Date of Class: 12/10/13
Day of Class: Tuesday
PI: Patrik
SI:
Assistants:
Module: Happy Holidays
How Many Learners: 5
Score:4+6+7+7+5+5=34
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): I can really see development here. Everyone is showing improvement, and especially when we do the Let it snow, song again, it’s definitely familiar, and folks are really interested. One learner came in singing the song – and he also asked at the end if I would make sure to call him when we restarted classes. I was a little tired and I admit, it gets to me a little bit when I wear a little thin, and I start to push them a little too hard.. but the connection and trust is there. I tried something new – an evolution of Yell and Spell – here, they spell their name fast with reduced articulation of letters (e.g., Lola = el-oh-el-ay, spoken quickly). This proves to be very difficult, and it made me realize there are some articulatory patterns that are very difficult for people – they can say the letters individually, but slurring them together is challenging – and, I think, very, very useful. Definitely going to explore that more!

Date of Class:12/3/13
Day of Class:Tuesday
PI:Brooke
SI:
Assistants:
Module:Happy Holidays
How Many Learners:4
Score:
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):
Pretty average class with a holiday twist. Started with our usual alphabet and yell n spell then did a listen/find using the scorecard. Since we were talking about holidays and their corresponding dates, we veered away from the plan a bit to practice ordinals.. but not for long. We practiced some vocabulary related to Christmas using some images that I brought in to use. GOt a lot of good pronunciation practice in here too. With not a ton of time left, we did some writing/question asking with the phrase ‘what do you want for Christmas?’ I was hoping to move away from material objects with this one but due to time, I kept it simple. Ended with a fun TPR and talked a little about end of term dates and such. Fun group!

Date of Class: 11/12/13
Day of Class: Tuesday
PI: Patrik
SI:
Assistants:
Module: Soccer
How Many Learners: 5
Score:
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): I blew it on this one.. I’m more than two weeks late posting! Dangit. Very low score for reflection. All I can remember is that one learner who often comes wasn’t there, and we did some listen and do with kick, throw, duck, that was pretty fun.

Date of Class: 11/14/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Patrik
SI:
Assistants:
Module: Telephone Etiquette
How Many Learners: 3
Score: 4+4+5+5+4+3=25
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): Small group, and we had an ok time. One learner is sort of starting to get a little irritating for the others because he’s always looking back over his notes, and he needs to let go a little to move on. I really like the answering machine IVR menu map.

Date of Class:11/7/13
Day of Class:Thursday
PI:Brooke
SI:
Assistants:
Module:Telephone Etiquette
How Many Learners:5
Score:36
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):
Well I had an array of activities planned as this was the first time I had taught this theme. It was fun! We started off with the usual alphabet and yell n spell then I went into a phone number dictation, which proved to be extremely useful, they all needed the practice! 4 of the 5 learners were pretty low level so I kept it pretty simple.. we practiced a short dialogue with ‘whats your phone number?’ My phone number is… and then ‘Can you please repeat that?” They loved it. There was a lot of Spanish happening, which would have been fine if there weren’t a Russian speaker there so I had to sort of reign in the Spanish speakers several times- but most of the conversation was related to the class and they were helping each other with translations. After the numbers, we did a sort of longer dictation/ dialogue that was an example of an informal voicemail.. it was definitely challenging and took a while but I think it went pretty well and they got a ton of speaking practice. We didn’t have a ton of time left but I really wanted to try having them listen to a voicemail recording that I found online. It was definitely pretty long so we didn’t get through much of it at all but it was cool to try out something new.. ended with a fun TPR and they all left with smiles :)

Date of Class: 10/29/13
Day of Class:Tuesday
PI:Brooke
SI:
Assistants:
Module:Soccer
How Many Learners:5
Score:
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Though I wasn’t too excited about doing the soccer module, it actually went pretty well. I realized (was reminded) pretty quickly that it doesn’t really matter what the topic is, it’s all good language practice as long as you facilitate it in an engaging way. We started with the typical alphabet and yell and spell. Learner I, who has really low speaking skills, was totally helping out 2 of the other learners during these activities, and even throughout the class. It was amazing to see! And she felt so proud about it too :) We did some dictation related to favorite sports, do you play any sports, have you ever played soccer, etc.. I was a little worried about introducing the grammar structure of ‘have you ever’ but I think everyone was at least somewhat clear on the meaning. After just 3 dictations- which were also used to practice speaking/pronunciation- we only had about 30 minutes left so we switched to a listen/find activity and ended with a TPR. I decided to first dictate the verbs and then we practiced them. Overall, pretty great class!

Date of Class: 10.22.13
Day of Class:Tues
PI:Brooke
SI:
Assistants:
Module:Maps/Addresses
How Many Learners:4
Score:32
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): Two learners showed up about 15 minutes early and it seems like they came to class together. After I finished getting set up, we had a few minutes to chat. One of the first things they asked was, essentially, where Patrik was. I had to explain to them in Spanish – due to their low levels- why he wasn’t there and then as soon as they knew I could speak some Spanish, they became very chatty…which was fine since it was before class started and it was good practice for me!
Then M came in, who is pretty advanced. We started right on time with the alphabet which was a great warm up for this particular group. We did names, and then worked with some cardinal then ordinal numbers. During that activity, it became clear that 2/3 of them were having trouble with minimal pairs so we took a few minutes to practice listening/pronunciation with that… they were definitely appreciative of it :)
We moved on to some address dictation/pronunciation and with about 30 minutes to spare, our 4th learner came in. We stopped to greet him and he jumped right in. Didn’t get to using the actual maps today but overall it was a great class!

Date of Class: 10/15/13
Day of Class: Tuesday
PI: Patrik
SI:
Assistants:
Module: Maps & Addresses
How Many Learners: 1
Score: 3+6+7+7+6+4 = 33
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): Only one came, but she was a repeat from last Tuesday. And it was kind of awesome. It appeared to make her a little nervous to be alone, but once we got into it, we really dug into the ordinals on the roads.. it’s like, this was all her first time being exposed to it, but she really started catching on. So, I got high scores for engagement and connection, even though I didn’t plan at all.