Megan CO#2

In my second class observation, I attended Ryan Flemming's composition class. I was extremely impressed with the level of professionalism with which he ran the class. He was very clear, upbeat, and intentional with his actions. He began by introducing me to the class and asking them what i was truly here to observe to which they responded "the class, not us." I though this was a nice gesture to make the students remain feeling comfortable in their learning environment, He then wrote the date and time they would spend on each of the lesson objectives for the day on the board. For 12 minutes the students went over the feedback of their academic essays as he went around the room to speak one on one with the students. Whenever he helped, he explained only what was necessary to guide their learning and let the students correct themselves. Next the students were then given a worksheet and told that they would be working in teams (pairs). The worksheet was on how to replace complicated words or jargon to more simple terms for others to understand. For example, instead of "to exploit" one could say "to take advantage of." The students had 12 minutes to work together to complete the worksheet as he listened for beautiful mistakes and answered questions. Then in the end they went over it as a class. While everyone left I asked Mr. Flemming why he chose 12 minutes for each of his activities. He said that this was just enough time for his students to work, because 10 minutes tended to be too short, while 15 minutes seemed to be too much time.