On Tuesday July 26th, the first activity was to hand out the pH scale sheet and over the definition of pH and how to find it. On the board, she wrote "fifteen across" acid + bases indicating that acid is less than 7 and bases is more than 7. She gave some time to students to do a scale of the information given to them like the pH of coffee is a certain amount and pH of lemon juice is another so they had to make a scale based on that data.
Linda went around and checked people's works and then asked one of the students who did the scale correctly to go on the board to do it and explain it to the class. After the student explained her work beautifully, Linda made sure no body had any questions and that they understood the method. She also explained that typically in the GED this type of question comes in the Science section of the test.
At 6:30, she moved on to Math, a subject like next week, called 'Angles'. She gave the students a hand out and a couple of minutes to work on it on their own. These sheets went into detail about the terms of each angle like "complementary, supplementary, congruent, and adjacent angles". The purpose of working on these sheets was to work on the definition and familiarity with these terms. Once Linda was done giving the lecture, she went on to the exercises and that's when students started having a lot of trouble. Linda did apologize for perhaps "lecturing too much" but explained that it was necessary to teach these certain terms because they might come up in the GED examination.
Even though this was a very difficult topic for the students I realized, there was still a light mood. Every once in a while when students were very concentrated on a certain question and trying to figure out the solution, for instance [Kate] would make a joke or make it known that she did not understand in an amusing way so the class would laugh despite the frustration they were having.
The way that Linda did each of these questions was that she tried to logically explain the solution and even asked students who came up with the right answers to explain why this is so and try to explain it in their own words what the logic of it was. Although the GED may not ask such questions, it helps students to think about what they are acquiring as they are doing it.
At 7 pm, she handed out the fourth sheet of Math for the night to work on four of the questions in class and the rest for home work. After about 6-8 minutes, she asked the student who had a good grasp on numbers 11 & 12 to come and explain it on the board for everyone. Although a student did come up she did not do it entirely correct so Linda had to step in and explain it more.
After going through the questions a bit more, at around 7:23 she gave the students a 17 minute break until 7:40 since she saw that students were beginning to become very frustrated with the work and almost burned out. While most students went out for a break a few stayed back to do more Math and two of them Linda worked with on what they were having difficulties in.
At 7:40 when all students got back to the class, the class resumed and Linda finally moved on to Writing. She asked students to clear their desk of Math and take out their essays (draft 1, draft 2, side shadowing exercise, and basically the whole package of the 'professional goal' essay).
She then, as planned, handed out the fifth sheet of the night for questions on how to do a decent introduction and questions that one has to ask oneself when writing it. The sheet included two samples of an introduction and students had to work in groups to read the two versions and figure out which is better. For this exercise, students had to get out of their seats and rearrange their desks to be able to communicate with each other. From all that Math frustration to this, I believe that it was a good shift and the atmosphere of the class immediately changed and students once again began to talk to each other, laugh, and interact more. I went around and checked on students' progress at this point.
At 8:03, she brought the class together by turning the light on and off to get their attention of course, since she preferred not to scream. She wrote the answers to the questions on the sheet on the board, summarizing the students' responses in the process. She asked me to also give the class my explanation of what makes a good introduction and I did so, explaining that an Introduction is basically a "preview" of the rest of the essay. I tried to answer students' questions as best as I could.
She then handed out sheet #6, which was "What is a Thesis?" originally prepared by the previous intern (Victoriia) so students had to choose the "best thesis" in the exercises. She also asked me to give my own two cents and explain as best as I could what a good "thesis" is and I made the comparison between a "hypothesis" in a science project and a "thesis" in a paper.
For the rest of the class time, she gave the seventh sheet to the students and asked students to rewrite their introduction to the professional goal essay right there in class after learning what a thesis is and what a decent introduction entails.
On Thursday July 29th, I surprisingly met my co-worker at the writing center, Jenny, in the class at 6 pm who apparently has started teaching GED Spanish classes and has come to Linda's class to observe her work for her own good. So Linda started the class with telling the students that just like students who learn from each other, teachers also do the same. Thus, Jenny is here today to observe her class and asked Jenny to introduce herself to the class and she did as told and explained that she, too works in the writing center on campus.
As for the first activity of the evening, Linda put the Math Angles exercises from Tuesday on the overhead projector so that the whole class could see what she was doing and she can write on it with the marker on the board. She invited students to ask any questions they may have about the exercises. She mentioned that she won't go over every single question but only the ones that students had the most difficulty doing.
At about 6:26, she went over the whole sheet, answered all the students' questions, and collected their home works. She then moved on to the drafts that the students had done and gave back what she had looked over with comments. She asked students what they may have noticed about the new comments. Students mentioned that the comments are now more focused on grammar, which was indeed the case. Linda told the students that generally when teachers and/or tutors look over essays, they first look for organization and development and then they check for grammar.
