Last Tuesday I observed Michelle's Advanced Composition class. I really, really liked Michelle. She had great energy and was very respectful of the students' intelligence. She also went out of her way to explain things to me and see if I had any questions, which I appreciated. I liked that she wrote the day's agenda on the board and went over it at the beginning of the class. Then, at the end of the class, she talked about what the students should expect for the next class and later in the week. I think that's a good habit to have.
The main task for students on Tuesday was to summarize New York Times articles (using 5-10 sentences) and share the summary with a partner to see if they could understand the article without having read it. This involved a lot of silent, individual work, and during that time Michelle shared with me suggestions for going over writing assignments with students. The most useful things she said were, 1) ignore articles when reading students' papers - they will all have problems with them, and 2) discuss grammar problems, but don't directly correct them. Rather, circle the problem and have the student figure it out. Useful tips which I had NOT previously been doing with my TP. Live and learn.
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