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?!
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