Online Observation: Tanya Cowie Vancouver Community College
In these online observations, Tanya delivers her classes to adult English language learners. Her class has a wide demographic that encompasses very early stage learners as well as some intermediate level learners. In some cases, the learners come from academic backgrounds of lower-level learning due to interruptions in their education. Most don’t have stamina built to learn English, this is very important for how she builds her programming.
In this lesson Tanya focused her vocabulary on clothing, picking 15 specific vocabulary items for her activities to centre around. When she was discussing her process in organizing her lesson planning, she explained that she tries to create classes that focus on situations and items that are fundamental to everyday living. In Tanya’s activity 2 she has created a “clothing store” for her students. I noticed in her “store” she had brought real items as examples for the vocabulary she was focusing on such as hats, shirts, belts, etc… After she has introduced her items in her store she starts working on dialogue. At the start of the lesson, she provides the students with the dialogue, but as the activity progresses she has the students fill in different vocabulary into the dialogue.
Tanya’s confidence in her classroom is the first thing that sticks out when you observe her lesson. She has well-planned activities and her transitions are seamless. Tanya uses a variety of activities to engage her learners, making sure each member of the class has the opportunity to participate in each activity before the class moves on. In her closing, she makes sure to engage one on one with each student providing them with direct opportunities for personal feedback. This was an excellent demonstration of care and attentive instruction to witness.