For my first class observation, I observed a Grammar class taught by Professor Olivia James. Initially, there was a new student to the class, and she asked him a few questions, such as what country and city he was from. Professor James then gave a brief explanation on the present continuous tense, the topic of that class, and wrote a few example sentences on the board. She spoke about the different parts of speech, and asked the students for example verbs in creating sentences. After she had given a brief and effective explanation, the class went outside for an activity.
The activity Professor James chose involved the students splitting up into groups, standing outside the CIES house, and observing what was happening outside. It was a competition between the groups to see who could score the most points. Students were asked to create sentences using the present continuous tense to describe what they saw outside, and to include any descriptive language like adverbs or adjectives to gain extra points. I assisted with group one, and they were very enthusiastic about creating sentences. When they had questions about a word, or where a words work grammatically, I always tried to invoke their inquisitiveness to see if they could figure it out for themselves. This activity lasted about 20 minutes.
After the activity, the professor tallied up all the points accumulated by all the groups' sentences. In the end, group three earned the most points, with my group unfortunately coming in third place. I guess I have some more work to do in helping my students in the future! I really enjoyed this activity, because not only did it make grammar entertaining by transforming it into a competition, but I actually saw eagerness within the students to create meaningful and descriptive sentences. I will utilize this method in my future lessons.
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