This past Monday I sat in and intermediate group 3 listening class with teacher Ryan. At arrival he was already in the classroom, checking some things out in the computer and greeting students that were coming in. It made students change their attitude when entering the classroom, since the teacher was already there. I think it helped them focus more on the starting class.
The class hour started on the dot even though some students were missing. He mentioned it in a joking way, but it made the other students conscious of how it can be detrimental to come in late (they’ll be missing the introduction to the class, they will be interrupting other students). Ryan posted the outline of what was going to be happening during the following hour on the projector and briefly went over it. I think this is a very good idea (like Ramin does with us every class!). It prepares you for what’s coming up and helps students realize how much they are getting done in each class.
The first activity was feedback of the quizzes they’d taken the previous day. In the meantime, a student that had missed the exam had to be taken to another classroom and be given the quiz. Ryan gave another student the quizzes to hand out while he’s out of the classroom. This is a simple action that he might have done without a second thought, but I think it demonstrated trust in the students. It’s good that students feel that the teacher finds them reliable, especially taking in account that many of the homework assignments in CIES (reading log, speaking log, listening log, etc) are based on the honor system. He came back into the class and gave the students a short time to check the feedback and answered some personal questions. He then mentioned the homework that was due the following day (never pick up projects on a Monday!). With a short overview he could see where the general doubts had been, so he used the board to write out the main doubts on the quizzes and go over them as a group.
The following activity was a new text. He reads the instructions instead of having students read over them which I think is a clever way of getting some listening happening in listening class! The students are grouped and need to discuss some of the themes of the reading. He actually times each discussion with his stopwatch… this I need to start doing, since I always end up spending more time on each point that I should! During the time each group is interacting, he attends to them individually to make sure they understand the activity and are developing it. This I have seen done before in all the classes at CIES: it is the students’ time to be active in class, but the teacher can be relied on to give input. He gathers answers from different students, asking some of the ones that seem to be less concentrated. After all, it’s the last hour of the school day and some of these students are overwhelmed! It’s difficult to keep them paying attention after so many academic hours.
From there on they move to listening to a speech of a class on the video projector. Ryan explains a little the speech’s structure and theme. He mentions that he wants to use this speech as an example of a normal university speech. They need to take notes of the lecture’s outline in a way that will be useful for them to remember. They will be tested on the speech a week from now, with their notes, as they would be in a university environment. The lecture talks about the different meanings one single sentence in English can have. Ryan follows the speech and stops it with the introduction of each new sentence. He implicates his students in giving ideas of the meaning. He also draws one of their vocabulary doubts on the board (ax), which he immediately looks up in the dictionary when one of the students asks him if it can also be written with as ‘axe’. I am impressed at how he reels the doubt in, mentions that he is not sure, looks it up casually, adds it on the board and then tells a student to put it into the ‘Black Book’. This I am guessing is a sort of general vocabulary log of the class’ doubts that have been drawn out on the board: drawing and name. He manages to take on the vocabulary doubt in a fast and precise manner without pausing the energy in the class.
The lecture is long and very difficult, including conceptual vocabulary and new ideas. Ryan tries to help the students find the cues that the lecturer will be using to change or introduce new subjects, and makes the students try to figure out the new concepts as a group. The lecture will go on the following day and Ryan has managed to keep them awake and focused until the last minute!
Great observation Catalina.
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