Class Observation 3

For my third class observation, I watched a recorded video of Mr. Flemming's Advanced Composition class. The topic of the class was cause and effect essays. I thought it was interesting how to build the class up to creating their own topic from scratch, he had them work in stages. In the first stage, the students were provided with a cause and had to come up with their own effects. In the second stage, the students were given an effect and had to come up with some causes. In the last stage they had to do both on their own. I guess this might count as the scaffolding method, where support is provided at the beginning of the lesson and then slowly taken away. Mr. Flemming did a good job of allowing the students to talk at their tables and work together, and of creating a class discussion about the topics at hand. I did notice that he didn't really provide modeling, but maybe since the students were not really writing whole essays on their own that wasn't as important. Also, if that really was an advanced class I think Mr. Flemming probably could have had a bit more of a natural speech rate. Still, it seemed like a great class!