My thoughts.....clouded by 12 hour work days,  24 Kindergartners, and a 2 year old at home, oh and Grad school! :) Yikes right.....

Coursework

            The coursework for this class was probably a little bit different for me. As a teacher who has been in a classroom now for 5 years, it was strange to be the observer instead of the one being observed. Of course, it also made me take a lot of how I do things in my classroom into consideration. I feel like I was able to take a lot of the things I was learning in class and implement them into my daily routine. At the same time, I was able to use new information to modify what I already do every day.

Processes for obtaining licensure

            I think we are very lucky in Tennessee that ESL is an add-on endorsement. In many states, it is treated like a separate subject. I would look for this to begin changing in states like Tennessee (and Kentucky) soon as the need for ESL teachers continues to spread to more rural parts of the country.

                       

Experiences working with ESL students

            I have been working with ESL students since the spring of 2007. I have always found the process to be a new and exciting adventure each day. The cultural diversity brings such richness to the classroom that not only do the students benefit from it, but I feel like I grow as a teacher and a person as well.

Application of your Wiki and related materials designed as part of specific classes

            The Wiki (and blogs) are a great place to keep track of everything you have worked on. As I finished each assignment in class, it was nice to know that I had easy, on line access to everything I had done. I am also excited that I can continue to use this as a way to help other teachers and parents when it comes to helping ESL students.

           

What advice do you have for others who intend to pursue the add-on and who hope to work with second language learners in the future?

            If you are looking to get into a rewarding field, working with ESL students is a wonderful field to work in. You will face challenges with them that you don’t always see and you will see just how good your skills are at creative problem solving and innovation. As far as getting the add-on endorsement goes, make sure to take advantage of the time you get to spend in a classroom so you can have a realistic idea of the environment you will step into when you get a job teaching ESL. If you are limited in the time you spend in a classroom, you will have very unrealistic expectations.

Literature Circles

What are your overall impressions of implementation?

            I felt it was a great idea and layout, but the implementation with Kindergarteners made it a little bit difficult as it took a lot of pre-teaching. This level of work would be more appropriate toward the end of the year. That is not to say, however, that it wasn’t valuable, it just took a lot of front-loading and teaching to make the organizers useful for them.

           

How did students react to the literature?

            They LOVED it! They wanted to read more books like the ones we’d been reading. I also think they loved the small group discussion of the books.

How did students react to discussing the selected texts?

            They had a great time talking about the stories and using rhyming words. It was very high interest for them.

How appropriate is the Literature Circle Technique for second language learners?

            I think it is wonderful, but I may need to adjust a few things to use it with such beginners not only to the language, but to reading and writing. This is already very similar to how I do my reading groups. The main addition to what I already do in reading groups is the use of multiple graphic organizers.

What changes would you make if you were to repeat this?

            I would not use three organizers. I would probably just use one, to be filled out as a group to help model the process of organizing thoughts on an organizer for future use.

What suggestions to you have for other ESL professionals considering implementing literature circles?

            I would make sure that you really think about the ability level of your students before you plan everything out. Make sure your organizers will be easy for your students to use. If not, you will spend a lot of time trying to get the students to understand how to use them. Once that’s accomplished, they may only be going through the motions of using the organizer without actually understanding why they are doing it.

Observation #4

What are your overall impression of this observation?

            I was most impressed with how all of the ELLs, no matter their language ability, can still function appropriately in the classroom as far as centers, seat work, reading groups, and whole group goal. Each student has their own particular set of coping mechanisms at hand when they don’t quite get it.

What did you learn as a result of the fieldwork?

            I learned that each student is different. I know this seems funny, but too often, teachers try to cover everything with one blanket. If I could take the time to spend that time with each student, I could keep those specific aspects of their lives in mind when I teach. It may not be possibly to do the full work up on each student, but taking bits and pieces from the process could be very beneficial. It would give me enough information to see exactly how to cover the needs of each student.

What is the value in case study research and analysis in terms of classroom practice?

            As I mentioned before, doing case studies like this could change not only how you teach each student, but how you teach the entire class. By developing tools for each student, your approach becomes quite different when you plan lessons. Then, when the students are in front of you and know about them, you will know which tools to use with each student.

What is the value of ethnographic narrative?

            Ethnographic narratives allow you understand your student’s point of reference to help you access their prior knowledge. By sitting down and having that conversation with my student, when I then have to teach numbers, I can go back to the picture she drew of her house and point out that her house number can be placed in order. This is just a small example of how much useful information you can gain, but the payoff is well worth the time.

How will this information assist future teachers (next year’s teachers) as well as yourself in the meeting the needs of this particular second language learner?

            This will allow me to easily tap into her prior knowledge. By watching her interact with centers and in other settings, I am able to see what frustrates her and how she solves problems. That way, when I see her in those situations, I know when to help her and when to back off and let her figure it out on her own. This also helps me see her as an individual as opposed to stereotype. This will come in extremely handy for her teacher next year as it will allow her to get to her as an individual early on in the year. I think this is an important part of how I approach my students now. In casual conversation, I can be more guided and directive with the types of questions I ask in order to learn all of these details.

Action Research

Thoughts

            Action Research is a very straightforward concept. Because of the simplicity, it allows you, as a teacher, to get right to the business of solving problems. As a teacher who deals with a wide variety of educational and language needs, I feel fairly confident in my ability to solve educational problems. However, Action Research has allowed me to fine tune these abilities by zeroing in on the heart of the issue. This allows me to look for changes and solutions I can use that will not only solve problems for one student, but possibly prevent problems for the entire group in the future.

