Notes/English 189

Angela Morales

October 3-7

I am finally beginning to feel more like the class is my own. Part of this comes from getting to know students and understanding their needs a little more clearly. I do enjoy having the ready-made website and online quizzes, but now I’m wondering if maybe I should have taught the class once through without using any of Chris’s materials. I think so much of these first few weeks have been spent trying to get a good understanding of the requirements for this level of student. (Even though I spent all of last semester observing the class, it’s funny how you don’t really understand how the class should be taught until you begin doing it and struggling with personalities and random problems that come up.) I wonder if this wouldn’t have provided me more with a test-case situation so I’d be able to compare 189 using some/minimal technology vs. using the website, etc.

Monday October 3:

This week we viewed an excellent slide show on “Building Sentences.” The slide show begins with a simple 2 word sentence and adds adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. The point of the lesson is to show that a complete sentence can consist of only two words, but that sentences can be easily expanded by adding descriptions. The slideshow works beautifully to build a sentence and then break it down again. It helps students find subjects and verbs in longer sentences by eliminating everything else. I loved watching students’ reactions as they started to understand the point of the lecture. It was really quite exciting.

Wednesday October 5^th:

(Absent)

Friday October 7th:

Today we began working on the third paragraph topic. Students will be writing about something they really dislike. We read the topic in class, and I began listing possible topics on the board. The class responds well to group exercises, I enjoy the spontaneity of using their responses as examples. Then we talked about the difference between an adequate topic and a really good topic. Many students wanted to write about traffic, and I encouraged them to think of a topic that would be unique and very specific to their lives. I wanted them to begin clustering and outlining, but the class seemed to need a little more instruction on the process of choosing the right topic. Although I got a little behind schedule, I didn’t mind because I enjoyed the fact that students were asking questions. Next week I’ll have them begin to put the paragraph together.