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Ingrid HeidrickKeymaster
Angela, I can’t tell you how much I love your ideas for this unit. It incorporates everything we’re talking about to prepare kids for reading. By dissecting a pumpkin, do I understand correctly that you plan on cutting one up in class and letting kids look and feel what’s inside? One thing I would encourage you to do is give students questions and sentence starters or frames to support the specific vocabulary words you want them to use: stem, seeds, pulp, etc. Examples are: How does the ____ of the pumpkin look and feel? Then students can insert the word and start a conversation with their partner: The pulp feels wet and sticky. It looks orange. It looks like string. They can also have a word bank of adjectives to describe the pumpkin. This way, for those learners who need it, they have supports to hold an academic conversation instead of having to think a long time about how to say something.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterBelow is a response from Terlyn posted in another place that I’ve moved now to the forum – I’ll send out an email with some clarifications on how to post to the forum. What is interesting about her comment is that she never recalls being taught grammar explicitly. Indeed, it’s not something we teach explicitly anymore. As we get into the reading and writing weeks of the course, I will go into when it’s appropriate to do some syntactic awareness with your students. Also, as a Special Education teacher, Terlyn brings up an important point that others have also commented on: body language and non verbal cues are a crucial part of learning (and teaching).
“As a former ELL and now a Bilingual Special Education teacher I find myself in a crossword in which I don’t recall any formal instruction of grammar rules to recall the purpose and reasoning behind the rules we follow. As student I recall build on and learning from the mistakes that were brought to my attention by my teachers and professor. I guessed that I must of pick it up along the way, that resonate so much while listening to the lecture and thinking of process in which ELL morph through the different stages of literacy. During my first few months of teaching 1st grade I found myself learning to break things down and teaching myself some of basic ideas (Phonological skills) in order to better support my students as they learn to read and write. Let’s say that as they explore writing and often ask me how to write a word, we both were sounding out the word and making connection between sounds and letters. It’s quite the learning journey as I think about it more. I personally don’t recall knowledge of relying on letter sounds as my journey to learning to read in English was quite different. I arrive here very young, however when I enrolled in school in second grade I already knew how to read and write in Spanish so I relied on that knowledge as I learned English. As I analyze the text we read and think of my experiences as teacher in my classroom I gain a better understanding of my students learning process. Language is such very important component that is we often overlook all of its component. In the field of special Education we tend to over emphasize the need for verbal/oral language. But is often necessary learn to accept most form of expression even if is not oral language. I learn to be in tune with my students body language, nonverbal language, sign language as well those voice intonations and utterance in order to learn and communicate with my students. I think that as professionals we often don’t realize or aware of how broad the definition of language and the power it possesses. In order to look at larger picture we must unpack the way we look and think of language and all of the factors that influences our views.”
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterBoth Jee and Angela describe being frustrated and feeling helpless (at different points) when faced with not understanding. There’s a whole socio-emotional component to learning that we won’t cover in this class, but that’s important to remember. Our students are often struggling and feeling a lack of confidence which affects their learning. Jee touched upon something really important: the high stakes involved in the learning (and teaching) happening today – remember only 27% of ELLs will graduate from high school.
Both of you also described applying every fluent reader strategy you have to making sense of the text – THOSE are the strategies you want to focus on in your instruction! Make them EXPLICIT in your instruction so students can see what you are doing, and can then practice doing it on their own.
Also, you mentioned the important of body language. Learning is multi-sensory, and when comprehension needs support, body language, gesturing, etc. is SUPER important. Also, repetition of key words and phrases!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterFirst of all, it makes me so happy to hear that your students are getting art class – so many schools I visit don’y have this. Secondly, the reality we are living in in our education system is that ALL teachers are language teachers. That’s why it’s so crucial for all teachers to receive training in ELL pedagogy.
