Frankie CO #3 & #4

I had the opportunity to observe both Kyle Kaminski's speaking course and Ryan Flemming's listening course. The first began with Mr. Kaminski approaching each student and addressing them by name with a warm and inviting smile and greeting. I was taken aback by such a gentle gesture, it intimated the close relationship he has with his students. The flow of the course was very relaxed and seemingly more productive because of his cool and collected persona. The agenda consisted of reviewing last week's biographical presentations, an introduction to timed speaking, practice, and then lab work. The timed speaking was presented to the class by a group of students he asked at the beginning to go over the chapter and give a summary to the rest of the class. This was a lesson in itself as summarizing was part of the speaking lesson. The class learnt how timed speaking works after he had modeled to them. They all were given a practice topic and he asked students to give their responses for each section of the assignment. After which they had time to go into the lab and record their responses on Sanako,  a recording program on the computers. The objective was to come back the next day and transcribe their recordings, eventually to enter their errors into a log. 

For Flemming's class I was greatly impressed by the thorough  presentation of information he was able to achieve through the use of a word document. If there were one salient aspect that is worth commenting on for his course it would be his transparency with his students. At no point was the class engaged in an activity that he had not already prepared and showed them though his document. Moreover, I felt what was more worth noting than the content of the course was his organization of the class. He had divided up the students into groups so as to maximize exposure to English by disbanding those who came from the same country or spoke the same language. This I feel will be something I would take into account for my future teaching.