Ideas

            The biggest and most important idea I have had as a result of my Action Research is the idea of front loading students with simple English vocabulary. When I was using pictures to represent words with a target sound, I was encountering major problems with students not recognizing the words in English, but in their native language. Often, the words did not have the target sound in them. By taking the time to teach the words we would be using, I removed a lot of roadblocks before we encountered them. This eased the remainder of the lesson as we moved from oral to written language. Sometimes, changing the order of instruction can alleviate many issues instead of encountering them when sticking to a previously set order of instruction.

Suggestions

            The most important thing I can think of to suggest to other ESL professionals is to keep in mind that oftentimes, the words we would normally use to help teach sounds to our students are not the same in their language. We can not count on our students to have the same familiarity as native speakers of English. If you teach with this in mind and address the problems early, you will greatly improve your students’ chances for successful language acquisition while saving yourself a lot of headache in the process.

Lesson Observation #2

Teaching Issues – The biggest problem I noticed is that the story exists only in the teacher’s manual. It is to be read orally by the teacher. There is no big book for the students to look at and no visuals to attach to the story. The students enjoyed the story, but have a harder time connecting to it because they must listen for every detail. The biggest concern in this classroom is the fact that there is a bathroom in the room. Unfortunately, this causes problems because students constantly ask to use the bathroom. The classroom is right next to the front office. Usually, when visitors come to the school, this is the classroom they see. While this is nice, it can be distracting to the students and to the teacher as well. The students are grouped with a shoulder partner. What sometimes happens is that one or both of the students do not participate in the brief discussions. This means that students don’t practice critical reading strategies such as making predictions.

Second Language Acquisition – We acted out parts of the fable as well as giving different parts of the story a motion for the students to do with their hands. This allowed students to understand some of the more difficult parts of the story as well as helped with recall. For example, when I ask the students “What is a Fable?” the students answer by pretending to stroke the long beard of an old man and say, “An oooooold story.” An interaction that works well with these students is to share and check predictions with their shoulder partner. It allows students to verbalize a prediction about the story in a low stress environment with very low stakes. If their prediction is wrong, it isn’t that big of a deal. If their prediction is right, they tend to get excited. Picture vocabulary cards were a great example of a good material for these students. The picture vocabulary cards enabled ELLs to quickly make a connection with new words and allowed them to reference them easily as they came up in the fable.

Ethnographic Perspective – It would be very beneficial as an ESL teacher to know if my students have older parents or siblings that speak English at home. If the student has them and I know it, I know that I can give homework to these students that can be worked on with help at home. At the same time, if the student does not have any English speakers at home, I know that I am dealing with a different situation and may need to help identify resources that can assist families with learning English. The fable we are reading, “The Bundle of Sticks”, is one of Aesop’s Fables. Because there are no pictures, students are able to use their imaginations to fill in the ethnic details of the characters. The theme in the story, sharing, is universal and therefore crosses cultures. None of the characters have names and are therefore ethnically unidentifiable. To bring culture into the situation, I asked students to talk about ways they share things within their families. Some of the students responded in such a way that reflected uneven sharing within their families between siblings. Whether the unevenness was perceived incorrectly by the student or real is unknown. However, it certainly showed that even within out small group of students that we have lots of diversity when it comes to sharing.

Just some thoughts.....

Lesson Observation #1

            The purpose of the lesson was to teach the students about “setting” in a story. I wanted to familiarize students with the words setting and get them to understand that the meaning of setting had to with where and when the story takes place.

            The students were introduced to the concept during the morning message. We talked about families and the different places that families go. Students were able to participate by talking about the places they go with their families. Then, we moved on to the oral language piece of the lesson. We made a chart to graph the beginning, middle and end of the story. Under each section, we talked about where the family was to focus in on the setting. We also identified the different things the families did in each location. Then, we reread the story and reviewed the concept by using a worksheet that helped us focus on the pictures in the story to find clues about where the families were. To help adapt for second language learners, we acted out the vocabulary words and stopped frequently for recall and identified patterns.

            The second language learners were able to identify that family was, for example, in a kitchen. It wasn’t as easy for them to name the objects that showed the family was in a kitchen, but by listening to their classmates, they were able to learn the English words for many of the items.

            The second language learners in the classroom are very involved in the classroom community. First and foremost, this is a Kindergarten classroom. Many of the students in the class come from diverse backgrounds and are at many different levels of language ability. This lends itself to a good sense of community as there is not a large group of students on grade level with a minority that is much lower. The students are not separated by language ability and students interact with each other by regularly talking to their shoulder partners. Second language learners are also able to get involved in even the most difficult aspects of the classroom, the content, by acting out vocabulary words with the rest of the class. To be a member of the classroom community, a student only needs to be present in order to get wrapped up in the fun.

            During this lesson, I was able to interact with the students by leading discussions as well as directly teaching content. Informally, however, I moved throughout the room encouraging students who were working hard as well as motivating students that were not as involved. If an observer had entered the room at any given time during this lesson, they would have seen a teacher engaging the students in a fun and exciting lesson about setting. The observer would have seen motivated students paying attention to the teacher and staying involved in the learning process. A second language learner, upon entering the room, would feel welcomed by the safe and comforting environment and would feel accepted by the friendly students and would more than likely see some students who look, or speak, like them.

New School Year!

Hello again. We are in full swing in a classroom full of precious Kindergarteners and in grad school as well. This is where I will introduce myself to you and tell you 'All about me'.  So here I am. I am Michelle Smith. I am a passionate educator and learner. This will be my 5th year teaching and my 6th year teaching ELL. I have been teaching 2nd grade ELL for the last two years and this year we had a big shake up in our building and I now teach Kindergarten ELL. I have 22 ready to go Kinders. I graduated from MTSU in 2006 with my Bachelor's in Early Childhood Education.  My husband is also an ELL teacher. I am a graduate student, teacher, wife and a mommy to an adorable toddler. Enjoy and keep checking back for new posts.