I sat in on Ms. Ciappetta’s 9AM grammar class on
July 5th. Ms. Ciappetta was very friendly and immediately took an
interactive approach when she arrived to class. I sat at a small table apart
from the students initially, since I did not want to draw too much attention to
myself or disrupt the class in any way. Ms. Ciappetta began to play music and
dance at the front of the class, which made the students lighten up noticeably.
She then asked how everyone’s Fourth of July was. One man said that he had gone
to his friend’s newly opened restaurant, where they drank until they all passed
out. Most students either observed fireworks or stayed at home. I was invited
to sit with the students since Ms. Ciappetta wanted me to engage some of the
quieter students while she assisted others with questions about grammar. Before
starting a peer group activity, Ms. Ciappetta projected a list of sentences on
the board that were written incorrectly and had the students attempt to correct
the sentences, explaining for example, why the article “the” was not used in
the sentence: “It can focus on law problems.” She said this was because the
statement was a general one and there was no focus on a specific law. I wrote
this down since it is small things like this that I have difficulty explaining
when put on the spot. During exercises, I had some trouble remembering the
tenses off the top of my head and had to look through my notebook when asked a
question about the future continuous tense. Many of the students were shy to
speak up, even amongst each other, and I definitely felt how much pressure
teachers must feel since they have the responsibility to keep the conversation
going. Overall, it was a very positive experience and even the shyest of
students responded to the teacher’s positivity.
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