English Learners

There are five English Learners in the Kindergarten class I work with. I have worked with this teacher for two years now and I am impressed with her ability to include all the children. I think I will just list and comment on some of the many things she incorporates in to her class to support her English learners.

1. She teaches them the Pledge of Allegiance in English and Spanish. They sing the birthday song in English, Spanish and Sign Language.  I think this helps all the children. Those who don't speak Spanish can learn and understand that people are different, but that's a good thing. Those who don't speak English can also learn, but they can have that comfort of their first language. I also think this builds on common ground. Everyone celebrates birthdays and sings birthday songs.  The children can see commonalities.

2. Reading materials. There are different sections on each reading sheet that comes home each day. She gives each child the same reading sheet, but for two of out ESL students, she doesn't expect them to read all the sections like the other students.  They struggle more with English and she focuses more on the basics with them.  There is one girl that can read everything you but in front of her, but she can't answer any questions about what she read. She lacks comprehension. So, her reading involves more question and answer practice than some of the others.

3. She puts an ESL student next to a chatty english-speaking student. She says the quickest way for them to learn English is to sit by English speaking students. Of course, that makes sense, but I hadn't thought of that before.

4. She speaks Spanish.  What a huge help.  If you don't speak Spanish, and the parents don't either, how can you communicate? Often times the student becomes the translator. That is my biggest question right now...do I seek some type of Spanish classes, if not a degree in Spanish ? How much more effective could I be?

Blog Entry #2

I would like to share my experience with Katelyn this week.

Fridays all the children are tested on their progress in reading for the week. I was able to sit with five children, individually.  Katelyn was my last student of the day. Katelyn couldn't focus on the task of reading. She was looking all over the room and told me she didn't want to read.  I knew, from information given to me by the teacher, that Katelyn's parents didn't spend much time reading with her. I got the feeling, from the way she was acting, that if she told someone she didn't want to read, she didn't have to.

I started to feel like I wasn't going to be able to help her accomplish her reading assignment because she continued to fight against it. Then I had an idea. She was so distracted by the children doing various activities, I had to bring her attention back to me. I have been reading more about auditory learners since the little test we took a week or so ago. She seemed to display some of the same characteristics as one of my children has who is an auditory learner.  We went out into the hallway where there was a lot less noise. I started to ask her questions about herself and reading. Once I was able to get her attention I took a different approach to her reading. I would ask her what sound the letters made instead of having her look at the letter on the paper and telling me the sound. Once she felt more confident with her letter sounds she was able to read the phonetic words without any problems.

By the time we were done, she had made quite a bit of progress.  More important, she could see the progress she had made. It was a neat experience for me and I hope for her.  Unfortunately, when you are one teacher among 25 children, those types of experiences are few and far between.  I don't know how you can spend time like that with one child while 24 others are needing attention as well. It seems like such a challenge. I am curious, as the weeks go on, to see how the teacher I am working with does this.