I had
the pleasure to observe Felicia Ciappetta’s grammar class on Tuesday, November
27, 2012. I was really excited to see
this class perform their lesson because they were in the Lower Advanced to
Advanced class, and thus, had a much better grasp of the English language. Felicia was exciting and very bubbly
person. She exhibited friendly and
humorous interactions with the students which seemed to have promoted an
atmosphere of trust. I also immediately
noticed handmade posters with prefixes, suffixes, and good reader traits. The class established classroom routines and
were able to utilize their time wisely.
The
agenda was written on the board and “bell ringers” were the first item on the
list. The “bell ringers” were error logs
that contained errors that needed to be corrected. The next item was attendance, followed by a
few other topics. The “bell ringers”
were interesting because the students would ask if you could write a sentence a
certain way. I heard Felicia giving a
good response by saying, “A Native would say…”
The
main focus of the lesson was modals and deciding which ones would be necessary
in the given situations. After reading
the text about modals, students had a discussion with Felicia about why modals
are difficult to use. The students gave
personal examples of how they had “beautiful mistakes” with the different kinds
of modals. The class divided into pairs
and listed the functions of all the modals, as well as, two examples of each,
and an explanation of the sentence meaning.
Felicia guided them through this process by giving them the total number
of functions for the specific modals.
Overall, I enjoyed watching this class because it helped me to realize
what an actual grammar lesson would feel like.
Wow Kim CO4, always going above and beyond! Those classes where the students have a strong grasp of the English language are always fun because the pupils are that much more involved. It sounds like Felicia is a great teacher whom we can learn a lot from. And dividing into pairs to recognize and discuss their own mistakes sounds like the most interactive and hands on way for students to learn grammar. I also liked the language that's used for errors, "beautiful mistakes" "bell ringers", such a positive learning environment!
ReplyDelete