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Erin Garvey TESOL Certification - Observation Hours Winter Quarter 2012

Observation Day 1 - Friday, January 13, 2012 After some initial back-and-forth between Kathy Larson, the instructor whom Ill be observing, and me, I attended her high-intermediate reading class today for the first (of what will probably be six or seven) times. We met prior to class, for about 10 minutes, to fill me in on what she would be covering that day as well as general logistical information. Kathy structured her 90-minute reading class well. The first few minutes she spent engaging her students in non-threatening, class-wide conversation about the first major snow that just happened the day before. She was asking/teasing students about if they had played in the snow and if they had ever seen snow of that magnitude before, either in their home countries or elsewhere they had visited. Most students had seen snow before, but some commented that they far preferred the snow they had seen in the movies to the actual stuff they had to wade through today. Kathys class is pretty small, or at least it seemed to be today. I counted ten students, comprised of six women and four men, all probably in their twenties-early thirties. It seemed like there were some Saudi students, some students from Indonesia and Korea (I think), and some from South America. I think I caught that there were about 3 or 4 students absent today, too. Most of the classtime was spent going over the students homework, which was a worksheet about figuring out words meanings from context, alone, and not from perusing a dictionary. Many students admitted (after Kathys insistence) that they did, in fact, resort to consulting their dictionary, but the majority tried to deduce meanings on their own. Kathy had the students work in pairs, with students who speak different languages, to go over and compare answers from the first part of the worksheet, and then reconvened the class. In her large group discussion, Kathy brought up great grammatical clues that are helpful for deducing meaning: things like looking at word stems (prefixes, suffixes), word endings (-s, -er) to determine if a word is a noun or adjective, and grammatical concepts such as intransitive and transitive verbs. She stressed that the students should begin to feel that they are smarter than they realize because they are able to construct a words meaning from sentence and grammatical clues, as well as their own life experiences (where applicable), and that referring to a dictionary is not always necessary (or practical). Kathy then had the students flip the worksheet over and went through the remaining exercises as a large group. From my vantage point, the students all seemed to be following her, and there were a few in particular who were especially participatory in the discussion (even interrupting her at times). The last fifteen minutes of class Kathy spent talking about the students reading log assignments. She gave a sample of the one that she had written, and many of her students seemed to appreciate having a guide to follow. She had to reiterate and repeat several times that she still expected students to find their own articles--and not just use hers. She explained that she would be collecting students reading logs each Tuesday (her class meets TWF) and the parameters of the assignment: that students should find an article from a publication like the WSJ, NYT, Trib, RedEye, DePaulia, Time Out Chicago (and the like)--an article that should be slightly challenging for them but not impossible--and then complete the reading log assignment. They have to write down words in the article they dont know and then use context to help construct meaning, and only after they deduce meaning themselves are they to consult the dictionary and provide another sentence example. They are also to write a short summary and a short response to the article, too. All told, Kathys class flew by, and she wasted no time in getting started. She began talking as soon as she entered the room, and she finished maybe even a few minutes past 12:15. She seemed to be extremely comfortable in front of her students, acting out various situations, re-wording and re-phrasing

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when needed, and nothing felt contrived or dumbed down (at least to me). I thought it was also helpful that she paid attention to the details that, while details, matter in L2 learning environments--things like rearranging the classroom to a more conducive discussion atmosphere (a semi-circle), employing multiple intelligences to make a point (re-phrasing and reiterating, body motion and movement, using transparencies), and asking students to work in both small groups and a larger, class-wide setting, in addition to her floating from group-to-group to field questions and provide clarification. The bookclub doesnt start until next week, and Kathy had a faculty meeting after class, so we didnt have a chance to discuss her class experience today. She also suggested that I begin the conversation partner aspect of my TESOL hours after the book club next week, as she expects that it will be a natural segue for the students, perhaps to even continue the discussion(s) they had at the book club meeting. Right now, shes uncertain if her students would be ready for the book club (because they are on the lower end of high intermediate), so it might work out instead that I hook up with book club participants for conversation partners and not her students. Well see; well work out the details next week. Time spent with Kathy pre-class: 10 minutes Time spent observing class: 90 minutes

