Blog 5

This week I worked in the Kindergarten classroom with Saralyn and Andrea. They taught about the four seasons. I saw a great deal of bi-lingual education in this lesson plan. Because of the Spanish use in this lesson plan I have seen progress in my goals for this semester.

In the beginning of the lesson Saralyn and Andrea showed a video to the students that showed all seasons and labeled them in both Spanish and English.  This is something I will have to keep in mind as I approach the time where I have my own classroom. I am very concerned about have ELL students in my own classroom not being fluent in any language other than English.  I hope to find creative was such as this to integrate my students’ native languages not only in my lesson plans but also in my classroom community.

In this teachers room I see so many different ways to incorporate both Spanish and English and help ELL students excel in her room. She has English words accompanied with their Spanish words, visuals, and many other ideas to help her students achieve to their highest potential, not matter what language they learn best in. I hope to find classrooms like this around or even in the school that I am placed at. This way even if my classroom is not full of ELL students like this school I can still expose my students to another language. I would say it is very possible I will have students in my class each year that speaks another language and representing their culture in my room will be so important!

I think the biggest part of this lesson that helped me strive towards my goal was the fact that Saralyn and Andrea had the teacher helpers teach the students about a specific season. I was in charge of teaching Fall to the students. When I sat down with a new group of students and said, “Fall” many of the students replied by saying “otoño”. I loved the responses that the students gave as they spoke in their native language.

I have also reflected on having the privilege of being in both the Prekindergarten room and the Kindergarten room. I have noticed big differences in the rooms themselves. I feel that the Kindergarten classroom was a more powerful environment for ELL students as there was many more visuals and translations around the room. This was an observation that was noted with only being in the room two times.  I feel that the Kindergarteners showed more evidence of learning English than the Pre-kindergartners showed. I would like to be able to go back into the Kindergarten room one last time before the semester is over to take notes on the different things she has done to make such a strong learning community.

I do not have any ELL students in my clinical site right now but that is not to say that those students would not benefit from language diversity in the classroom. I would love to set up some language diversity in my clinical classroom! They currently are on a sign language kick where they are teaching themselves each letter of the alphabet and signing their name. I think that my third graders would be very interested in learning a new language. We do have multiple Indian students who speak other native languages at home. It would be great to see them teach their culture and even some of their language to our other students.

Over all I feel that this week was the most powerful in reaching for my goals at becoming a more proficient teacher working with ELL students.  After reflecting one this week’s experience I can say that I feel more comfortable when thinking about working with ELL students.  I feel as though I have a much better understanding, after being in these classrooms all semester, as to how I can find better ways to communicate with ELL students as well as build relationships with them.

Exceeds: I went over the word count and related to my clinical setting.