Allison CO - 1

I observed Whitney's Group 3 Speaking class this past Thursday and it was certainly an enjoyable experience. Although she did not do a role call, I felt that she started her class very clearly. She wrote down the itinerary for that day's class on the board and kept with it wonderfully. First, the class began with a Beautiful Mistakes quiz. Whitney had taken 10 sentences that students had actually said during class and typed them up for the students to correct. She gave me one of the quizzes to look over so that I could see the sort of level they were at. The vast majority of the errors were in lacking articles as well as verb/word form. Some students entered just as the quiz had started and Whitney quickly explained what was going on . There was one student who arrived after the quiz had already been completed, but because 10 minutes of class had already passed, she would not allow him to enter. Her pace throughout the class was fairly moderate as she transitioned from the quiz into her lecture for the day. They discussed how to properly make phone calls to both formal and informal parties. For the lecture portion, Whitney explained how phone calls to businesses like movie theaters and restaurants needed to be both formal and direct so far as getting to the point. Students actively participated by reading various parts in phone call dialogues from the projector. Whitney called on the students by name and seemed to keep the students actively interested in the subject matter by giving examples relevant to the students, who she called by name. Underneath these dialogues, she has prepared a few sentences for the students to complete for a fill in the blank exercise with various phrases that one might use in a phone conversation such as "I hope I am not bothering you rigt now. Is this a good time to talk?" and "Thank you for your time!". Lastly, she split up the class into pairs for phone call roleplays. However, there was an uneven number so she asked if I wanted to participate which I graciously agreed to do. I was partnered with a guy named Jesus. As part of the exercise, the partners were told to face back to back so as to simulate an actual phone call situation in which you could not see the party which you were speaking to. Jesus did a great job with the informal calls. It was really funny doing those ones because we used slang like "Sup, bro?". There were only a few things that he did not understand in our formal calls. For example, in a call to a doctor's office he did not understand what I meant by symptoms, which I paused to explain naturally.

For the most part, all of the students seemed genuinely interested in the subject matter. The teacher kept each of them on task by calling on them frequently by name. There was only one point where nearly half of the class was on their phones texting, but this was because the quiz was finishing up. No one student was called on more than another to participate and everyone was given a fair chance to answer each question. All in all Whitney was very dynamic and I liked that she used so many different ways to help keep the material strong in their minds.