R/W Lesson Plan Evaluation

Shuting Shen

Colorado State University

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 I observed the E528 class on April 4, 2018, and the student-teacher of this class

was Steve Shook. Additionally, the topic of the 50-minute class was “Life in

America”. In this class there were 18 students. Most of the students are from China

and speak Chinese. Two are from Italy and speak Italian as their L1.

The student-teacher began the class with “thank you for coming today” and

displayed the pre-reading questions to the class. In this class, there were four activities

besides the warm-up, which were reading a story and completing the vocabulary

questions; a comprehension exercise; an exercise on understanding cause and effect;

and a discussion of cause and effect. Students were actively involved in these

activities, whether in group discussions or reading a story by themselves. When the

student-teacher asked the students to guess the meaning of the word, the students

responded positively and guessed the meaning. Although some students were a little

shy, they were willing to share their answers and ideas.

Compared with the last L/S class, this time Steve has improved a lot. Today's

class was not only more interesting than the last one, but also the content of the

activity was more suitable for ESL students. For example, the student-teacher let ESL

students practice reading while attending to details and focusing on vocabulary items

used. Furthermore, I feel the student-teacher explained the meaning of words very

clearly. In the first activity, Steve guided ESL students to guess the meaning of the

words when students finished reading a paragraph. He wrote them on the

whiteboard, for example, county=Larimer, country=USA. Moreover, at the end of all

three activities, the student-teacher found that there was still plenty of time. Steve

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immediately thought of a discussion activity, which not only fully utilized the

remaining time but also provided the students with an opportunity for group activities.

I feel there are two problems that the student-teacher could pay attention to next

time. One of the important problems is that the student-teacher can raise the volume

of his voice a little. Since the students in the rear are close to the air conditioner, the

noise of the air conditioning affects their ability to listen to the lesson. Sometimes,

students can't hear clearly and feel confused when the teacher was talking about

questions. Another problem is that the student-teacher could help ESL students

correct some pronunciation after they finished reading the paragraph. They were not

native English speakers, and some words may be unfamiliar to them. This may lead to

the incorrect pronunciation of ESL students or difficulties in how to pronounce the

unfamiliar word.

Overall, this class was very interesting, and every student was involved in the

class. There was no one left out. Throughout the whole class, the student-teacher

provided a lot of positive feedback, which encouraged students to actively answer

questions. Also, these activities activated student critical thinking skills and improved

reading skills by practicing reading for detail.