Date of Class: 11/21/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Jacob
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Telephone Etiquette
How Many Learners: 4
Score: 29
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

This is a tough group for me. It’s fun, because A and M are so high level and eager to learn, but T’s very low level and sometimes poor attitude drags things down. I’m trying to work on “cheerleading,” getting others to help her out, and generally make the class flow, but it’s a challenge.

That said, the class itself went well. We talked about Thanksgiving, practiced some telephone dialogues, and a couple students said they would bring some food to the last class. Looking forward to that!

Date of Class: 11/7/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Jacob
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Telephone Etiquette
How Many Learners: 5
Score: 6 + 6 + 7 + 6 + 6 + 5 = 35
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

What a nice change of pace! I really enjoyed working with this smaller, diverse group. I probably should have moved some people around – and used one of the rectangular tables as opposed to the round table – but it came together okay.

3 people, two mid and one lower level, came around 6:05, so we did some very simple dictation, and this was timed perfectly to a couple who came in at 6:30, thinking that was when the class started, and we went in to some higher level dictation, which they were more than happy to help the others with.

After that, I dictated a simple dialogue where you would call a school secretary and ask for their address. After dictating the whole thing, we practiced it as a group, then I asked one of the learners if I could call her, and I left the room and did so. It went perfectly! Unfortunately, we only had time for one more repetition of that, so I had her leave the room and call me, and do the same thing, and it went super smooth.

Date of Class: 10/17/2013
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Todd S.
SI: none
Assistants: none
Module: money
How Many Learners: 11
Score:
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): Nice start to this site as we had 11 students and a good mix of foreign language speaker-even Mixteco! Nice big room, lots of markers (!) with a big whiteboard, and Mario (the coordinator) is eager to help us out. I mainly did introductory activities to get to know each other, plus some intro to money terms and a short game to end. Some pointers for this site-call Mario at 503-888-3582 when you arrive because the school will be locked; end the class at 7:15 because they want the school cleared by 7:30 (no later!); attendance sheets are on the shelf to the left of the whiteboard.

Date of Class: 11/18/13
Day of Class: Monday
PI: Sheila G
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Talkin’ To The Boss
How Many Learners: 10
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

For the last class of the Fall term, started with your basic Alpha L&P until everyone arrived. Then did a review of the many things we’ve covered since this Fall term began (contractions, favorite phrases to use at work, catching the bus, directions, TPR with N-S-E-W, turn right, go left past the first desk, etc.) Ss retained more of the older information than the newer, perhaps because we’ve been using it periodically over time. Made special effort to interact with H, one of the LLLs, and quickly modeled down a couple of times to her to give her practice and sort of shine. I brought chocolate truffles from TJs to share with the class. I kept offering them chocolates and there was a lot of laughter and good vibe. I will miss this bunch.

Date of Class: 11/6/13
Day of Class: Wednesday
PI: Sheila G
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Talkin’ To The Boss
How Many Learners: 10 (+ 2 calm boys)
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Started with a brief AL&P and by the time we were done, everyone had arrived. Things went smoothly with attendance so I think I’ve hit a groove.

I started the Y&S asking for the names of people’s streets. I modeled mine and we went from there. In the middle of doing this, C. said she was confused as to why one street was pronounced one way but spelled another. She gave a couple of examples from last week and a couple of other people started a conversation in Spanish about how this was a difficulty with English, etc., so I decided to address it. I explained to her how specific things were pronounced but that I didn’t know why. Someone else asked another related question and before you know it, that’s what we were talking about – pronunciations and spellings, etc. They had a bundle of questions like this so I answered them and invited more. A lot of the class was spent doing this. Then it naturally moved to an activity generating vocabulary and then another one related to opposites. I did quite a bit of sharing by answering their questions, but tried not to over-explain – just get to the answers as quickly as possible and show them examples.

I included in my lesson plan some time to ask them at the end of the class what they wanted to learn in English class and they said “more of this”. I asked them about specific topics and they said things like talking with the boss is great, and also someone wanted vocabulary and practice for selling her car (C.’s moving back to Mexico. :( ). I told them I would continue on with the topic at hand and talk about the other as well next Wednesday. No class on Monday due to holiday.

