There are a
few goals that I have set for myself as we work with the students in the
preschool and kindergarten classes at Brigham. These goals are: 1) Help the
students learn in the best way for them, 2) Gain experience working with
English Language Learners, and 3) Gain confidence when working with English
Language Learners. I think the first day in the preschool classroom went well,
but it was not really what I was expecting it to be. We were told that the
preschool class would not have any English Language Learners, but this was not
the case. There was definitely one, but more likely, more than that. There was
one boy who spoke Spanish, and clearly had a hard time understanding us. While
we were playing the get to know you game, the boy next to him had to translate
what we were saying to him in Spanish. It was good that we decided to do this
game, because it helped us get to know these students better. If we had known
there were English Language Learners in the classroom, we would have prepared
better for this. It made me realize that I need to figure out how to
communicate with these students the best way that I can. It did not look like
there was much Spanish, or other languages, incorporated in the classroom. For
example, there were not any Spanish words on the wall, or around the classroom,
and the teacher spoke to the students in English. This makes me wonder whether
the students actually did not know English, or if they were just not listening.
As of right now, in order to reach my goals, I plan on getting to know the
students in my classroom well, including what languages they speak, and the
learning style that works best for them. I will learn how to best communicate
with them. I think this semester will help me get a better understanding of
working with English Language Learners. I have not had that much experience of
my own working with these students, so I am hoping to gain experience, as well
as gain confidence.
Unfortunately,
I do not have any ELL students in my classroom right now, so I don’t get to
work with these students as much as I would like to. I think I would really
enjoy working with these students and trying to figure out how to communicate
with them, and their parents. In my future classroom, if I have any ELLs, I
would like to incorporate their native languages in the classroom. I could
label things in the classroom in their language, I could translate letters to
be sent home for parents if needed, and I could provide books that are in the
students’ native languages. It would definitely be challenging to have ELL
students in my classroom, depending on their level, but I think I could definitely
do it.
I found an
article online about helping ELL students succeed in the classroom. I think it
has some very helpful tips for working ELLs. This could be a good reminder when
working ELL students. It is http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/760
.
Exceeds: I provided an article on how to help ELL students
succeed in the classroom.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteBeing in the preschool classroom was also different than I expected it to be. I was not prepared for ELL students to be in the classroom, but even if I was, I figured all of the students would speak a little bit of English. I have never been in a classroom before where everyone did not speak English, so I was a bit thrown off on how to go about the situation. I was waiting for the teacher to step in, but she never did. I am happy another boy in the class was able to translate for him. I was also wondering if the boy could understand English or not because he appeared to understand the teacher when she told him to listen, but he did not listen to us when we told him the directions. Maybe he just did not want to listen to us? I'm not sure what his thoughts were at the time, but it is something we should definitely ask the teacher about! Learning how to incorporate my ELL students' native languages into the classroom is one of my goals for the semester. I was planning on looking around the room the next time I am there to see if the teacher did this in any way, but after reading your post, it seems like she does not have anything on the walls in students' native languages. I wonder if she has any books in their language. I will probably ask her about this too. I am looking forward to seeing what the kindergarten classroom looks like and meeting the kids so I can compare it to the preschool class!
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ReplyDeleteKatie,
ReplyDeleteI was so thrown off by the one student not speaking any English and it definitely made me nervous when considering the rest of our time there but I loved the point you made about gaining confidence in these type of situations. This is like my number one fear when entering the field of education that I am not prepared enough to deal with families that speak a different language. Therefore, I myself would like to get more comfortable in working with ELL students and I think these types of class experiences help us do so. Our goals seem to be very similar which I think will be helpful when working within the same group. Asking the teacher questions and doing our own research are great ways to get the ball rolling. As we noticed during the time period in which the students were working on their drawings, the teacher stepped in and told the student to listen. This demonstrated to us that the student was able to understand what she was saying and do the directions. This is comforting because now we know that he at least has some working understanding of English and we can use that to our advantage. We can start at the student’s level and work to improve his understanding abilities but also our communicating skills. I love the article you also shared with us, these are great tips that I could see myself implementing in my future classroom in future situations with ELL students.