I sat in on Angel Rios' Group 2 Reading class this morning. All of the students immediately welcomed me and we got to chatting about the different places everyone is from. I was surprised by how good their English is for a Group 2 class. They then explained to me that they are in different group levels for each subject.
The class is reading Rain Man - based off the Tom Cruise movie. I think this is an effective way to get students interested in American culture and reading in English because almost everyone, no matter what country your from, has seen or heard of Tom Cruise. Angel began by asking for the students to give a refresher of what has happened in the book so far, prompting their answers with simple questions (i.e. what was the relationship like between Charlie and his father? Do we know who his father left the money to when he passed?). Angel then read Chapter 4 aloud, explaining more difficult vocabulary words as he went along.
The next activity involved reading from the textbook. The class is currently learning about sound and its different parts (echo, frequency, etc.). This time, Angel had a student read each paragraph, helping with the pronunciation of words along the way. He would go back and explain/define any vocab words after the entire paragraph was read, which I thought was good so they could practice reading and comprehending at the same time and worry about the small details they don't know later. I also thought that having the students underline the main ideas in order to separate the key points from the examples was very effective in teaching the students context and how they can quickly find the information they need to know in the reading.
Throughout the class, Angel used real life examples when explaining vocabulary words which really helped the students visualize and understand what each new word meant. He also incorporated American slang/idioms such as a "bucket list" and "in a pickle."
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