Julia CO #2

I really liked Sana McHarek’s teaching and strategies. Yesterday, I observed her group 1 (level  1 and 2) composition class. She had put an agenda on the board, followed it very well and referred back to it occasionally. She started with giving some feedback on drafts, which the group had done the day before. I liked how Sana took advantage of me being there (I guess), in that she explained the correction symbols on the board for me (“we don’t correct the mistakes for the students, we only tell them, or write on their paper what kind of mistake was made, so that they have to think about it and can learn from their mistakes”) while it seemed as if she wanted to remind the students of how this was done.

The new project was a comparison / contrast essay. What Sana wanted the students to do, after she had modeled the exercise in detail while involving the students a lot, was concentrate on brainstorming / outlining and drafting in yesterday’s class. “If you write a comparison essay you compare: two objects, two people, two ideas, etc.” And “when you compare, you look at similarities or differences.” Most students seemed to understand how to do the brainstorming exercise in using a graphic organizer, and participated well when Sana modeled how this was done correctly. And the students used the same methods when they got the second topic “Compare Tallahassee with Your Hometown” (the first topic was “Compare Life in the City with Life in the Countryside). She gave them precise instructions on how long every part should take them, brainstorming 5 minutes, etc. Level 2 students, I learned, who are obviously more advanced and ambitious, get additional assignments from her, which I think is great, so that they do not get bored.