Sophie CO #2

My second class observation was also on the same Monday as my first, this time a Group 3A Listening class with Ryan Flemming. The content of this specific class day was on note taking skills, especially to prepare students for taking notes during their TOEFL or IELTS exams. Ryan started the class following up with some questions from over the weekend and from classes the week before, such as vocabulary and a quick summary of what previous lessons covered. One thing I really liked about how Ryan taught this class was that he kept an online dictionary open in a tab on the computer so that any time a student asked about a word, he could pull up the definition on the screen for students to look at. This is definitely something I want to remember for when I'm teaching my own lessons!

The beginning of the class covered note taking basics, such as listening for organization in lectures. Using a workbook as an example, Ryan explained methods for note taking in detail. Then he played a lecture recording (twice) while students took notes. He read along with them and made sure to take note of any words that might be confusing. After listening to the lecture twice, Ryan had one volunteer share their notes with the class, while other students added additional information the presenter might have missed. The class then listened to the recording one more time, to see if there was anything else that could be added. This was then repeated a second time with a different lecture.

The final portion of class was dedicated to listening to a longer, 11 minute lecture. The workbook students were using had a blank outline to be filled in while listening to the lecture, with some prompts and organization already there as guidelines. Ryan covered the organization of this outline in detail before playing the recording. During the lecture, which was on the surface of the moon, he pulled up a picture of the moon, drawing on it as if he was the one giving the lecture. Doing this gave some context to the lecture, and added a visual aspect to it as well. Time ran out just after the recording ended, so the plan for the next day of class was to listen to the recording one more time, and repeat the same process as with the shorter lectures.