Date of Class: 10/10/2013
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Jacob
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Money
How Many Learners: 11
Score: 5 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 5 = 27
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Pretty standard class, except one moment when Ada came and gave me some forms to hand out. I let the students fill them out during class, which broke up the energy a little bit, but I was able to help out the non-Spanish speakers with the English sheet, and I used the form with the “this is an apple” game afterwards, to kind of seize an interesting moment.

I managed to make “this is an apple” go pretty well with a group that has probably mostly never seen it before. Fortunately I had a couple of higher level learners who were able to repeat the dialogue after me, and then correctly model it for the rest of the students.

I ended up with a table that had two or three learners that were getting things quicker than the entirety of the other table, so I originally had one student from that table stand up and help out the other table, like I would, but this kept happening… so I moved one higher level learner to the other table. I feel that if anyone from that lower level table doesn’t come back, it might be a result of my actions today. Only time will tell.

Date of Class: 10/17/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Jacob
SI: N/A
Assistants: Heather, Craig
Module: Money
How Many Learners: 12
Score: 3 + 7 + 7 + 6 + 7 + 6 = 36
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Yikes! I was totally on point with giving Craig feedback and directions, but I allowed Heather to slip my mind! When she showed up I had totally forgotten, and I forgot to warn Ada, but I think I managed to smooth it over in the end. I made up for it by making absolutely sure that they were involved with the learners and knew what to do.

Ada asked us to change rooms about 15 minutes into the class. We dealt with it, and I think I managed to get everyone situated in a timely fashion.

The class itself went really well. I was able to use my whiteboard to play a counting off game, by having people in turn count 1, 2, 3, and after people practiced once or twice, timing them and seeing how quickly they could do it. This never fails to produce energy and laughter.

I executed every other part of my lesson plan well, and had just enough time at the end to do some TPR by asking people to do the following: “slide your card,” “insert coins,” “pay with cash,” and “show your receipt.” This produced one of the best moments I’ve had so far; one of the learners, after repeating these actions over and over and ending the class, shouted “you have all my money now!!” I really did almost fall over laughing at that one.

Date of Class: 10/24/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Jacob
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Money
How Many Learners: 12
Score: 6 + 7 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 5 = 31
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

I brought tons of coins for the change game, which is always a hit. There’s usually a little hiccup, as there was tonight, because I’ll ask “What’s in your hand?” meaning I want them to tell me they have “3 quarters, 1 nickel and 2 pennies,” and there’s sometimes a disconnect at first where they say “82 cents” over and over and get frustrated, but this group figured it out pretty quickly and with only mild confusion.

We did some numbers practice (13 vs 30) by dictation and choral response, then we reviewed the different types of coins, and I produced some laughter by sending a dime and a quarter such that they would meet somewhere, and watched two Ss try to mediate one handing the other a quarter, and then the same person handing the other a dime.

Afterwards we did some TPR (insert coins, insert bills, slide your card, etc) and that was it.

Date of Class: 10/31/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Jacob
SI: N/A
Assistants: N/A
Module: Halloween and Language
How Many Learners: 7
Score: 3 + 6 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 5 = 30
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific):

Tuesday, I was asked to talk about Halloween, work it into the lesson. But, I was so fixated on a new activity that I wanted to try, that I totally forgot. I was asked to talk about it again today, so I ended up making that the majority of the lesson, but not all of it.

At first, there were only 3 Ss and myself. One Ss, N, speaks Vietnamese and does not know Spanish, and every other Ss in the class is primarily Spanish speaking. The Vietnamese Ss got to class early, and we had a 10 minute conversation that ended in us talking about child support. When the other two Spanish speaking Ss, F and C, sat down, they immediately started talking about something in Spanish, and N said “No! Stop speaking Spanish, I don’t understand! Speak English, this is an English class!”

F explained to her that, while he understood what N meant, it’s hard for him to hear something like that, because many native English speakers tell him he is not allowed to speak Spanish, only English. N said nobody had ever told her that directly, but that when she speaks Vietnamese where she works, to her family, she can see other people get nervous, and so she can only speak English.

I decided to turn this into a conversation about my use of Spanish in the classroom, which we all (myself included) agreed should not happen as much as it does.

I dictated a story, that went on way too long, about how I only got to trick or treat once and then was not allowed to again for the rest of my childhood. I ended with the phrase “I felt left out,” and linked that to the previous conversation about language. I wish I had told a different story, but I think this one worked.

I had 10 minutes left, so I asked everyone what they wanted to be for Halloween. Two people didn’t know (one doesn’t like costumes), one woman Ss wanted to be Spiderman, which everyone laughed at, and so I said “Hey, what if I wanted to be a princess?” A few people agreed that that was ok, so I was a princess and she was Spiderman. Everyone else had pretty normal choices. I turned it into a game where, after everyone had decided, I asked people if they could remember what everyone was, and it worked out pretty well. There was laughter.

I did a lot of things I’ve never done in a classroom before. I don’t know how well they worked, or if they worked at all. I liked the open discussion, but I fear that there were one or two Ss who were completely left out of the majority of the class, even though I tried to facilitate a little bit of interpretation to aid them.

Date of Class: 11/7/13
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Patrik
SI:
Assistants:
Module: Telephone Etiquette
How Many Learners: 8
Score: 6+4+6+6+5+5=32
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): Very nice class.. first time I met some folks in this community, but I met at least one before. One person brought her daughter and she really likes English, she is very proud “Because I’m good at it.” She helps her mom, it’s rad. The group was generally much more skilled than most community classes and really didn’t have much trouble with the dialogues and dictations I did, so we will step it up with more production and longer and more natural dialogues.

Date of Class: 11-21-2013
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Todd S.
SI:
Assistants:
Module: telephone etiquette
How Many Learners: 6
Score:
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): This class was more advanced than I had thought it would be, so I brought out a couple exercises from past classes. The exercises were more reading and writing based, and it made sense for this class. They seem to be much more interested in writing, and I liked that as a change of pace from the other site, where they like speaking practice much more. We did a basic sentence unscramble and then expanded off of that by having an S ask other S’s a question and the S’s answered in written form. The majority of the class was spent just from that one activity. Another activity was my favorite standby, the flyswatter game. I made it as challenging as I could and they definitely enjoyed it. At the very end of class the SUN organizer, who had been watching for a bit, came up to the class and showed them a pronunciation tip that I hadn’t thought of before, and it was useful for the class and me as well. Since she is a native spanish speaker she made it understandable and was quick about explaining it. Next class I will bring more challenging material for those who are more advanced.

Date of Class: 12-5-2013
Day of Class: Thursday
PI: Todd S.
SI:
Assistants:
Module: Holidays
How Many Learners: 3
Score:
What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): With 3 students at the last class of the term, I wanted to have an outline of what to talk about but let the students dictate the flow of where it would go. These students are so motivated (and pretty advanced) that I wanted to follow them, while leading at the same time if that makes sense. I did a dictation, which they wrote line by line, then we practiced the dialogue. Then we talked about certain parts of the dialogue and went further off of it. For example, they seemed confused about the present progressive and when that’s used, so we talked and practiced at length about it. They also, surprisingly to me, wanted to practice irregular verbs. This is usually something I’ll just throw in for 5 or 10 minutes each class, maybe 1 or 2 verbs, practicing but not writing. These students wanted to talk about verbs for much longer than I normally would, and they were very engaged. Overall I very much enjoyed their energy and eagerness, and I feel like they got something from the class-which is something I always question.