Andrew CO #3

 Date/Time: 5/06/21 11:00-11:50a.m.

Topic/Skill: Reading G4

Teacher Presentation: Ms. James had the students read from an academic article covering the possible uses of music as a tool for pain relief. Students were later given time to work on creating sentences using their vocabulary words to prepare for an up coming quiz.

Classroom Management: Ms. James taught a very small class so the general mood was very casual.

Materials: Computer, Internet access, Zoom, Canvas, Google Docs

Student Participation: When I first joined the Zoom call Ms. James asked a student to give me a brief summary of what they did last class. Following this the students continued to work through the article taking turns reading and describing paragraphs. After finishing the article the students were asked to give their opinion on and explain why or why not they would try using music for pain relief. The last classroom activity the students performed involved Ms. James giving each student a scenario related to their field of study and somehow the student had to convince Ms. James to use music for the sake of pain relief. After this, students were given time to prepare for an upcoming vocabulary quiz by constructing sentences using the desired vocabulary. 

Feedback Provided: Ms. James corrected any speaking errors as they occurred. She also actively checked the sentences the students were making for their vocabulary quiz as they were being posted. Additionally, she planned to go back and correct further sentences the students made later.

Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: This observation was a great lesson for me on how to lead a smaller class. Since my last two observations were for much larger classes this class gave a good example of how pacing and teaching style can vary based on number of students. One of the main things I noticed while observing this class was how personal it was. Not to say that Dr. Rios doesn't share a connection with all of his students, but because the class was so much smaller Ms. James had much more time and many more opportunities to connect her lesson with the personal interests of her students. I believe this kind of teaching is very beneficial to students because it not only helps them remain engaged in the lesson, but also practice their speaking skills in the context of their field of study. I also liked the way that Ms. James lead her class over Zoom. Because all of the students meet for this class through Zoom instead of having a single Word document that she is working on and displaying for the class to see, she uses a Google Doc that all of the students have access to. This allows students to see all changes made to the document in real time and make changes of their own. Lastly, I was also a fan of her highlighting system. Ms. James had a color coded system for distinguishing various aspects of the article such as key points, vocabulary, etc. Because they were using a Google Doc students also had the ability to highlight any areas of confusion within the article.

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