Tony C/O #1 - Dr. Ciappetta - Composition - Group 1/2

Date & Time: Monday 2/3, 9:00-9:50am

Topic/Skill: Composition

Teacher Presentation: Today's class was all activities. Dr. Ciappetta presented the interview questions and clarified any questions the students had.

Classroom Management: The class was very small (2 students). Dr. Ciappetta was able to answer questions as they came up.

Materials: Projector, laptops, shared Google doc to see students' responses and make corrections easily.

Student Participation: To start class, Dr. Ciappetta went straight into composition activities; she had the two students use pre-written interview questions to ask me basic information like my name, hometown, where I live, etc. I answered verbally, allowing them to practice listening and writing. I answered in the simple present "I go to bed" and they had to conjugate it in the third person "He goes to bed". Next, the students alternated stating their morning routines while the other wrote down their responses.  The following activity was similar to the first interview-style one, except the questions were focused on me and my wife. This allowed the students to practice conjugating the simple present from "we did ____" to "they did ____". The final activity was in the negative form- what does Tony NOT do every day? This gave them practice with negating words, as well as some more infrequently used vocabulary from my responses, e.g. I do not vacuum every day".

Feedback Provided: The professor let them focus on completing the activities before correcting mistakes. This is a beginner course, so she didn't want to overwhelm them with critiques while they were focused on forming simple sentences.

Lessons on teaching I learned: Timing of feedback is important depending on the level of learner the students are. While immediate feedback can help confident students identify correctable mistakes, beginner students would not benefit from immediate corrections as they still have much to learn and may frequently make mistakes.