CO#2 Mel

Last Wednesday I observed Marilyn Sohans foundations reading class. The class was lively and when I walked in one of the students was teaching the others how to samba before class started. The class was centered on vocabulary words related to the question “What kind of problems do you have with your body?” The instructor used the board a lot to write up new vocabulary words and often asked students to participate and use personal experiences. The class had a casual environment, that was very student centered. She made the students use complete sentences when talking about specific times when they had “earaches” or “back pain.” After going over the words she split up the class and asked them to act out a scene at the doctors office, with one person being the doctor, another the patient and the third a friend or family member. The class was very engaged with the content and she applied the vocabulary to specific, practical situations like when to go to the doctors office vs the hospital. This class was an interesting juxtaposition to the last class I observed. Foundation speakers seem to need a different class dynamic that involve a lot of kinesthetic learning.