On
Thursday, September 18th I went to Brigham Elementary School for the first time. For the first week I was in the Kindergarten
room. We played a game with the students
to get to know them a little bit more and their names as well. We did an introduction lesson about scientists,
what they thought scientists looked like, and what they did. It was so much fun seeing what their drawings
of their scientists and there were so many different scientists by their appearance
and what they did.
Before
we went to Brigham, we made a goal for ourselves in regards to working with
English Language Learners. My goal this
semester is to be more confident when working with English Language
Learners. The other part of my goal is
to learn more about the accommodations to make for English Language Learners in
the classroom. I decided on these two
goals because I have not worked with very many students that are English
Language Learners. I also had an
experience with an English Language Learner student in my third grade clinical
placement. She spoke hardly any English
and I did not know how to communicate with her, how to help her, and what
accommodations help her when doing school work.
My confidence level went down when I was working with her because there
were times that I could tell she did understand what I trying to do to help
her. I wanted to try my best to help her
because my cooperating teacher hardly ever interacted with this student. This was an experience that I will not forget
and it is why I have made confidence and accommodations my goal for this
semester while at Brigham Elementary School.
The only way I think to become more confident when working with any type of student is experience. I know that I will gain confidence throughout this semester while working with English Language Learners because I will hands on experience in the classroom. I learn best through experience and hands on experiences. I will have the opportunity to work with a variety of English Language Learners and in two different grade levels. This will definitely be beneficial in building my confidence. I also wrote as an action step to my goals is to practice ways to help those students. Throughout the rest of the semester I will be working with the students at Brigham and be able to practice the different ways to help those students. I think that I will learn a lot because of being able to work with two different grade level classes and the variety of students in these classrooms.
After
the very short thirty minutes of being in that classroom, I am excited to work
with these students and get to know them more!
I know that being in these classrooms I am going to learn a lot from
them and learn more about how to work with English Language Learners. I am definitely going to build my confidence
as I gain more experience from these adorable students!
Exceeds: I exceeded
the word limit.
Kelcey,
ReplyDeleteYou and I had almost identical goals. My goals also had to del with my confidence when working with ELL and multi-lingual students in a classroom. I think we all have had a lot of direct instruction on how to teach diverse learners but very limited experience working with diverse learners. That especially involves children that are English language learners. I think we all just want to feel more prepared for our own classroom and how to teach in an area that is a different cultural make up than the one we grew up in. I also learn best through hands on experiences as you said. I think this class is really helpful because it provides us with a lot of science material to teach to our future students and almost a whole new curriculum for science. Not only does this class do that, but it also provides us with hands on learning experiences for teaching students with linguistic diversity. I think this class at brigham will really help me expand my horizons, so to speak, to teaching students who have different language needs and how to help those students not only in science but in all general class topics in a regular school day. I’m really excited to see what this semester holds for all of us and how we will all get through the semester between PDS and other courses but I think we are all getting priceless experiences during this semester.
Kelcey,
ReplyDeleteI think that the goals you set forth for yourself are great! Gaining confidence is always an important step in teaching, but knowing about different accommodations is not something that everybody thinks to include. I really like how you included that in your goal. I also think it is good that you based your goals on past experiences that you had. Too often students who are English language learners are ignored in the classroom because teachers don’t know what to do with them. You saw this and didn’t like it. By remembering that experience, you will try to make all of your students feel welcome and like they belong. I can tell that you want to reach each of your students and make sure that you are doing all that you can to help them be successful. Having this mindset, paired with the experience we will all get at Brigham this semester, will aid you in accommodating the English language learners in your future classroom.
Another aspect that you mentioned was that we will be working with two different grade levels. I didn’t really think about that aspect before. Although preschool and kindergarten are sequential, they are very different. Developmentally, children are growing tremendously during those years. Being able to gain experience with those two age groups will give us insight into some developmentally appropriate practices and accommodations for the various grade levels. We should be able to see some progression and get an idea of how it might further progress in higher grade levels. All of this information will also contribute to our confidence levels in working with English language learners.