Feberuary 9, 2009

Class today started out with Stephanie and Rachael’s presentation. Rachael passed out chocolate hearts for everyone which was very yummy! I guess I had such a bad sweet tooth earlier; the chocolate was just very yummy! Yes, it was. They presented on vocabulary. Unfortunately, we had to stop because the laptop was not working. After a five minute break, we sat down in a circle to talk about our observation. I though the observations from other students were very interesting. Most of the observations that I heard was from Lincoln Community Center; my question that I have is, are students placed with the same level of students? How many levels are at Lincoln Community Center?
Diana came in to talk about her projects on vocabulary too. She talked about what she is doing with her students. It was interesting of how Diana is working with her students to learn vocabulary in her Spanish class. I thought it was a great idea of her divided cards. Coming back to the vocabulary in different time period will help retrieve the vocabulary better.
We went to the GLL to finish up Stephanie and Rachael’s presentation. They did a great job. I love the idea of word association. I think that some students may find it not confusing and again some may find it confusing. Students may find it not confusing because the words are words that associate or (connect) with the vocabulary word. Students may find it confusing because the words that are associated with the vocabulary word are different.
We worked on our last week lesson plan; adding what things students need to know in order to participate in the activity. My group added things into our lesson plan and then looked over Thea’s group’s lesson plan. They did a great job with their lesson plan. My group did not have any questions. Then we worked on corpus of English.

February 2, 2009

I thought that Thea and Rachel did an awesome job on their presentation. I found many of their points when they asked the question of “why” interesting. The reason is because if I was to ask someone for their notes and if they said no; I would not ask them why. I agree with Mariya and Esther’s why they too would not ask the question why. What I found that was nice to know was the different reasons why native speaker may not want to share their notes to non- native speakers. It is nice to know that at least there are nice people out there =) and that what the book said Thea, Rachel, and other students disagree with it. Although I did not speak much in our conversation, it was a learning experience for me. I did not know much about “double- dipping”. I agree with many of the reasons why people are or are not comfortable double- dipping. I really liked JoAnn’s reason which was that it really depends on the relation of the two people too. Personally, I do not mind double- dipping and I feel good when someone is willing to eat off what I was eating or share something with me. It just shows me that this person didn’t mind that I was eating it before them. The activity of practicing for our unit plan really clarified many questions that I might have had. I had a great group and it helps me understand more what I am supposed to do in my real unit plans.

January 26, 2009

Today Brian did his presentation of the issue in professional development. Brain talked about action research, teacher research, and classroom research in language teaching. What I found interesting was all different ways that are out there for teachers to find motivation and creativity. I think that it is very important as a teacher to be motivated and creative because it shows your students of how passionate you are about your teaching. I am glad to know that there are many ways to get feedback on your teaching. Of course, everyone needs feedback to improve. Every day is a learning process. The issue of keeping up to date as an ESL professional is very important too because you want to always be ahead of the game. There are new things, policies, activities, and etc. that come up each day. Being aware of these minor things will help you as a teacher be more prepare in your classroom and your students as well!