May 2,2012

Today there were more people in class. Ms. Austin announced that instead of warm up with board work. They would start with the book work. So, everybody got into their groups. Today, Ms. Austin said I would be working with book 2 today. I have worked with the group of book 2 before. Although, I did forget if it was many people involved with that group. It was only two ladies I was working with today. I worked with Marie and Sandra. We worked out of the grammar book first.  We were working on the grammar rule on a topic I didn’t really know. I didn’t know how to effectively teach and explain it. The grammar rule was changing the “be” verb and none “be” verb into negative. I was confused. Basically it was changing “was” to “wasn’t” and “did to didn’t + base verb.” So, I was trying to explain when to use didn’t + base verb and when it was just was the word weren’t or wasn’t  by itself. I was concerned. I asked them if I was teaching okay. They didn’t really understand at first was I was saying.  Marie answered later “you teach okay. I can understand you. “ I was glad I wasn’t too difficult to understand. Sandra was having more of a problem though. When I would ask her for the answer she would look for an example and give me the answer that way. Usually I accept that, but today I wanted to see if they knew the reason why. So I asked and Marie could tell me. Sandra couldn’t. Later Marie left to take a test, so I was able to work with Sandra more one on one to work on the grammar. I asked Ms. Austin how I could better explain how the grammar rule. She said did involve action. “Be” is the past of “is.” So it has to do with feeling. She also said working the examples would help with the explanation also. After explaining it, I was better able to understand it. I also noticed that they had a little difficulty with the contractions. Marie could say wasn’t and weren’t. Sandra couldn’t say wasn’t or weren’t.