This seemed to be a good, solid class – there was laughter and everyone except Am. seemed to be engaged most of the time. (Am. is a higher level learner and she just wasn’t participating very much at all tonight. She sat with her hands folded across her chest with her hood up over her head most of the class and when she did answer, she was almost whispering. I asked her if she was okay or if she needed anything, and she said she was fine. I wonder if maybe she was having some kind of upset between her and her husband who comes with her??). It was nice to just connect with everyone in a sort of calm mode and give them directly what they wanted. This group seems to have some very specific questions about general stuff so I am going to try to include 10 or 15 minutes in each class to ask them what’s working, what isn’t, time for questions, etc.

Date of Class: 10/30/13
Day of Class: Wednesday
PI: Sheila G
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Talkin’ To The Boss
How Many Learners: 14 (+ 2 daredevil boys)
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Alpha L&S went pretty nicely tonight and really played its part well – this group does like to straggle in. There are usually only 3 there at 6pm but by 6:15, usually everybody who’s going to show up has shown up. Then we did Y&S all the way around the tables.

Next, I dictated some things people might want or need (a car, a new job, a day off, vacation) and then “what do you want” and “what do you need”. Then I went around the room asking people the question and they’d answer in complete sentences. Some people gave different answers (a new boyfriend, food because I’m hungry, more English classes). Then I asked someone to go around the room saying what each person wanted (I want a new car, F. wants a new job, C. wants more English classes, etc.) This took some time and people were sort of panicked about doing it because they hadn’t been listening (more on this later) so I asked for one person to volunteer to do it and P. stepped up and did it with everyone’s help and she’s a card so there was a lot of laughter during this.

Then I moved on to Do You/Can You/Have You. I dictated sentences like “are you 100 years old” and “have you gone to the store today” then dictated the answers (no, I’m not / yes, I am / no, I haven’t / yes, I have). For each form, I went around the room asking different questions (are you a fish, are you a painter, are you hungry) and each person answered. Then we each took turns asking questions of our neighbor and eliciting responses.

Finally, I dictated the first 2 lines of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” and then we practiced saying them with different accents on the words, and then sang it.

The class had laughter and people were engaged while they were writing, speaking or listening to me. What I’m finding is I’m losing people to small conversations when we’re going around the room if the phrase we’re practicing is too difficult or too long or I have to coach on pronunciation too many times in a row (you versus joo, e.g.). It also happens when I’ve dictated something and I’m going around the tables tending to people individually. To combat the last point, I’ve taken to splitting up that “tending” effort. For one phrase, I’ll go and spend time on one side of the room, and then go up to the board and write the phrase down so that everyone gets it correctly. Then for the next phrase, I’ll do the same thing but focus my efforts on the opposite side of the room.

I spoke with Patrik after class and mentioned some of this and I’m going to get some suggestions from him during office hours. But in the middle of the night I woke up thinking “small groups”! What does this mean? Well, use more activities that will lend themselves to breaking the Ss up into 2, 3 or 4 small groups. (Duh!) This particular strategy won’t stop losing people when the large group is in play, but I think it will lessen the number of times it occurs in a class. I still seek other suggestions so if anyone has any, thanks in advance for sharing!

Date of Class: 10/23/13
Day of Class: Wednesday
PI: Sheila G
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: At the Doctor
How Many Learners: 17
Score: 31
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Well, it was another busy class at Hall. After 2 weeks, I’m heartened that attendance hasn’t fallen (although it doesn’t necessarily mean anything), but I feel like I have to up the stakes and bring in punch and cookies or something just in case!

We started off with alpha listen & point – most Ss were there but not all – and then we moved to going around the room saying everyone’s names. By the time we were done, everyone had arrived.

Then we did some TPR with phrases like point to your nose, stare straight ahead, roll up your sleeve, cough, etc. We repeated those phrases a lot and went around the room on some of them. Then I asked the Ss to sit down and I shouted out each phrase and they wrote them down. This took some time.

