Ceara CO #1
I had my first class observation today with the beginner level grammar course taught by Sana McHarek. She started out the class by reviewing their previous lesson on pronouns and possessive adjective. What I thought was interesting about the way she did the review was she encouraged the students to remember on their own by asking a lot of questions and clarifying their answers, rather than just reiterating a lecture on the rules. Throughout the lesson she used the deductive approach by making sure the students understood the rules before moving on to the activity. What I was also impressed by was that during the review she went over the definition of possession and then in the activity, used that as the topic: "Write about your favorite possession."
During the main lesson of count and non count nouns she used the same deductive approach of teaching the rules before the activity. Similarly encouraging the students to explain the new subject themselves by giving them hints rather than starting out by lecturing on the rules. What I was most impressed by throughout the lesson was that she was able to keep everything connected, having the subjects lead into each other, like with the topic of the first activity being a word they just learned, and having both activities in the main lesson bounce off each other: "List things in your kitchen" and after the explanation, "Now make a shopping list of things you need in the kitchen." This allowed for the lesson to be fluid and for the students to continue with the same train of thought from the previous subject into the next, keeping them from falling behind.
She ended the lesson by going over "beautiful mistakes": mistakes in their sentences that she wrote down during the lesson and put them up on the white board. She went around to each person, encouraging them to correct the mistakes and only told them the mistake when they were having trouble figuring it out. After class I asked her how she decided which of their mistakes to use. She answered that she ignored the mistakes that involved subjects above their level, and instead focused on the mistakes crucial to what they were learning. Overall today was a very rewarding class observation.
During the main lesson of count and non count nouns she used the same deductive approach of teaching the rules before the activity. Similarly encouraging the students to explain the new subject themselves by giving them hints rather than starting out by lecturing on the rules. What I was most impressed by throughout the lesson was that she was able to keep everything connected, having the subjects lead into each other, like with the topic of the first activity being a word they just learned, and having both activities in the main lesson bounce off each other: "List things in your kitchen" and after the explanation, "Now make a shopping list of things you need in the kitchen." This allowed for the lesson to be fluid and for the students to continue with the same train of thought from the previous subject into the next, keeping them from falling behind.
She ended the lesson by going over "beautiful mistakes": mistakes in their sentences that she wrote down during the lesson and put them up on the white board. She went around to each person, encouraging them to correct the mistakes and only told them the mistake when they were having trouble figuring it out. After class I asked her how she decided which of their mistakes to use. She answered that she ignored the mistakes that involved subjects above their level, and instead focused on the mistakes crucial to what they were learning. Overall today was a very rewarding class observation.
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