Stephanie CO #3

Today I observed Ryan Flemming’s 1A Grammar class and I’m very glad I did. I had tutored a 1A student before I had ever seen how they are taught, so this class observation was eye-opening for me. Mr. Flemming began with a plan on the board for the day, and I was able to see his speech rate for this level which was very slow and clear. He started off with a cartoon picture of a bunch of people on a beach. Mr. Flemming would point to someone who was sitting and say “He is dancing,” and the class would respond “No, he isn’t dancing. He is sitting.” This was a great way to get students to speak out loud and practice use of gerunds and action verbs. Throughout this activity, new vocabulary words came up. Mr. Flemming would say “she is holding a shovel,” and the class would ask “what’s a shovel?” He would then pull up a photo on google images of a shovel and say “this is a shovel. It can be a big shovel, it can be a small shovel, it can be a toy shovel.” I thought this was an incredibly effective teaching method and I will definitely use it while tutoring my 1A student, Abdulhadi. When a student would use a wrong verb tense or miss an article when speaking, Mr. Flemming would go “hmmm, I don’t understand,” and it would encourage students to reconsider what they said, and correct themselves. Every single time, the student was able to figure it out themselves which I found very impressive. Another notable thing was when a student would say “he is not dancing,” Mr. Flemming would ask “how would you combine “is” and “not?” and then the student would say “he isn’t dancing.” I thought his way of reminding students to use contractions was a great way to help their speech sound more natural.