Elizabeth Watson Analysis B: Monday, February 25, 2013 Part 1: Overview of Class Section 1. Learning Situation: a.

I plan to record my 11:00 SPA 201 course. The class is taught in Joseph Greene Hall Room 113 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. There are 3 freshman students, 6 sophomores, 15 juniors, and 6 seniors. There are 21 females and 9 males enrolled in the course. At this point in the semester we have been meeting for seven weeks, and this is the last class day to cover chapter 10 prior to the midterm exam. 2. Goals/Objectives/Purposes of this specific class: a. Today begins with a brief review/conversation activity with present perfect. The students are going to do a brief conversation activity, followed by some follow-up questions that use comparisons expressions. These questions will lead into a more formal introduction to comparative and superlative expressions, and we will do a couple of brief communicative activities for practice. I will also be briefing my students about upcoming Lola Lago projects, since we will not be able to discuss Lola Lago this Friday due to the midterm. 3. Outline of Activities: a. Lola Lago updates/sign-up sheet b. 5 minute conversations: review of present perfect c. Introduction to comparatives d. Activity 10-21, page 352 e. Activity 10-23, page 354 f. Introduction to superlatives g. En mi opinin PowerPoint 4. How I will address student reactions and time on task: a. I plan to closely monitor how the students react (facial expressions, posture, verbal statements, etc.) to the activities to determine if they need further explanation, if I need to speed up/slow down the activities, and if the students are on task. I think that monitoring the number students that are responding as a measure of interest in the lesson, and I will make adjustments as necessary to

accommodate for higher output and interest in the lesson. I would also like to do some couple activities in an effort to make the students more comfortable with the new material prior to making them answer in choral response or individually in front of the class. I plan to circulate around the room during the whole class to make sure that students are on task. If students are not on task, then I will gently redirect them and encourage them to participate. Students who are on task will receive verbal praise such as muy bien, excelente, or perfecto. Part 2: Post-teaching, pre-viewing/listening recounting of the lesson: Activity Lola Lago updates Post-teaching, pre-viewing/listening recounting and Overall Success of the Lesson I tried to keep the Lola Lago updates to a minimum yet also provide enough information to my students so that they would know what I expect out of them in terms of their presentations. I also think that I gave good examples of things that they could do in order to create their presentations, such as a Conversation activity fictitious movie trailer or a simple skit. I think that I gave good instructions with a students participation in the example conversation. I knew that I needed to review the present perfect tense prior to the activity due to how my students did with the activity during my first class. I think that this review was beneficial to the students, and the students were very good at asking questions if they didnt understand what to Review of conversation activity do. I had great student participation in this activity, and the students showed interest and were engaged in the activity. I also tried to recast the students responses if their answers were grammatically incorrect, just so that they Introduction to comparisons could hear what the correct answer should have been. I did a quick introduction to comparisons, but Im not so sure that I was as good at explaining the rules as I could have been. I made the introduction brief because it is easy to get bogged down trying to explain every last detail of comparative statements, and I wanted to move on to the communicative aspects of the language rather than focus solely on the grammar points. The students were attentive, but when I asked if people understood the concepts, they were mostly quiet. I wish that I had contextualized this part of the lesson more.

Activity 10-21, page 352 Activity 10-23, page 354

I had great choral responses during this activity. The students were able to quickly assimilate the information, and I had good participation levels during this activity. I had the students complete this activity in groups of 4-5 students. I liked using the small group format as a means of practicing the concept prior to reviewing answers and discussing the questions as a class. I think that students were more comfortable sharing their answers with the class due to this activity structure, and there was a high level of interest in the activity as a result. We also had some interesting debates that stemmed from the topics listed in the textbook activity, and the students tried to produce more language as a result. I was glad that I picked this activity. I have the same concerns with the superlatives introduction as I did with the comparisons introduction. Again I did a quick introduction to superlatives, but Im not so sure that I was as good at explaining the rules as I could have been. The students were attentive, but when I asked if people understood the concepts, they were mostly quiet. I wish that I had contextualized this part of the lesson more, but I was trying to reduce the amount of time that I spent explaining the grammar and have the students spend more time producing the

