Marissa_CO#2

Marissa M.
Class Observation Blog #2
9/26/2014

Friday I observed the Foundations speaking class taught by Leslie Wagner.  What a fun class!!!  I really enjoyed this observation and think she teaches similar to how I hope to.  When I walked into the class, tables were separated into three groups, with one in the center of all groups.  Each table group had a sign on it: "Dante's Deli," "Starry Night Cafe," and "The Sicilian."  The center table had donuts, orange juice, fruit, and utensils on it.  She had brought breakfast for the class and was going to use it to teach a lesson on ordering food from restaurants!

I arrived to the class a little early and watched the students come in.  I noticed that the male students seemed to make a point to all sit at one table, even though there were not enough chairs.  They went so far as to take chairs from a table where only one girl was sitting so they did not sit there.  This was a little odd to me, but I found out some of it was cultural.  Throughout the class I noticed that a few of the female students also had problems speaking in class, even more so when it was around the men.  A few of the students were couples in the class which I believe probably makes this more difficult.  I'm not sure of how frequently this occurs, but I think if an option to have married students in different classes is available it would be best - particularly for students from those cultures where the male still has most of the influence.  I would worry that the women are not learning enough in these instances, while trying to respect her husband and their cultural values. 

When the class had settled, Leslie invited everyone to get something to eat and explained that the students would be split into groups for role-play in one of the three restaurants.  While students were eating, she covered vocabulary that was new and/or she thought the students would struggle with.  She then posted a table with assignments for all students in the class - three waiters/waitresses and the rest customers.  Students were asked to move into groups.  Once grouped, she handed out a script, the appropriate menus for each table, and explained instructions for the activity.

To help demonstrate the first round, she asked me to play the role of a customer.  Her and I acted out the script - with a few modifications to the text, as she said students could do - for the class to watch.  After we completed the role play, she clarified that all students understood the rules and what they were supposed to do.  Then the lesson began.

My first observation was again with the confidence levels of the students.  A few were writing down directions on their scripts, acting out actual table deliveries with the left over food, and making up their own dialogue.  Others were very hesitant to even speak from the script and kept running to the teacher to ask for assistance.  This was a good example - in my opinion - of showing the different levels of students in each class and how materials need to be comprehensive enough to cover several so that students all feel they are getting something from the course.

As the students were getting ready to change for a second time, I said something to Leslie about the lesson and she admitted that she thought the lesson would take longer.  This was again, good practice for me in planning.  She was very quick to make revisions though and handled it with a breeze.  It was clear to see that she has done this before and is experienced in the classroom - students had no clue that changes to the lesson plan were made.  To re-arrange things she let the class continue through their role plays and then once they had she split them into two groups and asked each group to create their own dialogue that included at least one problem, to present to the class.  The class was then going to listen to the presentation and find what problems the customers reported having in the restaurant. 

This activity took a bit of time.  There ended up being a group of girls and a group of guys.  I assisted a bit with the student groups - primarily when I was walking over to them to see how they were doing.  I noticed quite a few missing words and pronouns in sentences.  Additionally, I noticed that a few students dominated the group while others did not appear to participate at all. 

The mens group presented first.  My first observation was that they were MUCH more timid in front of the entire class.  The guys had been very outgoing and dominated the small group conversation.  However, even the most confident male suddenly seemed a little more shy.  There were a few pronunciation issues with the words right/rice and sugar/sucker.  Additionally, a few problems with missing and/or misplaced words (ex: the eating is not good, the restaurant all bad).  But for foundations level students I thought all of the guys were fairly advanced, compared to what I had expected. 

The ladies group had quite a bit more difficulty with this exercise than the men.  Only two seemed to really be providing input on the writing and dialogue.  However, this went fairly quickly.  They primarily had difficulty with reading the dialogue after and speaking in front of the class.  There were adjectives placed behind nouns, plural forms of words left out, and missing pronouns (ex: here is you drink).  This was used as another lesson by the teacher on how to change the forms into either "here are your drinks," or "here is your drink."

To conclude the class, Leslie went around and asked each student to tell her one thing that they were looking forward to this weekend.  Most students were able to do this, only one or two really struggled.  It was interesting to hear what they were planning to do over the weekend.  Two of the students - a married couple - was even planning to have Gale, from my class, over to their house for dinner.  They seemed very excited!