Savannah CO #1

Savannah CO #1

I attended Leslie's fundamental grammar class.  She was teaching subject verb agreement in the present simple tense.  She started off the class with corrections of errors made in the last class.  She would write the sentence on the board and read it out loud.  She would call on students to explain what was wrong with the sentence and the correct answer.   I noticed that she would only explain things when the students were stuck.  Every other opportunity for correction of grammar was in the hands of the students.

Leslie reviewed vocabulary for ten or fifteen minutes.   She asked what the students do every morning.   Afterwards she asks different students what a certain student does at that time, in order to test their switches from first person answering to third person answering.    Once again, it's noticeable that she only spends the smallest amount of talking necessary to facilitate talking between students and answering her comprehension checks.

She spends some time explaining the information gap activity.   The third person vocabulary questions were a smart, smooth transition into the gap activity.  During the explaination, she uses some of the vocabulary in the activity.  She also makes it clear that "instead of talking about you, you you are talking about another person."   She was patient with explaining the rules thoroughly.

When she passes out the activity she asks them what they were going to do.  They do the first problem together.   She asks them what they want to find out, and writes the question on the board they need to be asking each other.  When they start the activity she stays engaged, answering all questions.  She uses hand signals for verbs and vocabulary.  She makes sure both the person answering and the person asking the questions are using full sentences.  They practice vocabulary, grammar, writing, listening, and speaking.

When reviewing the activity, she encourages the other students to correct the others if they hear something wrong.  She ignores smaller grammar mistakes.  She quizzes the students on their comprehension.  She has the students ask each other questions about the information they provided.  Leslie mixed up the known and unknown information in a question and the students would have to adapt to figure out the answer.  I feel like this created less predictability and formulaic thinking in the students.  It kept them on their toes.