Jackson CO #3

 Date/Time: Wednesday, 6/23, 11:00am

Topic/Skill: Reading, specifically making summary outlines about an article that has just been read, group 3

Teacher Presentation: The professor, Dr. Rios,  started the class by briefly reviewing what had taken place in the last class and how it related to the topic for today's class. The class was discussing an article about financial services at FSU, so the article was briefly summarized again before the group jumped into a discussion of the outline of the article. Dr. Rios led the lecture for the first 30 minutes, then allowed students 20 minutes to finish it up and work on other questions relating to the article. 

Classroom Management: Dr. Rios made sure to engage all of the students present. There were 4 in the class and 4 on zoom, and would ask general questions to everyone as a whole very frequently, letting them guide the words he was writing which he would later go back and discuss. There were 2 students who somewhat dominated the discussion, but he made sure that should others choose to speak up, he would listen and paid attention to everyone during the individual work time. 

Materials: Dr. Rios only used zoom, a PDF of the article and questions the class discussed, and a computer with a projector to show off the work being done. 

Student Participation: The students were all paying attention and engaged, even if there were some students that were more active than others. It seemed as though each of the students understood and were willing to do the work. 

Feedback provided: This class was a higher level than some of the other classes I have observed so far, so the feedback was more focused on sentence structure and finer grammar points. A couple times, Dr. Rios had to correct a student on their verb conjugations and how their sentences should be written in order to make the most sense. He was very kind and encouraging, laughing with students if he made a mistake and being willing to sit down with them and listen if they were making mistakes of their own. 

Lessons learned: I learned quite a bit about how upper level classes work. When teaching reading at this level, it is important to walk students through the harder parts of an assignment then let them go to do the less challenging ones on their own. This method of teaching fosters the sense of confidence and independence necessary to master this language, and slowly makes the hard parts seem not as much so.