Kayla CO #1

Date/Time: 08-31-2016/9:00 am - 9:55 am
Topic/Skill: Grammar/Group 3A
Teacher Presentation: Sana McHarek

The teacher began with a small warm-up exercise to introduce the topic of infinitives: four fill in the blank questions.  Students were given about five minutes to complete this exercise individually.  Then Sana reviews some possible answers while also involving students.  She then asks the students, "What pattern do you notice?".  Sana then begins using the deductive approach to teaching infinitives and uses the book as the guideline.  She also teaches the difference between infinitives and gerunds.  She explains the functions/rules while giving examples from the book.  The first activity (from the book) that was given was a composition activity to complete sentences with a partner.  She also had to go over a few vocabulary words before this activity.  The second activity was a speaking/comprehension exercise done in pairs: Understand the difference between the sentences.  For example, they had to tell the difference between 'I regret telling you about it' and 'I regret to tell you that you didn't get the job.'  The third activity was for students  to write a story using the list of verbs given and the target topic.  After each activity (except the third one) the teacher reviewed each of the answers, calling on students to answer the questions.  The third activity could not be finished in class, so it was assigned as homework.  Also during class, she told them what kind of questions will be on the quiz.

Classroom Management:

Sana did a great job with keeping track of time and keeping the class focused.  If the students seemed unresponsive, she called on students to answer questions.  She also did a good job of guiding students to think critically about what the right answer is.  Sana would walk around the room to help students during activities as well; she encouraged me to do so too.

Materials:

The materials used for this lesson was the classroom textbook, pencil, paper, markers, whiteboard, and a projector.

Student Participation:

If I had to rate the the students' participation on a scale from 1-10, I'd rate them an 8.  There were a few times where I saw students distracted by their phones. Also, during partner activities, some students preferred to work by themselves so that they could finish the activity faster.

Feedback Provided:

If students were incorrect in their answer, Sana would motivate them to try again.  She'll say something like, "Good try, but that's not the answer I'm looking for.  You're close though."

Lesson(s) on teaching you learned:

During the examples, it is important to break down sentences beyond that of the target topic.  Help breaking down the sentence allows students to apply rules effectively.  Reviewing as  class is definitely important because the students need to be engaged.