Raleigh CO #1

Date/Time: 5/10/17 (9-9:50am)
Topic/Skill: Grammar (subordinating conjunctions)
Teacher Presentation: Vicky Golen
Classroom Management: Teacher-centered and then student-centered with group work
Materials: whiteboard, marker, computer, projector, powerpoint, paper
Student Participation: group work
Feedback provided: She gave back old assignments that had been graded and then reviewed their group work with a discussion.

Today, I observed Vicky Golen's grammar class. She started the class by handing out past work and going over the main mistakes that the class made as a whole. After that, she started going over subordinating conjunctions in order to explain the difference between an independent and a dependent clause. She had the students pair up to write example complex sentences (independent and dependent clause). It was really interesting to listen to them try to work with these different conjunctions because some problems arose that were unexpected to me. The subordinating conjunction "even though" is used to show two contrasting ideas, but some students were struggling with this. They kept using example sentences where the phrases were fine, but they would use the incorrect subordinating conjunction. It was also very interesting to see how these students can still get excited about activities like this even though they're all adults. Ms. Golen did a great job keeping the energy up in the classroom. I really enjoyed observing this class. Ms. Golen had other things planned for the day, but she went with the subordinating conjunctions because the students had a lot of questions that dealt with these. Overall, it was really interesting to see how the class interacted with her and amongst themselves, and I'm excited to observe some more classes. I also met my conversation partner because he's in that class, and it was funny to see his reaction because it was clear that he wasn't expecting to meet or even see me in that setting. It was nice to meet him out of context though.