CO3

Today, April Fools' Day, I observed Wayne Schiefelbein's reading class at CIES. Before class when I attempted to introduce myself to the teacher, he told me that Wayne had quit and he was the substitute. Joke was on me, the April Fool! He began class by asking them if they had received his evaluations over e-mail. He said that he had tried not to be too coddling (my word, not his) and more honest with his criticism of their progress in reading skill development. Next, he went over a timed reading assignment from the previous class on Friday. I liked how he told the class the highest, lowest and average grades (and for this particular assignment, the fastest/slowest/average times for reading the passage and answering the questions) for each assignment and quiz, because it let the students know how they were doing in comparison to their peers.

Mr. Schiefelbein (hereby known as simply Wayne) suggested using the site Voice of America for improving reading speed, because you can read the text while listening to it. After class I suggested watching movies or TV shows in English, but Wayne said it is thought to be less effective because of the distraction of the moving pictures behind the words, and if you could somehow turn off the video and just listen to the audio track while reading the subtitles, it would be a more helpful activity. Another possibility for improving reading speed would be listening to books on tape (perhaps while looking at the text as well!).

In reviewing the timed reading assignment, he addressed skills that would be crucial to scoring well on the TOEFL, such as finding key words in a passage, discerning the meaning of words in their context, synonyms/antonyms, vocabulary building, making inferences, and summarizing main ideas. In the case of inference questions on tests such as TOEFL, he said to beware of the red flag (also my term) of over-generalizations (his term) such as 100%, every, and all. These questions are (almost =D) always false.

After the review of Friday's assignment, he passed out a vocabulary list, with words that would be on an upcoming quiz, words that were on the previous quiz (and the average grade), and a bigger list compiled from words that students e-mail him definitions of. After class he told me this is part of their 2-hour weekly reading assignment, and that nearly everyone participates and he thinks it is a great way to build vocabulary.

He finished the class by reading a short 3-page chapter from Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I think the students enjoyed it, and it was great extensive practice at this level - certainly the reading level was not too difficult for them. I learned a lot in this short class and I hope to incorporate some of Wayne's techniques into my own teaching practice!