2

This morning I observed an upper level reading class. We began the class with re-reading an article they were assigned the previous day. The article was titled Scientists Should ask Big Questions. It was an article that was addressing how Americans have a distrust of science for multiple reasons, and that they actually have a misconception about how the Scientific Method works. We were then told to write out the main points of each paragraph, go over new vocabulary within the article and then answer some comprehension questions. I found all of these things to be a bit too daunting for the students in the classroom. But perhaps that was just because I was not entirely familiar with the reading skill level of the students in the class.

I was partnered with a student during all of these activities, and I began to understand his biggest problem with reading English articles was not so much the actual grammar, but the format and his inability to connect ideas from previous paragraphs together. I think if I had the opportunity to tutor him, I would work on that. He was able to speak with me fairly easy, and was comprehending whatever was being said in whatever paragraph we were currently working on. But then we would hit a road block of him not being able to see how the workings of the article in its entirety. It was a very enlightening experience. It made me recognize that there will be times when I teach that I will not only have to teach English, but also actual critical thinking/reading skills.

I think reading is going to be one of the more challenging subjects for me to teach, but my next observation is going to be in an upper level speaking class so we shall see!

Yolnie Jean Baptiste CO#2

On monday october 17th, I observe Felicia Ciappetta's group 1 reading class. She asked me to introduce myself to the class before she started the lesson. The students were prepared to learn. they were also excited about participating. They did not hesitate to raise their hand and read out loud. The instructor provided a warm and friendly environment for the student to feel comfortable enough to express themselves. They asked questions when they needed to and the instructor answered accordingly. It was a great opportunity for me because this experience helped me decide what kind of teacher I want to be. people don't learn from those they don't like, and her students are definitely learning.

Yolnie Jean Baptiste CO#3

On Monday October 17th, I observed Mr. Ramin’s group 4 speaking class. There were about 11 to 13 students in the class. Compared to the two previous classes, this class was much more diverse. The instructor started with a brief introduction, then moved on to an activity in which I was partnered with one of the students. He was thrilled, and he wanted to show me that he was actually learning. The activity was about speaking for one minute about the characteristics of a good leader. We each spoke for one minute without any interruptions, then we switched partners and did the same thing. Each of the students that I worked with was amazing. I saw so much willingness to learn in their eyes, and in that moment I knew that the time I will spend to teach English will not be in vain.

Yolnie Jean Baptiste CO#1

On Monday, October 17th 2016, I observed Miss Vicky Golen's grammar class. it was an amazing experience. although, it was a group 2A class, the students were able to express themselves accordingly while using proper grammar. I was asked to introduce myself to the class, then each of the students introduced themselves. we moved on to a brief grammar lesson, then the students applied what they learned to complete some assigned pages in their workbook. I ended up working with one of the students because her partner had to leave early. she was such a great student, she learned very quickly. She seemed a little intimidated by my presence, I explained that I was there to observe and help if she needs me to, and we laughed about it. This was my first observation, if only they knew how nervous I was.

Gavin Byrd CO#1

Classroom Observation #1

This morning I sat in on a Grammar Level 2B class. There was about 7-8 students in the class, and to my surprise, they were more ethnically diverse than I had anticipated. We started off the class with an activity for which I was partnered with a student who walked in late. He seemed a bit grateful to be partnered with the native speaker. The activity was for us to come up with both a positive and negative sentence depicting a picture using simple, compound, and complex sentences. To my grammar naive mind, I did not know exactly what a compound sentence was. Felicia, the teacher, had to inform me of it being a sentence that combines two independent sentences by using words such as "and, or, but". Once I understood that, I was able to help my partner more.

From that activity we had a small deductive lesson/review on what the present progressive form was and how to use it. Felicia then had us draw three different photos that were hidden out of sight of our partners. Our partners then had to ask (in the present progressive form) what was going on in the picture and try guess what we had drawn. My partner, was picking up on the grammar lessons pretty quickly, and I was surprised at his confidence to try different grammar tenses when conversing with me. Him and I discussed a few words like "duet, goaley, striker" which were things that I drew in my photos. I am very excited to see how his English will improve through out the rest of this year!

