Sam - TP - 4 & 5

#4

On November 18th, I met with Hayriye at the Leon County Public Library to work on her reading/vocabulary in preparation for the GED reading test. I gave her some sheets I had printed out with prefixes and their meanings. We went over the sheet, asking her to guess the meaning of words I wrote on the board. She also gave me words she knew already that had the prefixes on the sheet. We went over some of the reading comprehension exercises in her GED practice book.

#5

On the 24th, we met at the library continued our prefix exercise with a quiz on what we did last week and a worksheet. Then we did an exercise from this cool book from the Literacy Volunteers' collection called "Word Power." It's these lists of words where one doesn't match, and at the top is a synonym for the ones that do match. For instance, the word might be GOOD and underneath are the words: benevolent, agreeable, unpleasant, satisfactory. Hayriye had to guess the wrong one and give justification, or use the others in a sentence. She was pretty good at it. The idea was to get her feeling comfortable with some level of "ambiguity tolerance" when she comes across unfamiliar words on the GED test. I thought that by showing her that she can figure out new words using what she already knows, it would build her confidence. She seemed to really like this exercise.

We also talked a little about Turkish culture and backgammon-- did you know there's a "boys" backgammon and a "girls" backgammon? Guess which one is the easy one? Hayriye and I lamented a little about how women are viewed sometimes as less intelligent than men, in both of our cultures. Some things are the same everywhere, I guess :P

Sam - CP - 5

December 3rd was my last meeting with Hasan, at the International Banquet for CIES. Man, what a great time! So much food! So many people! I arrived and sat down with Hasan and some other students for a while. We talked about the food, then we ate some. Hasan made an awesome dish from Turkey, it's like an almond-shaped flatbread pizza topped with finely ground meat (almost like a pate) and vegetables. It was sooo good.

I got to see a dance to the song "Footloose" that Hasan and his friend, Nihan, also from Turkey, worked on with the other CIES students. It was awesome. They were perfectly coordinated and having such a blast doing it. Hasan also played a traditional Turkish song on this stringed instrument (I can never remember the name!) that he had been telling me about, so I was really excited to finally see.

Before the night was over, we took some photos and talked about Hasan's plans in Pennsylvania, his nervousness and excitement. It was sad to say goodbye to Hasan, but hopefully our paths will cross again one day.

Sam - Classroom Observation #3

On November 16th, I sat in on Andrea's listening class, level EL-HE. Because it was an Islamic holiday, all but one of her students were absent. The first exercise was to watch a clip from "The Terminal," a movie starring Tom Hanks. I would have probably given a synopsis of the movie first, but instead they just launched right into it, playing the clip all the way through once, to give the student a general impression. The second time, Andrea stopped at each sentence, and the student had to complete a cloze worksheet.

The second exercise was to listen to a song called "Everybody" and complete another cloze worksheet. When they'd gotten through that, Andrea asked the student what she thought the song was about, and a few other questions relating to the theme of the song ("everybody needs to be loved"). Then they went over some vocab from the song, like "fit like a glove" and "to fold." Andrea told me it's hard to find clear enough songs to do these kinds of exercises, and that simple acoustic guitar songs are better, since there's less going on musically to distract the listener. She recommended using Norah Jones and The Beatles for listening lessons of this kind.

I would be curious to see how the pace would change if the classroom was full of students. We were fortunate because we could take the time and give the student personalized attention, but I imagine that will not usually be the case. There will probably normally be some people left behind, or have to be worksheets of different levels for the cloze exercise.

Sam - Classroom Observation #2

On November 4th, I sat in on Dr. Kennell's reading class, level LA-AD. He started by talking about the expressions Hump Day and TGIF. He told a funny story about killing a chicken. He got the students laughing and interjecting. They all seemed to really, really like him.

Then, he got down to business. He'd given the class homework, and he followed up with it. They had read an article about a Southern scientist in the magazine "Research In Review." He asked questions about the reading and went over a lot of the idiomatic phrasing in the article and references to Southern history and culture, such as the word "Dixie." Dr. Kennell was very considerate of me, including me in some of the discussions, and giving me rationale for his lessons. I think he did a good job of working on reading comprehension while still getting the students talking about what they read.

Sam - Classroom Observation #1

On October 27th, I had the pleasure of sitting in on Marilyn Sohan's grammar class, lever AE-LI. She started by writing the date, the name of the class, and the Agenda for the day: Chapter 2, present perfect tense. She started by asking the students, "What is the present perfect tense used for?" She then got students to give examples and write them on the board.

One student wrote:

I've stayed Tallahassee since I got here.

"How does that sentence look to everyone?" Marilyn asked. There was a chorus of protest. "Fix it!" she cried. After the sentence was corrected, she challenged the student to make it longer and more complex.

The students had done some reading on the subject before the class so she could ask them to contribute to the discussion, which was great. Most of the students were engaged throughout, and Marilyn called on different people.

The students did their exercises in pairs and then wrote their answers on the board. Marilyn got students to explain the meaning of the sentences they had written.

Marilyn was relaxed, funny, and confident while teaching, and I think the students responded well to her. She also did a great job of waiting for the students' answers.