Next we tried Tell Your Own Story. I asked one person in the group to tell me a story with 4 or 5 sentences in Spanish (since all Ss are Spanish speakers). I wrote down her story in Spanish on the board, and I practiced saying it. I was wondering how this activity would work and the Ss seemed interested in helping me speak and write better so that was cool. Then we went through and translated the story into English and they wrote it down line by line: “What did I do when I had a headache? I went to the doctor. He gave me some Tylenol but it didn’t help much. I made another appointment.” While seemingly a simple story, they had some trouble with words like “but”, “another”, and “appointment”. This whole activity took longer than I expected so we only had about 20 minutes left for The Skeleton Dance song. There were 2 new people there so I had to review and write down what we did last week. Then we sang it and moved on to the next 2 verses, writing, pronouncing, singing. And then we ran out of time. Most in the class wanted to stay a few minutes later to finish up the last sentence of the last verse we did tonight and we did so, but then someone mentioned that apparently we were supposed to be out of there right on time so we disbanded and I’ll pick it up again next week.

Class started just about 10 minutes late as I got stuck behind an accident on Stark. I didn’t even have time to get the box out of the SUN office so I passed around a blank sheet of paper and used it as an attendance sheet and at the end of class made sure everyone had signed it, and made a copy of it with a notation that the loyalty cards were not filled out for tonight. I will make sure they’re done next Monday for tonight’s class.

I felt there were some times when there was some distance and lag. By the time I arrived, the Ss had arranged the table but they put them in a different arrangement than I normally use. I thought I’d try it but I don’t really like it a lot – 4 library tables shoved together lengthwise; it was like a very long conference table. It held 16 people and 3 kids quite nicely but I will continue to “square” the tables as it’s more like a circle.

Ss were generally engaged and laughing, etc., but sometimes they broke into a couple of small groups to speak with each other. On the one hand, that’s not bad because they weren’t aimlessly looking around or acting bored and they were talking with each other about the meanings or the spellings, etc., and I was able to bring them right back with “ready”. But on that other hand, it happened just once or twice too many times so I felt like I was losing them too regularly – maybe not for too long, but still too regularly. I’m going to see if I can figure out another way to do dictation with only on person and a group that size. I’m also going to get to include document searches. I haven’t included any of those thus far at Hall as I haven’t had a printer but I arranged with Laura tonight to email her documents and she’ll print them out for me. Problem solved – ching! ;)

Date of Class: 10/16/13
Day of Class: Wednesday
PI: Sheila G
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: At the Doctor
How Many Learners: 16
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

16 Ss and 7 kids – it was a wild bunch! First we did alpha listen & point until finally everyone had arrived. I had put the loyalty cards that had been filled out on Monday in the middle of the table configuration and periodically asked people to pull theirs from the pile and hold onto it until the end of class. I collected them at the end of class. There was still some confusion about where to put the dates on the cards and first versus last names, etc. It took more time than I’m used to put the attendance together (was Maria Candelaria “Maria” or “Candy”?). I’ll be trying to do something a little differently next week, just don’t know what yet.

Next we went around the room saying “my name is…, her name is…, his name is…” With a big group this took quite a little bit of time and some people were intimidated by so many names to remember (as was I). At the end, I told them it was my turn to go all the way around the room and say everyone’s names with no help and I did it and they were impressed and applauded and laughed!

Next we moved to dictation/singing “The Skeleton Dance”. People really do love songs. Some people were quiet and not too animated when singing but I kept pushing little by little and I swung my arms wildly around to conduct and they started to swing their arms around, too. We broke the song down during dictation and practiced saying the words. After we finished the chorus, I asked everyone to stand up and I modeled how to sing the chorus, and then they did it as a group. Then I split the group up in halves and we did a little competition. Then they sat down again and I dictated the first verse of the song. We practiced speaking the lines and then they stood up again and I modeled the verse and conducted, then they sang the verse and swung arms. Then we all did the same thing but this time with the chorus and the verse together. We sang this all together 4 times, then I split the group in halves again and we had another competition. I got to use 3 of the kids as “props” (toe bone connected to the foot bone…) – they enjoyed it! Then class was over. I told the Ss we’d finish the song next Wednesday so they can have it for Halloween. They were singing the song as they walked out of the library.

I will say I’m going to have to hold on tight with this group if it (hopefully) stays this size. It’s a real challenge working with a group this size with no SI or assistant. I did have access to a whiteboard so I wrote some things down and checked on one side of the room and the next time wrote something else down and checked the other side of the room. There’s at least one person who’s sort of high level in speaking and writing and she’s very willing to help people so I’ll watch her a little more and I think I might ask her to ambulate for an activity and see how that works.

Good, solid class – lots of laughing and discussion and helping each other – it seems like some are more comfortable with giving and receiving help than they were even on Monday. Great group!