Jacqueline CO #2

4/5 Calyn Stringer Group 1B

On Wednesday, I observed Calyn's class. She has been my favorite teacher so far! She was very energetic, walking around the room, using the board, and was extremely interactive with the class. She made an effort to call on each student throughout the 50 minutes.

She started the class by passing out a sheet to take home and practice pronunciation with a conversation partner, friend, or classmate. Depending on where the student was from, she gave them words to focus on that were challenging to their particular language. (Prof Kim spoke about different languages and trouble with specific sounds, for instance "r" for Chinese students). I thought this set her apart as a teacher, since she took the extra time to make the lists specific to each student's needs.

While introducing myself to the class, she asked which country I planned on teaching in. When I mentioned it was "up in the air", she immediately used that as a teaching opportunity. She wrote the phrase on the board, asking students to define what they thought it meant. She was on her toes like this throughout the entire class. Super engaging!

She discussed modal words, such as may, could, should, must, & can. Then she handed out a worksheet about the court system, discussed its purpose, and had students define and write sentences about various vocabulary words used in a courtroom (ex. lawyers, judge, witness, juror).

Calyn spoke slowly, clearly, and used hand motions/ body language in an effective manner for teaching. When students would make a mistake, she corrected them in a friendly and positive manner.

She also discussed how some words in the English language are pronounced different than the spelling when someone is speaking fast. For example, in the sentence "We have to..." she mentioned it could sound like "We haf-to". I recognized this point from Ch. 8 on sentence word stress. Oftentimes, English speakers will stress certain words in a sentence more than others, and it may sound slurred. "While students don't necessarily need to learn to use the reduced forms of the unimportant words in a sentence, they should learn to stress keys ones" (Snow, 126).

(Sorry this was longer than expected!)