Will CO #4

     I observed Dr. Rios’ listening class today. The class was covering a reading on “The Legend of Evangeline”, which was projected on the board. Dr. Rios started by reviewing the highlighted vocabulary terms, calling on the students to provide the definitions. Anytime that a student provided a definition that did not apply to the context of the reading, Dr. Rios paused to clarify. Another vocabulary term was “crossed paths”. No one in the class understood that one, so Dr. Rios broke off into a brief discussion about idioms, providing further examples. The class took turns reading the last section of the story out loud. When they got to the end, Dr. Rios shifted the focus from vocabulary to content. The class went back through each paragraph of the story and summed up the main themes of each paragraph. They had a brief opinion based discussion about whether the story had a sad or happy ending. The next half of the class, they listened to recording about the history of Cajuns. The recording was very formal in structure, the narrator read at a slow and steady pace and paused to define vocabulary terms throughout. The students were instructed to take notes, then discussed their notes in groups at the end of class.