13 Sep 2016
On this day, I decided to
re-observe a different class Ryan Flemming taught. The beginning of the class
was focused on reviewing a quiz he graded. He goes over the material and
thoroughly gives his rationale for any and all question the students have for
him.
His class structure for this one
was extremely interesting to me. His pre-activity was basically low-controlled
storytelling where students got into groups and told each other stories based
on certain questions he posed to them. The topic was sleep and his questions
were ones like “Talk about the last time you stayed up all night.” During this
time where the students were talking to each other, he would just walk around
and take notes. He never interrupted or corrected the students. He let them
comfortably practice their English. I’m sure all he was doing was making sure
the students were staying on topic and keeping an eye out to see if they’re
making any common mistakes he needs to address at a later time. After this, he
played a lecture on sleep and let the students take notes on it. Afterwards, he
taught them the vocabulary that was playing in the listening activity (again,
all having to do with the topic of sleep). He let them look up the vocabulary
in groups but he made sure to go over the pronunciation of each word by using
stress marks and the whiteboard.
Ryan’s classes are great examples
of how letting students interact with each other under moderate to low
controlled conditions only helps them further develop their English language
skills. It very much helps that he’s both knowledgeable in both teaching and
English. There really is much to learn from attending his classroom session.
No comments:
Post a Comment