Lupita: From past readings I have learned that it is important to call on all students in the classroom. One of the readings I read for this class a few weeks ago ( I think) talked about the importance of allowing students to think their thoughts aloud. Lupita has ideas and they may not be the same ideas as the rest of her classmates but they also might be the same. If they are different, then it is important to hear her points of view. If they are the same as others, then it is just as important for her to voice her ideas. Mrs. Potter won’t know where Lupita truly stands in academics until she begins calling on her. Lupita is clearly doing well in puzzles and seems to be a bright student in that area but may just be shy and does not raise her hand in class. We have learned in class that some students learn best through talking and if she is not doing well, it may be because she is not sharing her thoughts aloud. Do more group work in the classroom.
Jonathon: We learned in this week’s reading we about figuring out what the student likes. This is important in this scenario because if you find out what the student likes, he will be more interested in reading the material. I would structure more fun reading time into the daily schedule and give him books he would like and be interested in. I would also send books home he would like and have him read with his parents or guardian. Also, I could structure more teacher involvement in reading and have him read to me once a week or ask for parent volunteers to come in and have all the students read to one of us adults once a week so I do not single him out.
Eddie: From the reading we read this week about Marcus, I think it would be helpful to give Eddie something to fiddle with and squeeze when he is expected to sit and pay attention. This gives him something to do with his hands while sitting and participating in group time. Mrs. Potter found that Eddie is interested in frogs but maybe did not catch the part about the frog eggs. Ask him what he learned from the lesson instead of a specific question. The tadpoles would have helped him focus and be more interested in the subject because he needs visual aids (said in this week’s reading).
Lupita: I agree with Alex that Mrs. Potter does not seem to know where Lupita stands academically. It seems to me that Mrs. Potter has made assumptions about what Lupita is capable of based on her background and the information that she DOES know. I would suggest that Mrs. Potter takes time to understand Lupita better on an academic level as well as personally. This could be done through a home visit or an interview with different tasks (like puzzles or math problems) to get a better understanding of what she is capable of and where she can still improve. Understanding Lupita's home life can also help her integrate her culture into the classroom. We often read about how allowing students to share their culture with the class (such as teaching the class Spanish words) can help make them more comfortable and give them that sense of status among their peers. I also agree with Alex when she says to give Lupita more opportunities to talk and share ideas. We read about how ELLs need many opportunities to use the language, even with social settings, to help them learn and improve. It is also extremely important to hold Lupita to the same expectations as the other children when it comes to participation and quality of work so that she has every opportunity to challenge herself.
ReplyDeleteJonathon: I really like Alex’s idea about tailoring reading more to Jonathon’s interests to help encourage him to read. I believe it is important to make reading meaningful to children and an excellent way to do that is through their own interests. Finding a book that they are interested in will help to intrinsically motivate the student and the more students are exposed to reading, the better they become at it. I like Alex’s idea about giving Jonathon more formal instruction by having him read to me but I feel like this can be difficult given there are 23 other students that need to be kept busy during this time. While the parent idea sounds great, it also sounds like an impossible feat. I think that Jonathon needs more structure when reading directions for assignments so that he can at least have a jumping point for where to start. I think having him read the directions to an assignment could be helpful practice and gets rid of the issue of him having to ask for help. The teacher can help clarify any beginning questions at that point and it is a way for him to get started. I think a modification to Alex’s idea of parent volunteers is to have students read together in pairs or groups of three to practice reading aloud and that way they can help each other read. This of course will need structuring with picking groups and instructing the students how to help each other, but I think it will help accomplish what Alex was looking for without asking parents to all take time to come in.
Eddie: I definitely agree with Alex’s point about giving Eddie something to hold on to when he is having trouble sitting still. In a classroom I student taught in for my early childhood endorsement, we had “fidgets” that were objects such as squishy balls or curly plastic strings that children who had a difficult time sitting still like Eddie could use during times that they were expected to sit quietly. I also like Alex’s idea about having Eddie share something he knows about frogs instead of asking him a recitation question that involves him recalling information he has heard. I also feel that the tadpoles could have been distracting to him so maybe Mrs. Potter could have moved the tadpoles while the information was being given and allow the children to take more time to see the tadpoles at a later time when they could do their own exploring. I feel this could have been distracting to many students especially if they are interested in frogs or have never seen tadpoles before.
I go to my placement for my TE494 class this semester every Wednesday for 3 hours, so I get to observe three different groups of ELL students. Like the article I read, there are absolutely no easy way for dealing with the challenge of providing effective literacy instruction to students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, but my mentor teacher did a very good job as Alex has suggested that have more teacher involved and have the students to have the chance to at least read to one adult once a week. She has one extra page on the back of their workbooks for people who they have read the book to sign. The student who left me with a very special impression is a boy who is now in second grade. He is exactly the second type of ELL learners—recent arrivals with limited or interrupted formal schooling. He also has some similar problems with the Eddie case that Alex has mentioned. He is from France originally and he’s sister is in fourth grade now at the same school with him. He was born in France and came to the U.S. four month ago. They both were born in the U.S. and by the age of 4, she can speak English and French fluently. However, they went back to France for a while and by the time they came back to the U.S., he’s sister couldn’t speak any English anymore, and he of course doesn’t speak any English at all. Then after he’s sister got back into school, she picked English up very fast, although she is still in the ELL class, her English proficiency is considered in intermediate level. This second grade French boy is very energetic, so it is very hard to let him sit down and work on the class materials. My mentor teacher will listen to whatever he wants to say at any time as long as he wants to. She is not like the teachers I used to see that would yell at a student like this and force them or put some negative reinforcement to let him sit down and work on his works quietly. She tries to get out as much English as she could get out from him. So even if when they are focusing doing a picture book, he all the sudden started to talk about what happened with his mom in the morning before he came to school, the teacher will listen to him carefully and repeat and recast what he has said with correct English. He sometimes went back and repeated following the teacher again. She always listens to his stories and even asks him more questions to get him to talk more in English. Because he is a second grader already, and he’s written English is still at a level of learning how to spell words. Because of the teacher’s encouragement, he is confidence when he writes even though he writes down the words with wrong spelling. The teacher usually asks him to read whatever he wrote down on the paper and then write the correctly spelled words underneath. She teaches him about stretching the word to hear out the sounds in the word to help him spell in the right way easier. Because the teacher is easy going and listen to him all the time, so he is very open up to the teacher, and only she can get him to concentrate and focus for a while. The teacher teaches him how to stretch the word on the white board, and she will write down the sounds that he could get out of the word and then encourage him by saying “you have done a very good job, and there are four letters in this word and you can hear 3 of them already”, then she will tell him why there’s another sound that he couldn’t hear very clearly and she will explain the change of the sounds because of the vowels. He would always will to work more with my mentor teacher. I think my mentor teacher is the kind of the teacher that is mentioned in the article that has created opportunities for all children to formally and informally play the role of expert, and she let the children know that she valued their knowledge as teachers and as bilinguals.
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