On May 17, I was able to observe the first hour of Hilda Freimuth’s two-hour ESAL 0320/0420 Advanced Grammar class. This class took place virtually, and Hilda began with a cloze activity, then introduced the topic of adjective clauses. I was able to see how Hilda gradually opened the lesson and had it progress from lesson to practice. Along the way, I was also able to see a hiccup in the practice and Hilda’s improvising as a result.
I really enjoyed watching the warmup cloze activity that led into the lesson for the day. I had the opportunity to do this activity as well when I was a student in my TESL 3010 class, but was not able to witness it from a teacher’s perspective. I like this activity as it maintains engagement because it is something to watch, and the students also have to pay attention to not miss the words to fill the blanks with. The students also have to ensure that the phrases are written down as they are said which helps with grammar practice and sentence structure. With so many different parts of sentences, this type of activity could be used in many instances where grammar and sentence structure are the focus.
The adjective clause grammar lesson appeared to provide a bit more of a challenge with the one student stating that it had gone to quickly and students having difficulty putting the sentences together. In the TESL 3020 Pedagogical Grammar class that I completed, I was able to challenge my preconceived ideas about the simplicity of grammar through the practice of doing it myself and teaching lessons to my classmates. With my classmates already understanding grammar and learning along with me, questions and a lack of understanding were never presented from my classmates about what I was teaching.
The need for clarity from the students in Hilda’s class was a great opportunity to see how a teacher would adapt on the spot to provide more instruction when it was not part of the planned slide presentation. The students appeared to have a better understanding of the steps to create the clause phrase after having a few more examples, but difficulty was present again when they had to take the completed complex sentence and dismantle them into the simple sentences. Because I was not able to observe the second half of the lesson, I am not sure if Hilda brought attention back to the adjective clauses and what that looked like in the learning environment.
Without having the knowledge of how Hilda proceeded for the second half of the lesson, this observation showed me that I need to have other ideas to implement should my own students have questions or present difficulty with a concept. Although the students are at an advanced level, there is still a discrepancy between the level of ability between them; plus, grammar is hard! In my own lessons, I will try to remember to maintain a slow enough pace that the students do not feel overwhelmed and scaffold the lesson so that there is enough explanation and examples at the beginning and enough practice to go along with it.