Kelly CO-3

I observed Victoria's Group 2B Speaking Class on Wednesday. She began the class by writing the agenda and taking attendance. I immediately noticed that Room 215 is huge in comparison to the fourth floor classrooms I have become accustomed to. At the end of class Victoria told me she prefers a smaller sized classroom to have a more controlled view of the classroom.
They began with a short quiz which went over some errors from a previous class. The students were asked to rewrite incorrect sentences for 5-8 minutes. Victoria gave clear directions and walked around the class helping when necessary. She then gave a two minute warning to wrap up and finish. These "2 minutes" went on a bit longer to accommodate stragglers. When they were all finished Victoria asked if this was a difficult or easy quiz. They unanimously but in a monotone voice said "Easy..." Victoria explained that they will do quizzes like this (going over errors from previous lessons) more often. She then asked if they had any questions. (none)
As a little respite, Victoria explained the Second Harvest Food Drive Contest occurring between all the Speaking classes. She explained what it was in the American context and then asked if there were similar activities in the student's home country. (YES!) After explaining it for a while, the students had their Aha! moment when the word "donate" was used in this context of food.
Victoria began the next activity by calling out assigned pairs that found each other. She wrote the directions on the board

*Student 1: Say the Sentence
*Student 2: Write what Student 1 said.

Victoria explained the directions and purpose of the activity (pronunciation, listening) and gave out a paper with a sentence randomly sourced from Yahoo News. One was on health, the other on science. If a person does not know the word, Student 1 may spell it out. The Student 1 counts the words in the sentence, and then checks Student's two written sentence. (Ie: Student 2 got 11/20 words.) Although I felt the directions were clear, Victoria seemed to have to reiterate to pairs what they were doing. I imagined that the students would read the sentences at a normal pace. What wound up happening is that they said each word slowly and over and over again. One student was becoming quite frustrated with his partner due to comprehension mainly based on a Spanish vs. Arabic accent. Mostly with laughter though. Otherwise, students worked well together. They were eager to make sure their fellow student did well on the activity.
Victoria went around checking the work of pairs that finished and explained what might have gone wrong (maybe he couldn't decipher your accent, maybe he heard a different word, etc). All in all, Victoria was very helpful in class activities, she did not do the work for students, but gave explanations, rationale and encouragement. There were some vocabulary words that were over the students heads (dementia, caffeine) that perhaps should have been gone over before the activity as it stumped many students.
Victoria closed out the activity with a "just for practice" quiz where she pronounced the sentence, "It can be/part of a healthy diet/and lifestyle/and may even contribute/to such a lifestyle. With pauses where the slashes indicate. She then wrote the sentence on the board and asked student to compare their answer.
She closed the class by telling them they would have a real quiz like this tomorrow.