She then asked students that if they were the ones reviewing the essays as GED test graders, how would they critique the work? What would be the areas they concentrate on? In response, students suggested several things like organization, introduction, conclusion, paragraph development, etc and Linda wrote everything down on the board. Then, she handed out a sheet that was basically an "evaluative rubric for GED essays" and went over each point with the class, answering any questions the students had in the process.
Afterwards, she handed out the home work that students must do for over the weekend. This time, they have to work on the third and final draft of the 'professional goals' essay with concentration on the rubric given to them. Now and then, Jenny would make a comment and give her intake of the subject to the students. For instance, she told the students how in college, professors generally ask students to do 2-3 drafts for paper assignments.
By 7 pm, she moved on to the Wall Street Journal article and the reading comprehension questions of it. This was what the students have worked on for home work so she just asked them to share their answers with each other and then went over it as a class. When doing so, she asked each student to tell the class where he/she got the answer from and from which paragraph in the article. In this way, she went over all key points of the article without actually re-reading it in class. There was a great discussion going on in class that reminded me of a regular college-level class.
Once the discussion of the article was over and all students gave their inputs and opinions of it, the instructor even took it further and asked the class what it made them think of after reading this? In response, students said that they think they may need more training and education perhaps in their fields.
At 7:18, Linda gave them a 12-minute break until 7:30. When they got back, Linda switched the class for about 15 minutes or so to me to give them a survey. In this survey, that I include in my first essay of the internship portfolio, I am basically getting the demographics of the students like their ages, genders, ethnicities, their motivations for taking the GED class, and if the class have matched their expectations of it.
While students took some time to answer the seven questions, Linda spoke to [Joseph] saying he should learn to prioritize and at least try to start the first draft of the professional goal essay since he has not been handing in the work apparently. I liked that Linda went over to him to say this in his ear and not let the whole class know about this and it was in a very respective way that there is no way that the student could have felt embarrassed or anything.
At about 7:50, after I have collected all the completed surveys, Linda took over and went over all the home work that the students have to do over the weekend to make sure everybody is on the same page. She then handed out the new article that the students would be working on in class and over the weekend: "Nickels & Dime" along with the usual Reading Comprehension questions.
As usual, she first asked students to 'predict' what the article would be about based on the title. Some students responded in a literal way saying it might be about "nickels and dime", some said that it may be symbolic and others thought it may have a social or political meaning.
Although, as I have mentioned before, the students have a lot of fun and laughs in the class, at times they can really disrupt the class for their behaviors. For this reason, Linda had to actually make the comment about this class being the 'rowdiest' among all her other classes and that since we're all adults, we should really try not to disrupt each other and especially not the lesson. Of course, Linda said this in the most respectful and kind way so no body took it the wrong way and they actually listened to her.
After guessing what the article could be about, at around 8 pm, Linda did a demonstration on the board with the help of the projector of reading the article to herself loudly and taking notes. She did this for about 5 minutes and I noticed that as she went on, students began to understand what was going on and really concentrated on what she was doing. Afterwards, Linda asked the students what she just did. She wrote down everything the students suggested on the board. She then asked the students how this could help them saying: "Now that you know what I do, how does this apply to you?"
A student [Joseph again] spoke about his experience of reading something once and not understanding much since there was so much detail so he had to go back and highlight the key points in order to remember them. However, after seeing Linda do the demonstration, he knows now that he can also take notes right then and there on the article and said that this can actually help him a lot better. And as usual, she asked students whether this was at all helpful or not. I really like the way she does her teaching strategies because it truly concentrates on the students and counts them as equals. I don't think I have ever felt like an "equal" as a teacher in any of my high school or undergraduate classes. In this way, the students are so much more motivated to do well and do what is expected of them, realizing that it is not just 'home work' but actually practice to do better and for their own good more than anything else.
She then went over some of the questions as much as she could based on what she read with the class. Then, she read the rest of the questions making sure the students understood what they have to for over the weekend. She also went over the Math section of this reading assignment of finding out the salaries and doing a pie chart by first giving some time to the students to work individually on the note-taking skills of the article to find the percentages. Then she broke them up in groups to start working on the task. Then she went over it with the class but basically they have to do the rest for home work
As usual, I left the class at 8 pm. I know that next Thursday, I will be teaching my second lesson, which will be on grammar. A whole month has now finished and I have got to say, I've learned so much. I'm actually sad that it will end in another month because I've built a very nice relationship with the students though I was not expecting it. I was not sure how much I would be interacting with the students indeed. This has definitely been a great learning experience for me basically, I am very glad that I did it or am doing it...
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