The first lesson on icebreakers had the goal of getting every student to talk while getting to know each other. 

The last activity was to interview each other. The group I worked with did a good job on having every person ask questions and also ask for clarification if they didn’t hear an answer for one person. This was useful to learn their level, or at least their confidence in using English, as everyone participated equally under the time pressure. The original plan was to have more time allotted. But the activity felt rushed. The teachers wanted the groups to choose one person to “interview” and get information for a mystery style presentation afterwards. I asked my group to choose one person. One student responded that they are still working on getting everyone’s names written down on the paper. I felt that was fair and the teacher feeling pressured for time shouldn’t affect the students if they feel like they still want to interview everyone. With the five minutes the students still got through over half of the questions for every person. There were about five students in the group. 

The next phase of the activity was to have the group describe only one person in the group for all the other groups in the class to guess the mystery person. The details weren’t explained but to me it seemed pretty logical to expect each person, including the mystery person, to state one fact from the interview. So I told this to the group and they even had the higher level students repeat the information back to me and shared it with the group. I really enjoyed seeing the collaborative work so quickly in the first class and with such little time. It was nice to see Korean and Chinese students taking initiate and being in control of their situation. We also were the first group to present and I felt proud as each student in a row stated one fact like instructed. I didn’t realize this simple presentation style would be miscommunication until we saw the other groups with some only have one person speaking all the facts. At the beginning of class the professor told the students that the rules of the class were everyone should be busy all the time. So looking at how in rushed or stressful situations it is important to let the big sisters know specifically what is expected of them during instruction and to students to find ways to get everyone involved. This will help me during my week of teaching to try to problem solve potential differentiation of “speaking weight” before they arise.

I don’t write any of the above to place blame on anyone. I’m just stating what happened for the purpose of streamlining speaking and participation expectations on the fly with also ample preparation before the class. I think that the more big sisters get familiar with classroom expectations as well as students, then something small like this will be prevented. Since Yuri and I are doing the first “proper” week of a themed lesson, we should plan on informing all the big sisters on the same expectations. I also enjoy big sisters to have freedom if they wish to take the activity in a fun way with their group that still allows each student to actively participate.