Rick Shemanski CO#1

I observed Victoria Davis’s 3A speaking class on Wednesday, March 05. Victoria started off the class by reviewing error correction from yesterday. Victoria wrote four to five sentences on the board, all containing some grammatical mistake. Victoria then called on random students or asked for volunteers to solve or fix the sentence. The students all seemed very eager to answer and participate. Victoria then shared the day’s agenda with the class and began to explain the instructions for the next activity.

The next activity was called timed speaking practice. Students were divided into groups of three and each group received a stack of questions. The students had fifteen seconds to respond to the questions and their response must include two reasons to support their answers. Most of the questions asked the student’s opinion’s on something. The student had to decide their opinion and state their reasons for it.

Before starting the exercise Victoria told students about how important it is to be able to respond to a question in a timely manner. She used being in a job interview or being at a party as examples to show how a timely response is important. This tactic was useful in helping motivate the students to want to try hard and improve their speaking skills. After each student responded to two different questions each, the class moved on to the next exercise. The next exercise, called the hot seat, but now a particular student volunteers to go in front of the class and answer another question from a news stack of questions. After the student answered the question Victoria asked the rest of the class to say what the hot seat contestant did well and what they could improve on. This feedback from class mates was another effective tool employed to get the students to talk and explain themselves on their feet. Victoria also provided feedback on grammatical errors. 

At the end of the class, Victoria went over some errors she heard used during the group discussion. She wrote out these flawed sentences on the board and called on people to fix the mistakes. Victoria had the class copy down these corrections and informed them that there would be a quiz on it tomorrow. Victoria’s class was very fun and active, students seemed very engaged and responded well to each activity.