ESL0170 – Basic Reading Skills

Course Description

This course focuses on reading strategies. Emphasis is on vocabulary growth and comprehension and expression of the main idea. Students develop study and reading skills such as pre-reading and reading rate strategies. Prerequisite: Placement according to English placement test.

 

This is my practicum class! It was great to have a chance to see the class before teaching it. I was able to get a feel for what level of english the students are at. I introduced myself to the students and explained how I would be teaching them the following Monday.

During the class students were given cues and commands on how to answer or respond to questions. For example, Shift + Enter is used to answer multiple questions at a time without entering them into the chat one by one.

Students are reviewing basic grammar skills like adjectives and are able to respond in the chat box to the questions. They talk about things like scanning paragraphs and looking for specific information.

The teacher encourages students to enter in their answers into the chat box.”It is ok to make mistakes”. Encouragement and patience for beginner level students is needed. Having the comfort to put up answers and be ok if they are right is very important. Giving them a safe place to learn.

The teacher encourages mistakes in order to learn, “Submit answers this is how we learn”. The teacher is very supportive of the slower typists. I think this is giving students a bit more motivation to learn. Technology allows checking out, but a teacher must stay on top of the students. Even a simple answer in the chat box gets them engaged.

Towards the end of the class, students move to a new reading about Antartica. The Antartica reading is a bit more challenging then the first tasks. This task is targeting the more intermediate learners. The students were much more responsive to questions this time after some motivating

This type of lesson would be ideal for the Language Learning Club and Conversation Club. The LLC can help students with homework before handing it in. Seeing this lesson gave me a great introduction into my practicum class I will be teaching!

General Notes:
  • Shift + Enter for multiple answers on BBB
  • 15 sec. Warning to finish up
  • 5 sec. Count down
  • 1 for yes
  • 2 for no

 

  • the colour blue
  • describes noun
  • beginner grammar skills