Catherine_CO_#3

Today I sat in on Josh's Group 3 Speaking class. This was definitely my favorite class to sit in on so far. As always the agenda was written on the board. His said: scripts, timed speaking, practice. He began the class by talking about the American idiom "on the house". He asked for a student to explain, he explained a little more and then gave a few examples. He then asked many different students to give some examples and to use it in a sentence/scenario. I was surprised at what they came up with, they were really good and even had a few I wouldn't have thought of on my own. I thought this was a really cool way to start the class and a good schema building activity that also got the students speaking. Next, Josh handed out scripts for the video they are all working on. He explained to me that they've been working on this video and each has their own script that they wrote and he edited. My CP Jack is doing the filming, and I worked with my TP Dalal on her script last week so I kind of already had a good idea about what was going on. Josh had the classroom set up into long tables so everyone was sitting across from each other. They kept joking that it was set up like speed dating, but I think it worked really well. The students were partnered with the person across from them, and they had to practice their scripts. They were mostly working on pronunciation of words. I walked around to listen and help anyone I could, and I helped a student with his pronunciation of "comfortable". A few students around us also helped him, which was better than me helping. He laughed and said the word comfortable was making him uncomfortable. They switched partners a few times to have a different person critiquing them, and I helped a girl who was a little behind to finish up writing her script. Josh had them take a break from scripts and asked them to describe to their partners how to get to a restaurant that the partner has never been to and what the restaurant is like. They did this for a minute or two and then went back to the scripts. They went up one at a time in order of how it would be filmed and read out loud, or just spoke like the two or three students who had memorized theirs already. Some were very nervous and just read, but others were really good and didn't have too heavy of an accent. I was very impressed with what they had all written, it was mostly about their experiences in America and at CIES. Josh went last and the students all critiqued him, saying things like how he needed to organize his ideas better, which was true and very funny. He told them that for homework they needed to try to memorize their scripts and practice saying it out loud because they would begin filming tomorrow. Josh ended class with going over a timed speaking activity in the book that they would work on doing tomorrow. Overall, I think I benefitted from sitting in on this class a lot. Josh was very friendly and helpful in explaining what was going on to me, and pulled me aside to talk to me about why he chose some of the activities he did for this group level and it was really helpful for me when I plan my speaking lessons.