For my third and final classroom observation I observed a
Group 2A Reading class taught by Victoria Davis. This was a Friday class, so
its duration was about an hour and a half instead of the usual 50-minute
period. Like Ms. Warmka, Ms. Davis wrote the day’s agenda on the board before
beginning class. The class started off
with students taking turns reading aloud from the most recent CIES Noles News,
with occasional breaks from reading to have casual conversation between teacher
and students about the topic of the handout, the 4th of July and how
it is celebrated in the US. Ms. Davis also paused the class after students had
read a segment in order to ask comprehension questions and explain grammar
concepts the students were having trouble grasping. The next part of class
entailed reading a Penguin Readers version of The Mummy, with text simplified for English learners (L2:
Elementary). As this was a much longer text, Ms. Davis did most of the reading
aloud herself, speaking slowly enough for the students to follow along. As
before, she often paused to check for comprehension and ask for feedback on her
reading pace.
I also observed this class, just on a different day. Ms. Davis explained to me after class that during their reading of The Mummy, she read it out loud because those were the rules. Apparently, even for upper level reading courses, the teacher is to read those texts so that the students can hear and recognize tone and certain subtitles in pronunciation. I thought this was pretty interesting.
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