This past week I was in the pre-k classroom at Brigham. This
was my first time being in the pre-k room and interacting with these students. This classroom of students was very different
from the kindergarten class I was in last week. As soon as we stepped in the
room, the kindergarteners were interactive, engaged, and talking with us. The
pre-k room was much different and they were very quiet. They were much more shy
and it did not help that they had never seen or met us before.
I have
been able to reflect on my experience in the pre-k classroom and my goals that
I set for myself when working with ELL students. My main goal is to become more
confident when working with ELL students and I do not feel like I gained much
more confidence after this past week being in the pre-k classroom. It is
difficult to gain more experiences and interactions with students when it is
our peer’s day to teach their lesson. However, we did help with an activity and
we worked with another partner and two students. One of the students in our
group was really sweet, interacted with us, and very easy to understand. The
other student in our group was also very sweet, a little timid, and sometimes
difficult to understand. I think that he was timid because he did not know who
we were. I asked him his name when we first sat down together and I still have
no idea what he said. I asked him to repeat his name and I still could not
figure it out. I feel bad asking them to repeat over and over what they said. I
know this goal is going to take time and I will slowly build my confidence as
we are in each classroom.
My
other goal is to learn more about the different accommodations I can make for
English Language Learners in the classroom. We have only been in each grade
level once and have not had a lot of experience in the classrooms or with the
students. This is a goal that I cannot say I have made many improvements on.
One thing that I have noticed my peers incorporating in the classroom is some
of the student’s native language, Spanish. I think this is a great way to
incorporate the students’ language because it can help the students learn what
we are talking about more if we are using language familiar to them. I think it
would be helpful to include visuals for the directions given to the students,
especially for the pre-k classroom. I think this will help all of the student,
including the English Language Learners because they can verbally hear our
directions and visually as well.
So far
since we have been at Brigham I have been able to see and work with all of the different
students in the pre-k and kindergarten classroom. I am confident that I will be
able to build more confidence when working with English Language Learners in
the classroom and what accommodations would best help students in these
classrooms.
Exceeds: Exceeded the word limit