Felicia also taught me through example how effective it is to simply repeat vocally with emphasis the mistakes her students made while speaking. Instead of saying "You should actually say..." she simply repeated what the student said, then he/she would recognize the mistake and repeat the sentence with the necessary correction. It was very cool! I think grammar is going to be one of the subjects I am going to enjoy teaching most. But that might change after my next to observations. Who knows?!

Kenneth TS #1

For my first tutoring session I met up with Basil Hashim. Basil is aspiring to study mechanical engineering but he needs to improve his english first. As far as getting tutored went Basil really just wanted to have a conversation and have me correct me o his mistakes -- easy enough. After we talked for about 45 minutes Basil mentioned he gave a presentation in his speaking class and i offered to revise his report that he read off of, after correcting those mistakes we called it a day.

Kenneth CP #1

Busy day! For my first conversation partner meeting I met up with my buddy Abdulghaffar who goes by Abady. Abdul is studying to get his master in mechanical engineering here at FSU. He is from Mecca in Saudi Arabia (yes THAT Mecca) and he told me how he gets a great sense of fulfillment when he helps non-Arabic speaking Muslims complete their pilgrimage. He also mentioned his favorite place to eat in tallahassee is chick-fil-a which is funny because that's also mine and everyone's favorite place to eat. He also likes roller coasters and is looking forward to going to busch gardens when he goes to Tampa in a couple of weeks because his wife has a test to take there. Abdulghaffar is a really cool guy and I'm looking forward to the next time we hang out.

Kenneth CO #2

For my second class observation I sat it on Calyn Stringers listening class. Unlike the speech class this was a much larger class, instead of 6 students there were about 15 all packed into a little room,  but to the nature of listening as opposed to speaking it's still very doable. The class started by transcribing parts of a lecture that they went over earlier, ms. stringer read each 2nd 3 times while the students tried their best to transcribe what they were hearing, apparently writing down the regular vocab (nouns, verbs) inst the most difficult part of these sections as much as the prepositions are. after that to test their listening skills over the last couple of days ms.stringer had the class get in groups and describe through the notes they took during the lectures what the lectures were about, since i wasn't in that class over the last two days i was lucky enough to be someone who the lecture was described to, the group i had did a very good job at describing the lecture because their listening skills seem to be very good.

Kenneth CO #1

For my first class observation i sat in on Andrew Wilson's speaking class. I really enjoyed the "idiom of the day" section of class right at the beginning. It was bottom line. After that the class went over their vowel worksheet from the day before, i enjoyed this section also because i learned what a diphthong is. What struck me was our eager to learn everyone in the class was, it was a very positive class environment because everyone wanted to be there and enjoyed the class. The last section all the students got paired up with another and gave a short presentation on various aspects on the teacher student relationships -- everyone did a really good job!

Akira CO #2

Today's agenda for Ms. McHarek's class to review verb tenses and infinitives. The first class exercise we did was to compare two sentences with different verb tenses and see if they have the same of different meaning. After that exercise, our next activity was a warm-up activity for infinitives. We would identify the infinitives in the given sentences, and discuss. For the main exercise, we wrote sentences using infinitives, and this was a group activity. Overall, I felt that the class went over very well, and it was a positive observing session.

Akira CO #1

For Mr. Wilson's Reading class, it was an overall good learning experience. I was told to introduce myself to the class, and everyone introduced themselves to me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that their English was fairly easy to understand, and it was pleasure to meet them all. The first task on the agenda was to learn and discuss the Word of the Day. Today's was "lease." The second task was to review the reading process as the students were all assigned some readings. The reading process consisted of pre-, active-, and post- reading. They all discussed what they had to do for each process, and Mr. Wilson made sure everyone was actively participating. After that, Mr Wilson passed out some handouts for the students' reading material. One of the handouts was an article about Pokemon Go, which I found to be funny. Next, they did some reading exercises, and discussed about inferences. To top off the class, they were instructed to get with a partner, and do some group work. Overall, observing Mr. Wilson's class was helpful as it gave me a good first impression on how these CIES classes are run.