Observation Day 2 - Friday, January 20, 2012 Earlier in the week, Kathy alerted me that the first part of her class would be devoted to her students taking a quiz/exam. I elected to still observe the class--since tests are part of the teaching experience, right?--and it took most students the full 45 minutes to complete the double-sided test that included what looked like some short answers, context analysis, and article reading. I so very much remember how nerve-wracking it was to take an exam in a foreign language and not be allowed to use a dictionary--instead, just relying on sentence and context clues--so in many ways, my heart totally goes out to these students. Very few students, maybe only one or two, approached Kathy for clarification during the exam, and if memory serves, only the men did. Prior to the test, though, Kathy did a short vocabulary review of words that appeared on the exam, presumably in order to ensure that the students knew that they, in fact, knew these words and could thus respond appropriately/correctly. Thats a theme that Kathy often tells her students--that they know more than they think they know--which, again, can be really unnerving when studying a foreign language. The words she reviewed included extinction/to be extinct, endangerment/to be endangered, to be on the verge of, diversity/to be diverse, to swallow up/to be swallowed up by (and with the important distinctions between swallowed and swallowed up), and to suppress/to be suppressed by. Following the vocabulary review and skills quiz, in the remaining thirty minutes of class, Kathy gave some general comments and feedback regarding the students reading logs that they had submitted earlier in the week. She assured them that they were all good and reminded them that they were due each Monday; she often told them as a class, and then later, me privately, that some of the students doubt their abilities and elected to use really short, one-paragraph blurbs from publications like the RedEye instead of fuller, longer, more challenging texts. I also thought it was really interesting--and if nothing else, showed how committed and engaged Kathy is to her students learning--that on many of her students work, she left them questions for follow-up about the articles. Ive always had teachers do that--ask for more information, implore me to investigate more fully, that sort of thing--but Kathy made it a point to tell her

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students that she actually wants them to write their answers to her questions on sticky notes and affix them to their papers in their reading folders. This dialogic, back-and-forth conversation between Kathy and her students surely gives them additional learning opportunities and ways to practice their English and individually engage with their instructor--all of which is great, particularly for the students who arent as talkative in class. The last fifteen minutes of class Kathy spent reviewing more vocabulary with her students in advance of their vocabulary test on Tuesday. She encouraged them, again, to identify the parts of speech first before trying to decipher meaning or which word/words belong in a sentence, particularly because, as she has shown them, you can derive some words meanings from grammatical structure along and tell whether/where it belongs in the statement. After class, Kathy and I touched base for approximately fifteen minutes, talking about what I had observed that day, how some students participate more or less than others--and if thats a gender- or cultural-based thing--and the logistics of the bookclub and conversation partner. She encouraged me to try to hook-up with Michelle (sp?), a woman from Saudi Arabia, since she is among the higher readers in class and will be participating in the book club that afternoon. Book club was awesome. There were many students there--at least twenty, a good mix of men and women, predominately Asian students--and some sounded like they had participad in it in the fall. The group was led by Jasmine, a woman named Laurie from the UCWBL, and an ELL student (I think). After Laurie laid the groundwork for the quarters book, The Hunger Games, we watched the movie trailer as a large group, read the first few pages aloud, and then broke into smaller groups to talk about the text in more detail and, as it was for my group, about reading and literature in general. Having started two book clubs before at previous employers, I felt right at home and am excited to have some pleasure reading this quarter amidst the boatloads of schoolwork. Michelle was in my group, and after class, Kathy approached us and asked if Michelle would want to be a conversation partner with me. She agreed to right away, and we both decided to start next week, and in the process, we learned that we live in the same condo building--she in B building on the 18th floor and me in A on the 11th (small world)! Im looking forward to beginning our conversations next week. All in all, it was a really productive and enjoyable day observing for TESOL. I remain impressed by Kathy and the ELL students. Time spent observing class: 90 minutes Time spent with Kathy post-class: 15 minutes Time spent in Book Club: 75 minutes Time spent w/convo partner: 0 minutes (to begin 1/27) Observation Day 3 - Friday, January 27, 2012 Today's observation day was more interactive than last Friday's, simply because the students weren't taking a quiz for most of the time. Unfortunately, this was also the day where I managed to bring the wrong folder to school and leave the ELA textbook at home, so I felt a bit underprepared to fully participate in what was going on in class. Kathy began class by saying TGIF and elicited feedback as to what students thought that meant and why (or how) Americans use that expression. Afterward, she returned students' reading logs that they had submitted on Monday and gave general feedback on the students' work-- mostly praising it. She also noted that beginning the week of January 30, students would

