Camille-CO1

This past Wednesday, July 6th, I observed an Elementary level reading class taught by Maria Samuel. The class started at 11:00 am and by 11 students were still walking in. The class didn't officially begin until 11:05ish. The class consists of 8 male students. 6 were from Saudi Arabia and the other two were from Ivory Coast and Panama. Maria had me introduce myself to the class and explain the reason I was sitting in on the class. Then the students went around one by one and introduced themselves to me and explained why they wanted to learn English. It was interesting being able to find out the real reason behind each of the student's desire to learn the English language. I have found out that many of the students, especially those from Saudi Arabia, desire to learn the language because they are more likely to earn a job in their country knowing English. English is considered a universalizing language and it is extremely beneficial for students to learn the language. In the class, Maria wrote out the day's agenda which included a Quiz review and watching a movie entitled The Last of the Mohicans. Maria explained to me that the class consists of students coming from a multi-level background and are all strongly encouraged to read more outside of the class. During the quiz review, Maria used tactics such as relating jokes back to the students, calling on the students to read aloud and asking alot of direct questions in order to keep the students fully engaged. Even with these useful tactics, it was apparent that the students were not very interested, whether it was their boredom with the subject matter or some other aspect of the class. Whenever the students read out loud, Maria would stop the class and write the mispronounced word on the board and make the student repeat the word correctly at least 2 more times. I learned that in the Arabic language they do not have the letter "p" in their language so they confuse it with the letter "b" on a usual basis. Things like this are useful to learn when trying to teach a completely different language because some of the sounds and letters are completely foreign to the students. I will have to keep this in mind for when I teach. I also observed that Maria distributes a reading log to the students and they must fill it out every day for an entire week. This is a loose reading log with alot of leeway. The students filled in several different types of media from English television shows to newspaper articles to fill in their reading log. Yet, only one student actually completed the reading log and the rest of the students informed Maria that they will do it soon. Each of the students called Maria "Teacher" which I am not sure if it was her idea, or is it just how the students have adapted her role into a title. Regardless, the class observation was extremely informative and I cannot wait to observe again!