Ben - CO #3

I sat in on Ryan Flemming's Group 3B Listening class today for my last classroom observation session. Right off the bat I noticed the advanced level of speaking and communicating exhibited by the students in the class. I think both of my other classroom observations were lower-intermediate level, so this was a nice change of pace. Ryan began the class by deliberately going over the class schedule and assignments for the remainder of the semester. I admired the clarity and pace with which Ryan explained exactly what was expected of the students in the coming weeks. After that quick review, Ryan quickly went over the expectations for the next homework assignment due for the students which was a listening log for a TEDTalks. I thought this was a fantastic assignment for a listening class. Not only are the TEDTalks a great opportunity for students to learn new vocabulary and hear some sophisticated English, they are also a fantastic learning experience in general because they are loaded with interesting and relevant information about the world in which we live. They are educational, important, and very cultural as well. I thought it was a great teaching tool utilized by Ryan. 

After that, Ryan went over a transcription assignment that he had assigned for over spring break. One thing I noticed about Ryan's teaching is that he was very clear about his expectations from the students. Not only did he go over the problems, but he also carefully went over the rubric he used for grading their assignments. It allowed for a fair, comfortable learning environment. Another thing I noticed was that Ryan effectively used the "I don't understand" technique. Whenever a student said something that was not grammatically correct Ryan would pretend not to understand and they then knew immediately that they had to correct themselves and they did so accordingly. Ryan concluded the class with a listening exercise where he played an audio clip of a woman discussing neuro-marketing. This particular bit of audio was great because it was packed with vocabulary (or potential vocabulary), it was an interesting topic pertinent to today's world, and there were a lot of numbers and figures brought up which was something that Ryan had stressed in his earlier lecturing. He then had the students split up into groups and pairs to go over all of the information they had gleaned from the audio clip. As they discussed, Ryan would walk amongst them providing prompts and help whenever it was appropriate. Overall, Ryan's class was interesting and student centered and I learned a lot from it.