Introduction to superlatives

targeted structures. PowerPoint: En I had wonderful choral responses during this activity, and this activity mi opinin generated the most interest and participation out of all of the activities that we did in class today. I think that I made a smart decision to italicize and darken the key words in each sentence of the PowerPoint slides for the students. This noticing technique gave emphasis to the target structures, and they served as great models for the students responses. The students really liked this activity, as nearly everyone was giving some sort of response. We didnt get to the brief conversation activity at the end of the PowerPoint due to time constraints, but I am going to use it as a warm-up activity for Wednesdays class. Part 3: Evaluation: Activity Lola Lago updates Post-viewing recounting and Overall Success of the Lesson Not much reaction from the students; one student immediately selected her

group. The students are paying attention and writing down any pertinent Conversation activity information. The students are good at telling me that they need an example in order to complete the warm-up conversation activity. The students are paying attention and are on task during the activity. I assigned the activity and the groups, and the students used the speaking prompts listed in the book to Review of conversation activity complete the activity. I had better timing as to when students had wrapped up the conversation activity, and there was not as much down-time between the end of the conversations and any idle chatter. The students participated in the activity, and they reacted positively to the Patrick Dempsey statement (the students had to discuss whether or not they have met a famous person, and I had mentioned that one of my students in another class had met Patrick Introduction to comparisons Dempsey). Everyone listened to their classmates. I hate that I didnt contextualize the activity, but I did a good job at making crosslingual comparisons. The students were paying attention to the introductory notes, but this was not one of the more interesting parts of the lesson. I think that the grammar explanation went on for too long, and I could have (and should have) shortened the introductory comparisons notes to get to Activity 10-21, page 352 Activity 10-23, page 354 more communicative activities. I had good participation, good choral responses from the students. The students were on task, and the activity was quick. The students had good reactions to little jokes, and a student initiated a response to an example that I had given in class. There appeared to be a few side conversations, but they didnt last long because I limited the amount of time that the students spent on the activity. In spite of the side conversations, Introduction to superlatives I still had good participation from the students. My computer was about to die, so I had no choice but to give a quick, concise explanation and examples of how to form superlatives (about 2-3 minutes in length). If truth be told, this was my favorite explanation out of the two that I gave today. The students still understood and mastered the material without any lengthy explanations, and they were still prepared for the next activity. The shorter explanation turned out to be the better one! PowerPoint: En I had GREAT participation during this activity! The students were very

mi opinin

interested in this activity since it pertained to celebrities. There were some side conversations during this activity, but on the whole the class interest during this activity was at its highest point during todays lesson. We didnt get to do the conversations that were listed at the end of the PowerPoint presentation, but Im going to have the students discuss the prompts as a warm-up activity for Wednesdays class.

Part 4: Student Time on Task: **I decided to observe the interactions between one male and one female that sit next to one another in class. They are two strong students, and they tend to be quiet in class. The times listed are for different times during group activities and whole-class activities, and it does not include the grammar point introductory notes (while there were examples in the target language of the grammar structures, there was not substantial practice with the language by the students). The total speaking times are in bold at the end of the chart, and the times listed in the table are approximate. At one point the female left the classroom, and her time missing in class is marked by a series of dashes. The lesson lasted for approximately 46 minutes. Student Time Time Time Time Time Time Time Time Time 1 Male Female 4:14 4:14 2 1:53 1:53 3 0:20 0:03 4 2:13 2:13 5 3:30 3:30 6 3:01 3:01 7 2:57 ----8 0:46 0:46 9 4:30 4:30 22:0 4 19:3 0 Part 5: Reflection: I liked the student reactions that I saw in the activity. I think that my overall student participation was good, but it could be better. However, there was very little dead time in which no one was speaking when we did whole-class activities and review; inevitably, someone gave a response to keep the activity moving. I think that had I done a quicker, lighter explanation of comparisons expressions, we could have done some writing activities in conjunction with the Total Percentage of time on task 48% 42%

speaking activities. I have noticed that in my attempts to create a more communicative language-learning context, I have neglected to incorporate more writing activities to focus on overall communication, and this is something that I need to work on as I continue teaching. Another aspect of this lesson that I did not like was the length of time that was spent explaining the grammar structures. Although the PowerPoints that I use in class have good grammar explanations, I need to be more judicious as to how much information is presented and for how long. The grammar explanations can be lengthy, and sometimes a concept does not need a 20-minute explanation. My superlatives explanation is an excellent example of this notion. The students still understood the concept of superlatives and how to form them, and the total time spent explaining superlatives was a fraction of what it was when I was explaining comparisons expressions. I plan to adapt my grammar explanations so that they are more concise yet clear in the future so that we can get to more interesting activities that are more linguistically productive. In terms of the individual students time on task, I noticed that although it may appear that the students were on task and using the target language for roughly half to a little less than half of the class, most of this time was spent listening to each other and to other classmates, reading, and writing sentences. I had planned speaking activities (and most of the class was speaking), these two students did not do as much speaking as they could have done. Given the lack of sufficient oral production of the language, I am concerned about these students overall communicative competence. I want them to be able to orally communicate in the language, but I dont feel that they are speaking enough to do so. I need to do a better job of promoting speaking and encouraging students to talk more with one another.