On May 19, I was able to observe Hilda’s hour-long Conversation Club (CC) class as part of the ESAL 0350/0450 Advanced Oral Communication class.
I really enjoyed the first activity that Hilda presented in which the students learned about an artist and were then able to apply a concept around that artist to their own lives. For example, the students learned about one artist that only painted scenes from their personal life. The students then got to share what scene they would have wanted painted from their own life. I thought this was an engaging way to not only present a learning component to the lesson but also use it as a prompt to encourage the students to share about themselves and contribute to the discussion. The atmosphere of the class was fun and light, and I look forward to incorporating a similar idea into my own teaching.
Hilda also tried a Jeopardy game as an activity during the class. I was curious to see her approach to teaching this game as it was an activity that I had also tried in one of my lessons I taught to my classmates in a previous course. I had not been successful in this activity but learned of many different changes that I could implement to make it better in the future. I did not have the opportunity to talk to Hilda about the activity and am not sure if this is a game that she has played before with students. The students in this class struggled with the questions and having to work as a team. It was beneficial to see these struggles and how Hilda adapted the game to help the students. The first adaptation came when groups had to be remade because some did not remember the number of their breakout room. I think this made it more difficult because the students would have had a better memory of who was on their team if it had been made up of the students they had just worked with in the breakout rooms. Without having the familiarity of their group and the group names not being written down anywhere, it appeared to be difficult for the student to communicate with each other to answer the questions. Hilda chose a student to be the team leader and encourage their teammates to discuss the answer, but there was still silence. There was no time left in the class to create breakout rooms for discussion, but I thought this would have been a way for the students to take time to work together and find an answer.
Next, when the first question was too difficult, Hilda provided three possible answers. This change enabled the team to answer the question. The question was not written down anywhere, which I think would have helped the students, but I really liked how Hilda gave the students the choices for the answer. I thought this was helpful for the students and allowed the game to progress more smoothly. The questions had not been based on any prior teaching, so I thought that this was a good way to help the students answer the questions if they did not have any knowledge about what the answer could be.
This lesson observation helped me to learn about new teaching ideas that I can use in my own lessons. It also enabled me to see an activity that I had once struggled with carried out and how adaptations were made along the way to make the game more successful. Seeing this not only confirmed some of the changes I knew I would have to make if I used this game again, but it also showed me other adaptations I can make that I had not considered before, like the three choices. This lesson was beneficial as not all teaching plans will run as we hope they will, and it was good to see how another teacher embraces the challenges and makes them work.