This Tuesday I observed a mixed level reading lab class with around 10 students of levels 1 to 3. The students were of mixed cultural backgrounds. This was a complicated class as there were multiple courses being taught within one class to accommodate the different levels. It was taught virtually. The students first met in their virtual “homeroom” where the teacher could speak to everyone, then they broke out into individual “classrooms” based on the different courses and levels to work on their assignments. The teacher moved throughout each room to spend time working with each group.

The teacher worked with the students on pre-reading exercises. In one group, she worked with the students on prediction and previewing. She was teaching the students to look over a text before reading it intensively to develop an idea of what information is important. I think this is an effective strategy as it gives students the ability to go into an intensive reading with expectations of what it will be about, thus priming their brains and helping them understand the text better as they read it. Previewing gives the reader direction. In another group, the teacher worked on asking questions before reading a text. She provided the students with newspaper headlines and had them ask questions about what they hoped to learn in the text. I thought this was an important skill to teach as, like previewing, asking questions gives direction to reading. I would say it also helps pique the reader’s interest and motivate them to read, and fosters critical thinking skills.

Assessment in this class was informal. I think the teacher had planned to do more assessment, but unfortunately the students did not have access to the reading prior to class and could not prepare. The teacher adapted her approach to assessment and made it more spontaneous. In one group, she provided a piece of a text and asked the students to identify what genre of text it was and how they knew. When students successfully identified that it was an email and explained why, she moved to another room. In the room in which she was teaching students to ask questions, she assessed their ability to do so. She was looking for appropriate use of “who, what, when, where, why, how” questions. Without prompting the students to use these question words, they intuitively did so. The teacher seemed to consider this a success.

There were several challenges to learning in this class. The mixed levels made it a difficult class to teach, as the students had to be split in different “rooms” and the teacher only had a limited amount of time to work with each group. Students also were not discussing their work among themselves when the teacher was not in the room, though I am unsure if they were supposed to be. I think the virtual classroom setting provided a barrier to communication. The teacher and her students were communicating without any visual cues, and I think visual cues are extremely helpful for beginner English speakers. Learning was also stunted in this class as most students did not yet have their books, and the teacher had forgotten to upload the scanned reading onto Moodle before class. She was apologetic and said she was very overwhelmed, so it was just an unfortunate situation, and understandable given the new online format of teaching.

The main thing I would take away from this class is to extensively practice using the technology required for teaching an online class before teaching the class. If this teacher had had more time to practice—which I am sure she did not given the abrupt switch to online classes due to COVID-19—I think the class would have run much smoother and all of the materials would have been available. I would also be interested to see if the class would operate more effectively with more visuals. In this class, neither the teacher nor the students used their webcams, and the teacher did not use a PowerPoint or other material to present. Perhaps the students would be more engaged in learning and more accountable to participation if they could see others and be seen themselves.