Focus for this week was formal narration. We used reporting verbs as a way to accomplish this. This was built on the previous classes of Week 7 with connectors in narration. The goal was to have students narrate on topics that are more formal so that it's knowledge that is also not easily familiar with them.

Tuesday the activities seemed to be active enough to have students motivated and engaged. The professor mentioned that beforehand the students might feel a little soggy from midterm week. So our first activity was melee and they said either a direct quote or an indirect form of that quote. They were to find their matching statement. After the activity, I asked the students who finished earlier if they could see the connection between the direct quote and the reporting verb used. Some cases the reporting verbs were 'warned', 'promised', or 'advised'. Common ones were also 'told' and 'said'. I also asked the little sisters to think of another reporting verb that could be used to describe the direct quote.

Sadly, one student did not have a partner for the first activity. I'm not sure if we lost the card before handing them out to students or there were uneven numbers of students. A couple came in late, so the logistics of it is mysterious.

The last task the students were creating a new narration of a children's story through the eyes of the antagonist or another character. They could also draw 3 pictures to help them with the narration. I saw students drawing and taking notes down to help them with the narration once it came time to share with another group. One group did not have any drawings. So when it came time to share, the listeners were a little disappointed. I think the drawings would have also helped the narrators stay on track with the storytelling. I gave time reminders for the last group to share, but they still took a slower time to finish the story when it was their second time telling it. So I think pictures would have helped them.

For the most part, Tuesday's activities finished as allocated. 

On Thursday, the task was more complex and it was hard to keep track of which groups were able to complete the final task well. Again, the first activity was melee and the students seemed interested in the activity while also not spending too much of the class time on it.

For planning the news report video on a topic influenced by culture, it seems that two or three of the groups were more motivated and took organized notes to help them for filming. One group seemed to struggle with getting content for notes and like to plan more verbally for pre-planning material.

When it came time to film, we allocated 20 minutes for actual filming. One group was successful at time management and completed easily within the time frame. One or two groups started filming about the last 5 minutes. Even though a set of criteria was given before and after filming videos, the students only chose their own videos for the "chosen" new group for Sookmyung News. I also think that students were more interested in re-watching their own videos. When I saw a couple students watching other groups, they didn't even have the sound loud enough to hear. So overall, I think students are generally more interested in their own work and not others. So perhaps if there is a final task that needs a final step, I (we) should create a rubric for students to self-assess their own group work. 

Overall, time was more manageable with constant allocated time given with the big timer on the screen and reminders of time remaining for most activities. A couple activities ended before or within the time so a reminder was not necessary for the whole class.

For directions, there were a couple clarification questions from little sisters once an activity started but they easily asked at the start. There were models for most of the activities, and it did not seem like there was much confusion this week on directions. The big sisters were also very helpful as I observed on Tuesday for using reporting verbs for each activity.

The challenge for formal narration was creating activities that seemed different enough from each other. I think the students were engaged for the most part this week and it's a combination of the lesson planning as well as a cooperative effort by the big sisters and teaching partners. ​