Christiana CO #2

Date/Time: May 10, 2017; 9:00-9:50AM

Location: Room 311 

Teacher/Subject: Ryan Flemming, Grammar 

Group: 1A

For today's class observation I joined Ryan Flemming's group 1 grammar class. Having observed a level 3 class yesterday I could immediately see the difference both in approach that Mr. Flemming took with this group and in the level of proficiency in which the students were able to speak and understand English. After greeting the students and having brief conversation for a few minutes before class officially started Mr. Flemming took attendance and discussed what the agenda would be for the class. They went on to finish up a review that they had started on Monday on the present continuos tense, which they were told would be in an upcoming quiz. They each had small pieces of paper with 3 word choices on it and Mr. Flemming read a sentence aloud and students chose which word or pair of words would work with that sentence and in some cases would have to change word/words slightly to fit the sentence, this honed in on their listening as well as grammar skills, and the students only had a few hiccups during the 4 questions they went over. After this short review they went over some "objects in our lives" which were words that were used in the activity with images shown on the projector. During this activity Mr. Flemming was teaching them new vocabulary and asking them questions like "What is this object used for?" and "Who uses this object?" He had them speak about the objects in partners and then discussed their answers as a class all the while correcting pronunciation, grammar and making sure the definitions they were coming up with had the correct content. In the final activity he had the class break up into partners who they usually don't speak to so they could work on a worksheet focusing on "Can you?" questions. In this activity each partner had a different list of statements describing their partner and they had to guess whether or not their partner could or could not do something, like sing or dance, etc. After they were done guessing they were responsible for asking their partners the questions "Can you sing?" and then revealing if they were right or wrong. This was an activity that kind of served as both an ice breaker to meeting a new person in the class as well as a great practice for asking questions and converting answers. The entire time Mr. Flemming walked around and helped students when they were stuck and gave them pointers and comments on their progress. 

There was a point where he said the word "through" and he knew they would ask about that so when they did he was ready with an explanation which he supported using google images of tunnels as well as written words on the white board. He was really great at being able to anticipate the needs of the students and making sure that everybody was up to speed without moving so slowly that those who were perhaps more versed in English got bored. The white board and projector were both utilized a lot in this class and activities moved more slowly than in the level three class I had observed before which I had expected but it was good to see the difference in tempo of these classes. Mr. Flemming made sure to use positive reinforcement when students did well on activities with key phrases like "great job!" or "very good, you got it!" He also used a lot of hand gestures and head nodding while speaking so that his body language was matching up with what he was saying strengthening meanings of each word he said. He also made sure to ask "Are you ready to listen?" and "is everybody ready?" often to make sure that everybody had gotten the activity or topic of discussion before moving forward. It was awesome to see the difference in approach and strategy that you must have in and how important knowing exactly what your students know and do not know when teaching to different levels of students.