Teachers: Andrew & Kim
Observation date: 11/13/2015
Site: Bay View Academy
Description:
Andrew and Kim collaboratively taught a beginning-level Chinese class in fourth grade at Bay View Academy. There were 28 students in the class, and they were sitting in three rows.
To start the class, Andrew raised his voice and said in Chinese, “hello, little friend” (literal translation). He repeated several times, and asked students to guess the meaning. Students quickly recognized “hello” and “little,” but had trouble with “friend.” Kim assisted Andrew to help students guess the meaning.
Andrew started with teaching numbers. He said the numbers in Chinese while showing the students the correct Chinese hand gestures. Kim also showed the hand gestures to the other half of the class. To help students remember the numbers, Andrew used exaggeration and connection with English (e.g. “five” is the similar pronunciation as “wooo”). He slowed down a little bit after number six because he wanted the students to realize the difference in hand gestures. After teaching all numbers, they reviewed three times. The second and third times were faster as they got better. Then, Andrew made the students apply the new knowledge into counting off groups. They did a quick group activity, in which the class got too loud and Andrew ordered, “One at a time.” His classroom management was very effective.
After finishing teaching numbers, Kim started her TPR activity. Students need to push aside their desks and chairs, which took about three minutes. Kim explained the game: she would throw the mini basketball to a student; the student would say “I am + name” and throw the ball to the next person. She then introduced the words “I” and “you,” and the sentence structures, “I am” and “you are.” The students were very loud; I could barely hear Kim from the back. In addition, the circle kept getting smaller because the classroom was crowded. Andrew helped coordinate so Kim could do the activity. Kim scaffolded well by first teaching “I” “You,” and then “I am” “You are” structure. But when doing the activity, most students have trouble producing the “I am + name” sentence. Kim patiently explained.
After this activity, students were told to sit on the floor. One of the teachers (I forgot which one) asked, “would you like to learn some adjectives in Chinese?” A few students said loudly, “No.” Andrew continued, “We are going to learn it anyways.” There were only five minutes left for the class. At this point, students were even more excited, so the last part of the lesson was quick and hard to carry out as planned.
Reflection:
I know that Andrew and Kim have prepared a lot for this class, and I feel bad that they didn’t get to go through all the interesting content. Apparently, they were unaware that the classroom setting was in rows, which made their activity harder to carry out. I wonder if the setting was meant for better classroom order. However, the students were too energetic, and the circle activity energized them even more. I think meditation should be added into course design for these students. I also think that if the current seat chart doesn’t work as well, the teacher should consider changing the setup and make it more effective. I noticed that the two corners chatted a lot during the lesson. A suggestion for Andrew and Kim is that be alert about students’ reaction. Students showed that they could no longer take any more inputs during the circle activity. In order for the lesson to be more effective, it would be better to stop teaching new content, and review what they have learned instead.