Catherine_CO_#2

Today I sat in on Ryan's Group 2 Composition class. He had the agenda up on the projector, and began class by reviewing what was talked about in yesterdays class. They had been going over comparison essays, lasts class was traditional vs. virtual classrooms. Today, the class read an essay comparing Western and Eastern paintings. He had the students read the essays and look for the thesis statement as well as each bodies topic sentence. He asked the students for any confusion on words, and used the projector to google the words together with the class to find definitions, synonyms and antonyms, and example sentences. I really liked this method, it seemed like the students learned the words very quickly this way. He also explained the words by speaking very slowly and clearly, much more than when he would talk to the class about other stuff, which I also think helped them to understand better. He put the essay up on the projector and went over the topic and thesis statements together with the class. Ryan then had them pair up with a person who spoke a different first language then they spoke and had them write an outline. I think this exercise was very helpful in having them learn how to identify the main points of an easy, and helps them understand how to write an essay themselves. They then moved on to a different essay printed out in a handout on fresh foods vs. canned foods. He had them look for the thesis statement and topic sentences again and unlike them, while also circling words about comparison. I thought this part was a little hard, because I wasn't really sure what words were considered comparison words. Ryan gave a few examples to the class, and then let them compare their answers with their same partners from before. After, he put up the essay on the projector with the sentences underlined and the comparison words circled, and the class went over it all together. I liked this activity as well and would definitely consider using it in a real writing class. I wanted to sit in on this class because I feel like my weakest lesson plan was writing, so I hoped watching this class would give me some insight to what I should do in the future, which it definitely did.