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be expected to also supply their own sentence with the new words they find from their articles, no longer just supplying the dictionary definition and sentence. After the discussion of the reading logs, the students split into small groups to compare answers from their textbook reading about the e-factor (emotional happiness, unit 2). Each group was assigned to go over different aspects or sections of the homework, to compare answers among group members, and then to write their answers on a transparency in front of the class, who would discuss any discrepancies they had with their answers. In the plenary class discussion, Kathy guided conversations about the contested answers and helped to clarify things that were tripping up the class, such as suggest in academic discourse having a different meaning than suggest in everyday parlance. She also talked about the different functions of each type of word (adjective, adverb, etc.) and discussed word suffixes and collocations, a concept I had learned but since forgotten since last winter's linguistics class. While the students were working in their small groups, I peeked at Kathy's textbook copy to see the types of questions students had to answer. Some were reading comprehension, but others were a bit more complicated, such as discerning which word (usually an antonym) didn't belong in a group of words. While the students were working, Kathy and I talked about how the ELA is set up, which was enlightening to me. I learned that there are basically three different levels of passing within the ELA, and then a fail grade, but they don't use the A-F scale that DePaul uses. She said that the end result of ELA is a university bridge certificate, which would basically confer onto the ELA students admittance into DePaul, but she said that this is highly coveted and fewer than 10, maybe fewer than 6, ELA students earn this each term. Instead, most students are here on scholarship for a few months or a year and then return home to their studies or work (or, in some cases, continue study here in the US). Specifically in the context of of her H-I reading class, some students may end up having to retake it, simply because the jump between the lower class and her H-I is so high, particularly when considering how much vocabulary and reading and analysis is involved in her H-I class. To that extent, she said that her first reading quiz was really challenging for her studentsand for the other H-I ELA students in other classesand that many students (if not most) did quite poorly on it, typically in the 60s. She remarked that one of her students wrote on her sticky-note in her reading log a message to Kathy, asking Why is your grading so 'serious'? which Kathy is interpreting as meaning why are you grading so strictly? Like any teacher, she wants to challenge them to not only put the work and effort in but also to try their hardest to be successfulwhich can be tough in a class like H-I reading. After the student work groups completed their exercises with the class, Kathy collected their homework (with the students' corrections on them) for credit and informed students that their Monday class would be going on a scavenger hunt at the Harold Washington Library at State/Van Buren. Today's class was really interesting, especially once Kathy and I talked about the grading structure and the passage rate of the ELA students. I think it would have been helpful to know this before I began my field observations, but regardless, it is helpful information to know. Book Club meeting #2 I love book clubsand in fact, have started them at my first two full-time jobsso I was thrilled to be able to partake in the ELA/UCBWL book club for The Hunger Games. Unfortunately, my schedule precluded me from reading today's assigned sections (I hate it when others do that, so this was frustrating to me!), but I still came to the meeting and observed and participated. Much like last week, Laurie began the class with a brief discussion of the characters and main plot points, and then we broke into small groups (mostly based on where we were sitting in the classroom, but with different ELA/UCWBL instructors and tutors). I was with an instructor named Sandy (from the ELA) and her group, and the students asked some great questions about the text and larger questions about vocabulary and culture references. I'm going to try very hard to catch up for this week's readings so I don't look like a moron (and irresponsible) in front of the other students.

