CO #1 Madison

For my first class observation I observed Mr. Ryan Fleming's class. It was an advanced level listening class. I noticed at the very beginning of class that he called roll- just as a "house keeping" duty. Then he immediately went over the agenda so the students knew what they were doing that day and even included the amount of time it would take to complete each task. He effectively used humor throughout the class to help lower the students' affective filters and get them to feel more relaxed. He then transitioned into asking the students what they did the week before- using a schema to help incorporate previously learned information. The students were talking about the UN in class which gave the students a cultural lesson. Mr. Fleming used a lot of hand movements while he was talking also, despite the fact that they were an advanced level class. For the active lesson Mr. Fleming had the students do group work- talking with a partner about a video they watched on the UN. The students had to compare and contrast that video with a previous lecture they had watched (this is once again schema building). While the students were comparing and contrasting, Mr. Fleming walked around and listened to their conversations. He maintained good control over the class by quieting them when he wanted to transition back into a group discussion. During the class discussion he called on students specifically. He wrote down their answers and encouraged all of the students to participate. He didn't wait for students to raise their hands, instead he called them out. If a student didn't know an answer to a question he would come back to them and move on so he didn't wasted too much class time waiting on students' responses. Then, as a class they analyzed the video they had watched together. While the students were watching the video Mr. Fleming sat in the back and took notes on the video also. Overall, I think he is a very excellent teacher. I noticed him using a lot of skillz that we have talked about in our TEFL class~