Paige Shaw FL 694 Analysis B 1. Overview of planned class session a.

The learning situation This class is a Spanish intermediate course taught in a foreign language university setting. It is a 201 eight week class which means that it is taught every day for eight weeks as opposed to two or three times a week for sixteen weeks. I have 19 students in the class- 9 male, 10 female- which has a meeting time of 8am every day. The classes on Tuesday and Thursday are 75 minutes and the classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday are 50 minutes. The students are near the end of the 201 class at this point, having been in class for six and a half weeks. The students are generally attentive but only a few are normally vocal in class. The rest I have to specifically direct questions to in order to get them to produce any kind of output. b. Goals/objectives/purposes In this particular class, the objective is to practice the vocabulary from the chapter la naturaleza, to introduce the differences between por and para and to work with the reader, Lola Lago, and thereby work on the classs comprehension and input. I feel that I somewhat over planned for this class because there are a lot of substantially sized activities that I have included but this is because any of the activities can be moved to the next day and combined with the next grammar point, subjunctive with negation, because with this point they are not learning a new structure, only another use of the structure they have previously learned., and I can focus on several different forms shown in context in the Lola Lago readings as well. c. Outline of activities planned Warm up: conversation with class about what they did the day before I will simply ask students about what they did the day before and what we did in the previous class to jog their memory and wake them up a bit before starting with the lesson. I will also ask if there was any confusion on anything so far before we start with new material. Activity 1: 12-6 Para o por (10 minutes) I plan for this activity to be relatively quick because the students have already seen certain instances of por and para and this will just be to specify the rules for using each one. We will concentrate more on this in the next class but I just want them to be aware of the differences so that they will notice their uses more in the Lola Lago readings. Activity 2: Lola Lago- presentamos los personajes (10 minutes)

The students should have read chapters 1-7 by this point and so the first activity will be for them to work in groups to draw and then present the different characters to the class. The students will be given 12x12 dry erase boards and markers to draw their characters which will give them a nice visual aid and assist in the whole classs comprehension of the descriptions from the book. Activity 3: Lola Lago- resumimos los captulos (5 minutes) After each group presents the characters, I will assign each group to a chapter in Lola Lago which they will be responsable for presenting to the class. The students may keep the dry erase boards to make notes on while summarizing each chapter. Activity 4: The Hobbit- trailers and worksheet. (5 minutes) This is a supplemental activity that gives a comparison of the same two trailers for The Hobbit, dubbed in Spanish with an accompanying worksheet. One of the dubbings is from Latin America and one is from Spain. The worksheet has the transcription of both versions on one side of the sheet, and several vocabulary words and opinion questions on the other side. I want them to go through each version and see what differences they spot and also mark the various grammar constructions that we have learned this far in class. This is sort of an extra activity so it can also be used as a review at the end of the chapter if there is no time during this lesson. Activity 5: 12-8 Nuestra Aventura (15 minutes) Part A: After the showing of The Hobbit, I will use the activity 12-8 to Segway into a new use of the subjunctive while still using the vocabulary from the chapter. I will have students quickly write about a trip/ adventure they want to take in groups. Part B: Intro to subjunctive- I will next tell the students that there was some kind of problem and they can no longer go on this trip, so now they need to write their reactions to this problem using the new phrases that require the subjunctive. I will show them the explanation from the book and check for understanding, and then I will give them time to individually write their own sentences using this new structure. d. Statement of specific elements addressed I have designed these specific activities to be very communicative and studentcentered. For this reason, I think there could be a lot of variation of time on task for each student and for the whole class. I want the sections on Lola Lago specifically to concentrate more on fluency than accuracy, but during the por/para section and Nuestra Aventura section I want more focus on accuracy. 3.Evaluation/reflection as I view recording Viewing this class, I feel that it is, in fact, a bit slower than desired, but I also think that these 2.Post-teaching/pre-viewing recounting After this class, I felt that it was very different from the way that I planned it. I changed the

activities were more complex for the students than I was expecting for them to be. I shifted my lesson plans for the class because of the perceived learner needs and so I do not regret this decision and I think that the students benefited from having to organize their thoughts from the readings; however, I think the activities could have gone a bit more smoothly if I had pushed them harder both during the preparation phase and the presentation phase. The recording shows consistent correlation between what I have written in the right column. I primarily used Spanish to explain the directions and to talk about the characters, but sometimes interjected English phrases or words to complement or explain what I was saying. After seeing the recording of my class I wish that I had set a faster pace with the first activity and also had some type of time keeper to help me stay on track. I dont feel that students are off topic but I think they could be pushed a bit more and still benefit from the activities. Another aspect that I would like to work on is getting my students to use the target language more when working in groups and discussing the topics that they are working with. They do their work and stay engaged in the task, but use more English than I would like to negotiate meaning between each other.

order of activities around and did not even get to half of the material that we were supposed to cover. I do not think that this will cause me to be behind on the syllabus because I had given myself a bit of wiggle room when planning, but I still feel that the class could have gone a bit faster, allowing us to at least get to the por and para activity that was originally supposed to come first. After the warm-up, which lasted approximately 5 minutes, I went directly into the Lola Lago activities because the students had been reading Lola Lago for several class periods by now and they were anxious to start talking about it. Since I felt that this is where the learner attention and interest was at the time, I changed my plans to fit their projected learner needs. I began by asking students who the characters were and wrote the names on the board. I then handed out the dry-erase boards and grouped the students according to their location in the classroom. I forwarned them that they would be presenting their characters to the class and that they should draw them as well as be prepared to describe any important physical attributes or personality traits that they had. This activity took significantly longer than I projected, but they were genuinely engaged in the activity so I allowed them to finish their drawings. I then called on each group and let them choose the spokesman for each presentation. This took more time than projected too because it took them a while to get all of their ideas out, but I wanted them to have practice with output so I allowed it to continue. The first part of this activity lasted about 10 minutes and the presentation lasted roughly another 10. I then continued into the second Lola Lago activity which was summarizing each chapter. I rearranged the groups just a bit to allow for each group to work with two chapters because there were several people absent that day, and smaller groups would not have been as productive I felt. Once again they took a significant amount of time to gather their