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Conversation partner meeting #1 with Mashail (on Sunday, Jan 29) Mashail, from Kathy's class and also from book club, decided that she'd like to be conversation partners with me, and we learned last week that we live in the same condo complex (but in different towers). She said she had something that precluded her from meeting with me today after class, so we decided to meet on Sunday at 12:15 in her tower's lobby to chat. It was an awesome conversationfrom 12:15 until 3pm!--and we were both chatting nearly nonstop the entire time. Mashail was very sweet and brought Arabic coffeewhich resembles tea, but is intensely flavored with cardamomand dates and a sweet little Betty Crocker carrot cake (I think) that she made. We talked a lot about culture, politics, language, religion, family, marriage, geography, the US, Saudi Arabia, communityall pretty heavy and deep topics that many native speakers wouldn't even want to necessarily broach. It was really enjoyable, though, for both of us (I think). She wants to meet the baby, so I think next weekend when we meet, I'll ask Connor to bring her down for a bit. I love doing conversation partners/intercambios like this, so I think this will be an extremely rewarding and personally gratifying experience for me. Mashail seems like an awesome woman, and I think I'll learn a lot from her. TIME SPENT OBSERVING: TIME SPENT W/KATHY: TIME SPENT AT BOOK CLUB: TIME SPENT WITH MASHAIL: 1 hour, 30 minutes / 90 minutes 10 minutes 1 hour, 15 minutes / 75 minutes 2 hours, 45 minutes / 165 minutes

Observation day #4 - Friday, 3 February 2012 Today was a pretty straightforward class and observation in Kathys room. Students had their reading logs passed back to them, and Kathy made global-scale comments about how the students were improving from week to week and how much she really values those assignments because selfishly, she, personally, gets to learn a lot about a variety of topics. She also noted that as the term goes on, students will no longer be obligated to keep the journals because they are embarking on their reading/literacy circles. However, if students kept up with their journals, of course they would benefit from them, and theyd even earn extra credit. Kathys reading circles idea is really interesting to me. Basically, the students are divided into three groups--in part, by way of their preference, in part by Kathys discretion--and each group is responsible for reading one book. This terms selections are Charlottes Web, Holes, and Big Fish. Kathy said BF is the most challenging, with CW being the least so. Each group is comprised of four students, and each week students are responsible for very specific roles within their conversation circles, which include the discussion director, the vocabulary enricher, the literary luminary, and the investigator. Students rotate jobs each week, and the groups are basically self-contained. Kathy acts as an interpreter and floater each week, troubleshooting with students where she must, and at the end of the term, the students collaborate within their groups to create some sort of final/culminating project that they share with their peers in-class and with other HI reading classes. Kathy very much believes that there is a value to teach pleasure reading, so she purposely doesnt test or do any types of assessment with this unit of her HI class. She noted that its purely a pedagogical decision and that there are other teachers who do teach and assess, but she finds it more worthwhile to not. The students will still have in-class readings and vocabulary building exercises, but the leisure reading unit is designed to be more of an application-type exercise than what they usually do. I think this is a fabulous idea, and I especially like the books she is

