Class Observation #3

On Thursday I observed Dr. Kennell's Advanced Reading class. I enjoyed this class immensely because he kept the atmosphere very lighthearted. He had a smile on his face and would joke and laugh with the students, which is what I am all about! I noticed that he wrote on the board as he spoke to give them verbal and visual explanation, which is what we have discussed in class before. He wrote the word 'assumption' on the board because the students would be doing a lot of that in their reading for the day. Kennell asked the class what assuming does and they all laughed because they knew the joke. I know a lot of second language learners have a hard time picking up on humor in English, so it was nice to see them laugh at that joke. The first activity they did was to interpret a pie graph about U.S. Greenhouse Emissions by Sector in 2007. Kennell gave them specific time limits to read it and answer questions about it. He then called on students to answer the questions. They did a second activity which was very similar to the first one, except was with a table of information instead of a pie graph this time.

Even though it was a reading class, he would correct even their small spoken mistakes. I believe that at an advanced level teachers should be doing that because the students are near fluency. This was my first advanced class that I observed and I noticed that the students were using complex sentences and expressing their opinions more so than in the lower level classes I previously observed.