thoughts, but I wanted them to complete their work so I waited. Some of the groups had trouble expressing their ideas in Spanish and took longer than I wanted them to, but since I wanted them to know that they had to try before I would move on, I waited. After this activity I ran out of time and so I did not do all of the other things I had planned. I think this class moved way to slowly and I need to definitely work on moving the class along even when they say they are not ready. A Student-Centered Observation and Time on Task a. reactions of the learners The learners seem to be engaged in the activities, but they are still a bit quieter than I would like for them to be. They seemed interested in the story and mostly involved in the lesson. Their facial expressions do not seem overly optimistic or enthusiastic but most of them seem engaged. There were a few students that seemed off-task and bored but I believe that this has more to do with their personal motivations for Spanish than the activities themselves. Most students are willing to participate and none of them have a negative attitude in my classroom. b. interactions with the learners I noticed that I did walk around quite a bit during the lesson but I usually asked for volunteers before I would call on a specific person. I do this because I dont want students who have high affective filters to be even more apprehensive in my class, but I think that I should call on some of the quieter students more often now that everyone is more used to the classroom environment. The students initiated the topic of Lola Lago at the beginning of class but then I controlled the topics by grouping them and having them discuss certain elements of the book. I gave them some freedom with this topic though by allowing them to focus on what aspects they wanted of the topic provided. I think authentic discourse in this setting is whatever natural speech and vocabulary comes from having to discuss the physical characteristics and personality traits of a person, in this activities case, as well as the vocabulary needed to narrate a story and give sequences of events. Both of these topics are very broad and are used frequently outside of the classroom to communicate with others and so in that way they were practicing and developing the same skills that they would use in authentic discourse. c. comparison of two students The first activity lasted approximately 18 minutes, with 9 minutes of preparation time and 9 of presentation time. I observed 2 students from different groups who both are generally attentive and participate in class fairly regularly. Neither are my best students nor my worst. Student number 1 is generally more outspoken in class and wants to be

involved in the conversations but is still fairly novice in her language abilities. Student number 2 participates, but is not as outspoken as number 1, though it is clear that he has a slightly better grasp of the mechanics of the language. During the first few minutes of class, I spoke to the class as a whole, asking about the book and trying to get them into Spanish mode. I included this as part of the time on task because the students had to interpret what I was saying and would respond occasionally or ask for clarification, so I considered that part of the listening comprehension. I have created 3 tables that correspond to each of the three sections of class: the warm up, activity 1, and activity 2. I have denoted the exact times from the video and total time on task at the end of each section. Warm up (6 minutes) 0:20-0:49 (listening) 1:14-1:50 Student 1 response 1:35-1:36 2:25-2:55 2:42-3:10 3:30-4:09 Student 1 response 4:05-4:09 5:24-6:03 6:09-6:19 Total time 2min 39sec

Activity 1(9 minutes groupwork, 9 minutes presenting) Student 1 Student 2 6:43-7:48 (reading) 7:15-7:40 (discussing/reading) 7:51-9:40 8:01-8:17 9:55-10:37 10:35-13:35 (writing/drawing) 11:05-11:25 14:39-14:42 (reading) 11:45-12:05 (listening) 17:34- 17:37 (listening) 15:15-15:17 (speaking) 18:18-18:22 Total time 2min 14sec Total time 1min 21sec Activity 2 ( 11 minutes groupwork, 6 minutes presenting) Student 1 24:04-24:41(listening) 25:15-27:07 (reading) 26:15-27:17 27:20-29:15 31:08-31:20 35:10-35:13 (listening) Student 2 24:04-24:31(listening) 24:42-24:38 25:15-26:27 (reading) 26:29-27:05 27:10-28:05 31:02-31:11

36:55-37:27 (speaking) 41:50-42:05 (listening) Total time 5min 26sec 42 min class Time on Task 4. Brief reflection

35:10-35:13 (listening) 41:50-42:05 Total time 3min 45sec Student 2 7min 45sec (19%)

Student 1 10min 23sec (26%)

This means that the total percentage of time that I could see student 1 engaged in either speaking, reading, listening or writing specifically in the target language is 26% and the percentage for student 2 is 19%. I feel that this is a low number and I would like it to be higher in each class, but I also thought that these activities and recording quality made it more difficult to judge some of the engagement during the activities. I also noticed that the listening and reading forms of engagement were much more common than speaking and writing. I attribute this partially to the type of task the students were involved in, partially to their level as language learners, and partially to me as the facilitator. I think I should push my students to be more verbally communicative in the classroom because they can work on reading and writing outside of class more easily than they can work on speaking and listening outside of class. As I was timing the students, I did not include sections of their group work where I could not tell what they were doing or where they were speaking in English, even though they were still discussing the topic. I think that this affected my scoring greatly because they were using English frequently to negotiate meaning in the Spanish book they were reading from. I do still feel that these activities were productive and helped the students to practice organizing their thoughts in Spanish and communicating an idea, so I would still repeat these activities with some slight modifications on the amount of time dedicated to each activity. I saw a few more wandering eyes than I would have liked as these activities were going on and I think a faster pace would help with this problem. I think, especially with an early class like mine, the faster paced, more communicative atmosphere would force students to wake up and become more involved in the class, and therefore get the most engagement possible during class time.