Ted Hong - CO3

Yesterday, I sat in on Vicky Ledbetter's Foundation Listening Class. I've had a lot going, especially that day that required me to impose the spirit of the Flash within my feet and make it all the way to her class on time.

Vicky had a very small class of 5 students and was joined by me and another observer, Dusty, whom I've sat with in on another class. We were asked to participate in some improvisation to illustrate her lessons today. I don't know if I should have declined, but I was more than willing to assist.

Vicky's lesson was based off of a handout, presumably from a workbook that goes through several instances regarding sickness, ailments, doctor appointments, etc.

Her lesson plan revolved around regular verbs and irregular verbs. Dusty and I acted out certain events to our choosing the detailed certain ailments or problems. Vicky was trying to get the students to ask us via memorized sentences how we felt and why we felt that way. It was rather straightforward yet entertaining. A positive factor for the students.

Following this, Dusty and I fashioned sentences to incorporate past tense regular and irregular verbs from the worksheet for students to determine which ones are being used in its respective sentences. They had two options as well as defining which past tense column (-t, -d, and -id) they fit under. This was more of a reinforcement as most students appeared to understand, even when they jumped the gun and misspoke. They would immediately correct themselves, as well as help the others. It seemed like a tightly knit group.

Vicky at one point bumped her arm against the marker board and immediately jumped to using a previously learned memorized question/answer interaction. I thought, good form. Good form.

At the end of the lesson, Dusty and I split into groups and we recited lines from a dialogue in regards to setting up a doctor's appointment. It included what kind of pain one was feeling, how it got that way, and what time the schedule would be. Students were quite eager and spoke the lines with minimal difficulty.

Overall, Vicky's methods were just basic repetition for them to remember it. A little challenging of sorts but never deviating from the main focus. She was quite ecstatic, addressed people by name, and did a fantastic job in keeping morale up when a student would answer incorrectly. Very tactful. It's something I hope I always do when I have to address an incorrect situation.
It was a fun class, albeit a little impromptu. At the end of the class, she did mention that she didn't have a lot of material specifically for listening toward the foundations classes but I thought she pulled it off.