You can definitely incorporate literacy into your art instruction! What I would suggest is to choose themes that sync with what the children are learning in their classrooms – so, if your 3rd graders are learning about frogs and their habitat, incorporate that theme into an art project – this gives students more consistency. Do your word collage idea with academic vocabulary words like “tadpole” or “hibernation” or “bayou” (this is next week’s theme that I’ve demonstrated for you in the lecture). Practice sounding out the words with the kids, practice “drawing” letters that they can decorate and create mini word collages with. I will try and find some resources for you about art and literacy.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterAgain, here is Angela’s response to this question that I moved from another location to the forum:
As a fluent reader of English, Spanish, and Greek, I would imagine I would understand a little bit more that I actually do. I am not able to understand anything, and it is quite frustrating. The knowledge and skills that I used to try to read and understand this text is the left to right reading concept, and sentence structure identifying the beginning and end of a sentence with the use of punctuation. I also used my decoding skills to read the words although I did not recognize any of them. I even tried to use my knowledge of other languages to see if any words were familiar, but no luck. A lot of times I am able to use words that are similar to other languages to find the meaning, such as puerta is door in Spanish, and porta is door in Greek.
Trying to read this text makes me feel frustrated and hopeless. It does not motivate me in trying to figure it out. I can now relate to new comers who are thrown into classroom with no help or support. After you provided visuals, repetition, pointing, and body language, I became more motivated in trying to figure out the meaning of the text. All of a sudden, words like trinken made sense, it actually sounds like “drinking”. I was able to grasp a lot of information that I never thought I could. It is so interesting to see how much the strategies that you incorporated in the German lesson helped a non-speaker of German understand. Once I understood the vocabulary with the use of visuals and pointing, I was able to connect them to my prior knowledge, and make sense of the information.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterBelow is Angela’s description of some learners she has (I moved the post to the forum from where it was). Although it was not required to post these profiles, they are interesting to read. What I love about these profiles is that exemplify the diverse situations teachers have to deal with linguistically. It sounds like Yonefe needs more time in an English academic environment to develop his literacy and oral language. Kindergarten is still really young to be learning decoding. Phonics are important, but I would consider focusing on sight word recognition and single letter decoding too, so that he can start to gain some more fluency.
I’m so glad that Adam has the opportunity to get time with you despite the fact that he’s commanding. THIS is where you can really focus on word building activities like morphological awareness and writing skills.
Week 1 Activity Workbook
Activity #1 Learner ProfilesYonefe is a five year old boy whom I pull out from a Kindergarten ICT class to provide ESL services 4 times a week. He was born in NYC, and speaks mostly Spanish at home with his family. He is a very verbal boy who loves to participate during class discussions, and is mostly on topic when answering comprehension questions. He struggles with alphabet knowledge, decoding, and sight word recognition. During my program I provide him with both read alouds introducing vocabulary, and engaging him through questioning, as well as phonics through the Fundations Program. The Foundations program provides hands on activities that allow students to recognize letters and sounds, blend sounds to read CVC words, and letter formation. I believe this program has helped Yonefe progress, however he is still falling behind in literacy compared to his peers.
Janesty is an entering, five-year-old girl that I service in Yonefe’s group. There are 6 Kindergarten students ranging from Entering level to Emergent level in this group. They are all from the same class. Yonefe is the only one with an IEP. Janesty recently arrived to the U.S. She is from Puerto Rico and hardly spoke a word of English in September when she arrived. I speak Spanish, and allowed her to answer questions in her native language. By June, Janesty participated in English with only one or two words in Spanish. She has an accent, however has progressed so much in speaking, reading, writing, and listening. Although Janesty is on grade level compared with the other children in her class, I believe she will still need vocabulary and academic language, and would greatly benefit from lessons that allow her to learn content material through visuals supporting academic vocabulary.
Adam is a nine-year-old Commanding ESL boy that I service twice a week. Although Adam is a student who is excelling in his fourth grade class, by law he requires two more years of ESL services after passing the NYSESLAT test. His oral language and literacy skills in English are excellent, however he still benefits from lessons that reinforce academic vocabulary. After ESL students learn to effectively communicate in English, it still takes a few more years for them to be able to catch up with the academic language used by their L1 peers in the content area classroom. These students benefit from vocabulary rich lessons that challenge them with content-based critical thinking questions.
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