Isabelle CO #3 with Dr. Felicia (Group 1/2 Listening)

 Date & Time: Thursday, January 30th, 2025, 2:00 PM - 2:50 PM

Topic/Skill: Listening Skills

Teacher Presentation: For today's class, Dr. Felicia prioritized individual work for the sake of the different group levels in her listening class. The students were given audio clips, and Group 1 students were asked to answer questions about the audio clips, whereas Group 2 students were asked to summarize the audio clips. The students worked independently on their devices for the entirety of the class period.

Classroom Management: Dr. Felicia managed the class by (1) assigning level-appropriate work for each student that catered to each of their needs, and (2) monitoring the students' work in real-time via the shared Google documents each student was performing their work on.

Materials: Devices for each student (provided by the students themselves), instructor's laptop, access to Google documents, audio files, headphones (for each student provided by the students themselves).

Student Participation: The students participated by listening to the audio clips given to them by Dr. Felicia and completed their respective assignments in class.

Feedback Provided: Dr. Felicia provided the students feedback by leaving comments on their work via the shared Google documents. She would leave comments consisting of positive or negative emojis for the Group 1 students, indicating if their work was good, bad, or needed revising. For the Group 2 students, she would often leave comments that included "This isn't correct YET," and would then give the students hints for the correct answer. This was productive for the students because it allowed them to think critically about their work instead of being fed the correct answers.

Lessons on teaching you learned: I learned a lot from Dr. Felicia's class! I learned that she grade's her students based on comprehension only, not on grammar, because she wants the students to be able to comprehend general ideas about what they're listening to instead of also worrying about grammar structures (she said that's what their grammar classes are for!). I also found it really interesting how Dr. Felicia said she rarely assigns homework for her students because they are ESL learners living in the host country of the language they are learning. She said she wants them to learn from their environments and the overall American culture(s) that surround them rather than focusing on completing homework assignments. I thought that this was such a great perspective on teaching/learning!