Dhugal Gardner CO 2

I went this morning to observe Carolyn Stringer's group 2C Composition class, approximately 10 students. 

She opened the class by introducing me, which was nice. She then outlined what was in store for the lesson: the students would go over previous essays and enter mistakes in an error log with a correction; then the students would work on outlining. 

The error log exercise seemed pretty useless to me. The students would just mindlessly write down sentences that had already been corrected by the teacher. No real thought processing was needed. Needless to say, the students weren't really engaged with the exercise, and I heard many of them chatting about other things. It seemed that the students could use any essay they had written, so they could've been mentally far removed from the works. Perhaps something they had written recently should be used, with errors pointed out but not corrected. 

The second part was on outlining. She went over the idea and importance of an outline on the board, and also reviewed the basic structure (into with thesis, body paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details, conclusion), which I thought helped focus the students. She then broke up the students into groups, and gave a prompt with which to prepare an outline around; it was something along the lines of characteristics of a good co-worker. She had the students brainstorm first, and I worked with a group. I was fairly impressed with their production of adjectives to describe workers. We only brainstormed for about 5 minutes, as class ended. I assume they will finish the outline tomorrow, and write them out on large sheet paper. 

I liked the interaction that the second activity provided. It gave students a chance to share work experiences and relate to each other.