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using--a decision, she noted, that was hard to come to because she wanted it to be appropriate in terms of tone, challenge, and the like for adult learners (in other words, no need for books about boys and girls in the cafeteria having food fights). The next part of the class Kathy devoted to going over the students homework and readings from their textbook, with the students comparing their answers with their partners quickly before a large-group plenary. In the plenary, the group went over unfamiliar words, such as redundant, fluctuate, around the margins, stunningly, and perpetually. She also talked about how important it was to dissect words according to where they were placed in the sentence and their suffixes, which can be huge clues as to what the word signifies and the way in which it is used (and can be used). Kathy then reminded students that they were having another skills and vocabulary quiz on Tuesday, so they did a quick review of the words and content of the forthcoming assessment, again with classmates and then in the plenary. The final few minutes of class Kathy spent asking students to go over an exercise from their textbook about using clues from the article to select the best title for it. It has been really interesting to observe the class from week to week, and I am continuing to learn a lot from Kathy in the process, which is refreshing. Book Club I was so relieved that I had caught myself up on the first 100 pages of The Hunger Games on Thursday night, so I was able to finally contribute something meaningful to the conversation. Before we broke into our small group discussions, Laurie from UCWBL led the plenary about what happened in the subsequent part of the book, in terms of plot, characters, and vocabulary, and solicited students for areas that confused them. This seems to be the norm for how these book club meetings are going to flow. I was in Jasmine Pachecos group, which she was leading in her UCWBL capacity, and we had some great conversations about the book and discussed our ideas about what we think was going to happen next. A few of the ELA students asked clarification questions about certain ideas or language components, but those comments were few. Most of our time was spent talking about the actual novel -and the up-and-coming movie-- so it is seeming that the ELA students are following along pretty well. Conversation with Mashail Unfortunately, I wasnt able to meet Mashail this weekend because of some other commitments, but we are in the process of scheduling our next get-together. I anticipate it will be in one week. TIME SPENT OBSERVING: TIME SPENT W/KATHY: TIME SPENT AT BOOK CLUB: TIME SPENT WITH MASHAIL: 1 hour, 30 minutes / 90 minutes 10 minutes 1 hour, 15 minutes / 75 minutes 0 minutes

Observation day #5 - 10 February 2012 Todays day of observations went pretty well. Kathy began class by giving her students a bit of a pep talk because apparently, Wednesdays quiz was very challenging and might have left some of her students a bit disillusioned and discouraged. After this pep talk, she also talked about a vocabulary quiz that the students had earlier in the week and reminded them that grammar clues can be helpful as they are trying to select the best words to use in certain sentences, even if they dont know all the words in the sentences or their exact meanings (ex. choosing between elected, elective, electing). I continue to think that how Kathy teaches her students to deconstruct English is really fascinating and, I imagine for them, helpful. She often encourages her students to break the English words down into their word cells

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(suffixes) and, if possible, even their Latin roots. The Latin stuff is easier for the Spanish speakers than for the Arabic ones, but it seems to help everyone. We spent most of the class in our literacy groups. Each group is reading either Holes, Charlottes Web, or Big Fish. I joined the BF group because it was closest to me, and I quickly ascertained that this book was the most challenging of the three and that overwhelmingly, the five students in the group didnt really care for it. They were frustrated with how non-linear and fantastic it was (having never read it, Im assuming that the movie rendition I saw must be pretty close to the book), and Areeg even mentioned that she never reads stuff like this in her culture (Saudi Arabia). At any rate, my group had some really interesting conversations about the storys plot, characters, and images, and they asked me about issues that they didnt understand, such as certain words or allusions to American culture. To that extent, we had a good conversation about how its normal, if not expected, for young adults to leave home around 18 years old and how adults are chastised if they move back home to their parents house. Each group member had a specific job to fulfill (see previous weeks entry), and at the conclusion, Kathy distributed new job sheets for each group member. The last fifteen minutes or so of class was spent going over The House on Mango Street textbook exercises from their For Your Information textbook. The questions were all comprehension check questions, and Kathy also spent a little time talking about how typography can affect a readers comprehension and interpretation of a text, using italics as an example (and its corresponding emphasis). Book Club I finished our next section of The Hunger Games, and as twisted as this book is, its pretty awesome. Book Club followed its usual format: Laura from the Writing Center went over key plot points and characters, eliciting feedback and questions from the plenary, and then we all broke into smaller groups. Again, by virtue of where I was sitting, I joined Jasmines group, and we had a lively discussion about the book. I love book clubs, so I look forward to this each week! Chat with Mashail (on Sunday) Mashail and I had a wonderful conversation for nearly three hours. We were at Dollop, a coffee house near our apartment, for about 2.5 hours, and then we came back and she met Connor and Alice. Masail and I have a lot in common, and we again broached some pretty serious topics like religion, our families, school, and relationships, among others. The time really flies by when we talk. I really, genuinely look forward to it. Checking-in with Kathy Since Kathy and I hadnt yet had an opportunity to talk outside of class, we coordinated schedules for me to come chat with her after book club. We talked for about 45 minutes and talked in generalities and specifics about her class, her methodology and pedagogy, and her students strengths and weaknesses. It was enjoyable to decompress with her and to talk about what I notice from my perspective. I feel like I am learning a lot from her and that my observation experiences have been worthwhile--even though this quarter is a bit frenzied for me, to say the least. TIME SPENT OBSERVING: TIME SPENT W/KATHY: TIME SPENT AT BOOK CLUB: TIME SPENT WITH MASHAIL: 1 hour, 30 minutes / 90 minutes 45 minutes 1 hour, 15 minutes / 75 minutes 3 hours / 180 minutes

