The Second
class that I observed was Karin Devick’s group one listening class, which was
focusing on intensive listening. I walked in after a majority of the class had
already taken their seats. After I had taken my seat, Karin informed the class
that I would be sitting in on their lesson and asked me to introduce myself. A
minute after I had introduced myself, the last student came in late. He rushed
through the door and quickly uttered an apology to the teacher. She promptly
stopped him from sitting down and asked that he properly apologize to the
entire class and then apologized to him for embarrassing him in front of peers.
The first thing that Karin did was write the schedule for the day on the board.
The preliminary activity consisted of Karin playing a trailer for the new Pixar
movie Brave several times and having the students fill in a pre-prepared script
that had blank word spaces for students to fill in. After the activity was
finished and Karin had gone over the correct responses with the students, she
informed them that they would be quizzed on symbol meanings and gave them a few
minutes to prepare for it. The quiz was 23 questions long and covered fairly
basic symbols (! # $ % & @ w/ “). After going over the correct answers, she
introduced the next lesson, which would be interviews and American culture. The
vocabulary was introduced and seemed to cover southern foods mostly, which
prompted a student to ask what ‘gumbo’ meant. The class then reviewed the words
by asking for example sentences. The late student sat next to me and asked for
several examples or answers. Karin announced that they were going to watch
interview videos, but they had run out of time. Overall I found that the
lessons/activities were fairly simple but seemed effective in conveying the
predetermined content in and engaging way.
Karin is a great teacher. She seems harsh at first, but really is just in control of the situation without being a taskmaster.
ReplyDeleteAs you have observed, each teacher deals with class management issues differently. I think it all comes down to respect for the class, each other and ourselves. Just like Aretha said!
ReplyDelete