September 1, 2006 Observation

September 1, 2006

The 9am class seems to be a typical freshman composition course. There were twenty-four students present. Though the class takes place in a computer lab, I noticed at least six of the students brought their own laptops to class. The beginning of the class was in a lecture format. My mentor did an overview on the homework that would be due next week and then began to teach the students about Google images. The students were told to search Google images for an image, copy and paste it into their word document along with the original website for citation purposes. The students then worked with their mind maps (previous homework assignment). The students had to create topic sentences for two of the words on the map. There was then some questions and answers followed by teaching the difference between topic sentences and thesis statements. The class as a whole was very quiet; only speaking when they had to. There was little conversation between students. I was unsure if that was due to shyness still or that it was 9am.  

The 10am class is very different from the 9am class. This group of students is very diverse in many different ways. There are two ESL students; one from Afghanistan and one from Spain. There are a mix of upperclassmen and freshman. This group seems to be a little more talkative with discussion and with each other. My mentor seemed to be building a personal relationship with each student as she walked around the classroom to answer the student’s questions. The class followed the same schedule her previous class.