Gale_TP#11

Gale Workman

TP#11

Sept. 18, 2014, 8 a.m.

Hecht House

Sore said she likes her Reading class best because it is easy, but she meant it was her "easiest" class. This was an opportunity to teach affixes, which I did briefly as we settled in. More about that later.

For today, I planned a listening lesson to prepare Sore and Jihun for midterms. The hour flew by so fast that Jihun was visibly shocked when I said, "We have approximately five minutes remaining in today's session." (We were working with the word “approximately” in the lesson.)

I had prepared an article with graphic titled "U.S. says: Goodbye, Summer. Hello, Autumn." I introduced the lesson by asking Sore to mark today's date on my calendar. I asked Jihun to mark Sept. 23 on the calendar. The article used in our lesson was chosen because it was important now.

I read eight sentences aloud. Students jotted down words they recognized. We decoded their word lists to begin to comprehend the sentences. Our immediate goal was to summarize the main idea of the paragraph.

The paragraph and graphic referenced the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere. We used the graphic to discuss how these terms are geographically relevant to Sore (Venezuela) and Jihun (Korea).

Jihun asked about the word "ceaseless" (orbit), which lead us into an explanation of affixes. Jihun said he knew the term from his English classes in Korea, but he did not understand it. It was all new to Sore, whose English listening level is "barely."

Jihun "got" affixes because he asked if priceless is synonymous with valuable. When I said, “Yes,” Jihun said, "Does that mean if something is cheap and can be thrown away, it valueless?" I said: "Yes, but a more often used word is worthless or useless."

I concluded the lesson by tying this explanation back to a quick review of the “easy, easier, easiest” classroom chat that began our lesson. There were "a-ha moments" all around! I suggested students review affixes in their grammar texts and ask their grammar teachers about affixes. "Knowing affixes can help you understand 75 percent of words."