Today I observed Dr. Grill's TOFEL class that started at 5pm and ended at 6:30pm. Dr. Grill walked into the class and before she began her academic instruction, she asked the class how they were doing and how they felt today. I thought this was a very good approach to starting the class because it gave a comfortable environment and it can help with how the teacher will run the class for the hour and half duration.
Dr. Grill had informed me that they were working on an assignment that was assigned last Wednesday and so, there would not be as much instructional teaching today; however, I did get to observe how pair working can be managed and executed. Dr. Grill instructed the students on what she wanted them to do in their groups and explained each step on what they will be doing for the whole class. This was very good because it gave a clear outline of what the students were expected to do as well as their objectives and goals for that class.
The assignment from last Wednesday was working with -s endings. The students were given a handout and they were instructed to go through the list of phrases and see if they have any questions on word meanings before they get into pairs. Dr. Grill gave the students about 5-10 minutes to go through the phrases and then she had asked them questions on some phrases or words that she felt they may feel confused about, but just too shy to ask. I think this was very smart because sometimes students will not ask a question because they may feel embarrassed or too shy to ask in front of the whole class; if the teacher asks the class, then the class is obligated to answer the questions.
Dr. Grill then assigns the partner so that the students can interact with different people; this was smart because there was a habit of the people of the same cultural background to sit with each other. Once Dr. Grill assigns the partners, she reminds them of the time limit they have in the groups and lets them proceed to work. During this time, Dr. Grill observes and helps when she is needed/appropriate.
Then, it was time for the students to get into groups of 3 and going over their articles they had read last week. Dr. Grill have them sets of vocabulary words to focus on and a focus questions to go over in the group. This gave the students purpose and an objective/goal to focus on. After the group work, the students went down to the listening lab to record themselves reading a passage of the text.
Overall, the class was very stimulating with lots of group work and peer interaction. Though I did not get to see instructional teaching it was a great experience to see how to effectively use group work and pairing up students to interact, be active, and learn.
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