Observation day #6 - 17 February 2012

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Todays observation day for class was a bit uneventful. The students took a really hard skills test, and originally Kathy scheduled it for fifty minutes but then extended it to 55 and then 60 minutes. The remaining time students were in their book club groups, and by this point in the term, they will only have one or two more meetings of these clubs before their final projects/presentations. Book Club Todays book club took the usual format it has all quarter: Laura from the collaborative did a large-group orientation and then I joined a group with Mishal, Abdullah, and other students. As always, we had a great discussion about the book and what we thought was going to happen in the final few sections. This has been a fantastic book selection! TIME SPENT OBSERVING: TIME SPENT W/KATHY: TIME SPENT AT BOOK CLUB: TIME SPENT WITH MASHAIL: 1 hour, 30 minutes / 90 minutes 0 minutes 1 hour, 15 minutes / 75 minutes 0 hours / 0 minutes

Observation day #7 - 24 February 2012 There werent any observation hours today because of the statewide TESOL meeting, and I also did not attend the book club meeting because of a doctors appointment on the far north side. TIME SPENT OBSERVING: TIME SPENT W/KATHY: TIME SPENT AT BOOK CLUB: TIME SPENT WITH MASHAIL: 0 minutes 0 minutes 0 minutes 0 minutes

Observation day #8 - 2 March 2012 It was nice to be back in Kathys classroom for what will be the penultimate observation date (though the last that Ill be writing about). Students were visibly tired, as the end of the quarter is quickly drawing near. Kathy spent the first part of class going over general housekeeping things related to the end of the quarter, finals, their novel presentations/projects, and informed her students that theyd be finishing up unit four today. The students numbered off into small groups and compared answers in their comprehension check questions (about the idea of athletes being role models), and while the students were doing this, Kathy and I chatted about the students who took a make-up exam because they had done so poorly on it the first time around. Once the students finished their work in their small groups, they reconvened in a plenary and talked about the grammatical and contextual concepts behind each sentence but also the larger idea of sportsmanship (using Kathys children as real-time examples). This took most of the class period, and at the end, Kathy spent about fifteen minutes using flashcards to encourage students to identify the word, its part of speech, a definition, and a context or environment wherein students would find them. I hadnt seen Kathy use flashcards yet, so it was interesting to see her doing that today (and at the end of class--which made sense since students were a little antsy, and that was able to hold their attention more since it was relatively quick and very interactive). Book Club Todays book club was a little different in that instead of Laura facilitating a large-group orientation and summary of the chapters assigned for today, we immediately broke into our small groups. Jasmine P. led mine, and the groups today were all much smaller than usual--probably just a by-product of it being the end of the quarter.

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TIME SPENT OBSERVING: TIME SPENT W/KATHY: TIME SPENT AT BOOK CLUB: TIME SPENT WITH MASHAIL:

1 hour, 30 minutes / 90 minutes 10 minutes 1 hour, 15 minutes / 75 minutes 0 minutes