Katelyn_CO_#3

After Mrs. Stringer's class on Tuesday, I went right to Joshua Valentine's 3B Reading class at 11:00am. He also began the class by asking if anyone had travelled over the long weekend, before writing the vocabulary for the week's reading on the board. He only taught the students five words during this lesson--any more "might be too many" at once. After explaining the vocabulary, Mr. Valentine had the students follow along while he read the (rather intense) article out loud to the students. The article was on a study from FSU about human's attraction to beautiful people--it was titled "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," I believe. He spoke slowly, pausing on difficult words, such as "instantaneously," to sound them out syllabically, which I thought was a great technique. In total, the pre-lesson took about fifteen minutes to complete. Students then read through the article alone, underlining any words they didn't know, and circling words they couldn't pronounce for the next twenty minutes.
While students were working on the article, he prepared the board for the following activity, and walked around answering vocabulary questions--again, a technique I have observed in every CIES class. Afterwards, the students were asked to shout out adjectives that were used to describe men, women, or both, which were written on the board. Most students gave adjectives that were "both," although there was some discussion about where a word truly belonged (for example, does "smart" describe only women?).
During the individual reading time, Mr. Valentine explained some of his personal favorite games to me, which I plan to use in my own future classes. He explained two excellent activities: team charades for vocabulary practice; and "shadow reading," in which two students take turns reading out loud and asking the other questions.
I fully enjoyed this reading class--it was too bad that a fire alarm cut the class a few minutes short, and we ended without a proper conclusion. Although this post is my last for the classroom observations, I would still like to sit in a few more classes for my own learning experiences during this TEFL session--seeing the professional teachers in action has given me some great ideas for my own lesson plans, and I know there is much more I can learn by watching.