CO#3 Alice

       For my final class observation, I observed Vicky Ledbetter’s Group 2B listening class. It just so happened that one of my conversation partners, Bruno, was in the class! As soon as Vicky walked into the room, she wrote the agenda on the board.

9/17/2013

1.  Greek Salad

2. Cloze Activity

3. Recipe Presentations (We didn’t get to this activity, because we ran out of time)

        To begin the class, Vicky asked everyone in the class individually by name what they were going to do after class – “Do you have plans for today?”, “What are you doing today after class?”. If a student responded with a simple phrase, she would ask them to provide their answer in a complete sentence. Afterwards, she asked more questions using the students’ own output. For example, my conversation partner said that he was going to have coffee with me later that day. Subsequently, Vicky asked the class, “Who will have coffee tonight with Alice?”, to which someone responded, “Bruno will have coffee tonight with Alice”. I thought this exercise was a great way to work on listening as well as speaking.
        For the Greek Salad activity, students watched a video on how to prepare a Greek salad. As they were watching the video, students had to fill out information regarding the ingredients, utensils, and preparation steps in their workbooks. She played this video more than once.  To assist the students, she wrote down the verbs associated with each step so that the students would have something to focus on as they listened. Afterwards, she broke the students into pairs, and asked them to describe each step and to write a summary about how to make a Greek salad, of which would be turned in. For this activity, she used an online stopwatch (like the one Mrs. Kim uses in class), so that the students would be aware of how much time they have left for the activity.
        For the cloze activity, students were given a small paragraph with blanks that would need to be filled in as they listened to Vicky read the completed paragraph aloud. I was given a paragraph so that I could follow along and participate. The paragraph coincided with the cooking theme. She repeated it twice in a slow, clear manner. After the assignment was complete, she went over the answers with the class to make sure that the students knew the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of each word. Once the lesson was complete, she gave positive feedback about participation. Vicky seemed very bubbly and happy the entire time. I felt that she made great use of her allotted class time, and the pace of the class never left room boredom.