Observation 2

The students were just getting done with their testing as I came through the door. I helped clean up the desk while Mrs. Wagner took the students back to their room. As I was waiting for Mrs. Wagner to return, I observed Gach do his math. Now he is working on his 9 in multiplication. Gach was actually better at the 9’s than his 8’s.

Mrs. Wagner came back and I went to observe her group. This group was third graders. She was teaching the student pronouns. It was interesting how fast some students are able to catch on and how others struggles. When Mrs. Wagner got done with pronouns, the students continued working on their worksheet they did not get done. They were filling their worksheet related to the book that they read. I went around helping, giving, suggestions, and answering questions students had.

Mrs. Wagner talked about cause and effect as well. I thought it was funny how the students would guess the cause and not know the effect. I felt like they were on the right track but weren’t there fully. It was time for this group to go back so Mrs. Wagner took them back.

I waited for the next group. The second group that came back was Mrs. Wagner were second graders. Again, Mrs. Wagner talked about pronouns. I noticed that it was harder for this group to understand pronouns. Maybe it was because they are second graders so it takes longer for them to get the idea down.

Eventually, they got the idea of pronoun. Mrs. Wagner gave them each two words. The students were to come up with two sentences using the words given to them. One student seemed to be having a hard time coming up with his sentences so Mrs. Wagner helped him. One of the words each student received was in the past tense, present tense, and future tense. They shared their sentences. As they were sharing and Mrs. Wagner was explaining the tense, I thought back to when I was taught my tenses. I am not too sure if things have changed but I thought second grad was a bit too early to introduce them to tenses.

Observation 1

I am observing at Washington Elementary School with Mrs. Wagner. I was excited about observing ELL students because in my past observations, I have always observed the whole class. I arrived at Washington Elementary School, checked in with the secretary, and headed to Mrs. Wagner’s classroom. I kind of got lost but found my way! No worries =D
Mrs. Wagner was working with a small group of students when I walked into the room. She told me what she was going to have me do for the day. I was going to observe an ELL assistance work with a student until 10:30am, work with the student until 11 am on his math; work with a different student with her math until 11am; and then read with a kindergartener in Mrs. Davis’s room.
It was interesting observing because some characteristics of the student came into my mind. I would say the student is very good at his English. I wondered if his parents speak English at home too or not. I loved the fact that he did not mind me sitting next to him because I have had experiences in the past where a student did not want me sitting next by him the first visit. Finally I got a chance to work with him one on one with his math. He is a very bright child. With a couple of the problems, I told him that drawing out pictures helps me a lot and I thought that he should try drawing a picture to help him get the answer too. I model how to find an answer by drawing it out and I had him do the next problem drawing pictures. And it worked, he got the right answer. We did not get done with all the problems that I anticipated for us to get done but as long as he understood everything else then that is what counts!
It was 10:30 and he had to go back. I waited and another student came. I helped her with her math too. She seemed to be shy. She wasn’t as talkative as my first student. We were working on greater or lesser than math problems. In her math book, “greater than” is not said “greater than”; it is said “more than” and I kept on saying “greater than” because I grew up learning it by saying “greater than or lesser than”! I kept on correcting myself and thinking that the student might think I am slow! Oh well. 11am came by fast and I left to go to Mrs. Davis’s kindergartener classroom.
I read with a student. He was very adorable, loud, talkative, and funny. We were reading about Dinosaurs and Wow!.. he was excited. When we were reading, I stopped him a couple of time just to check his comprehension and it was there! Every time when he did not know a word, he would say, “what is this?” very loud. I thought it was funny how the way he said it. I have seen many students read in the past; and I can now say that I can see the difference in reading level. This student that I was working with is probably in the beginning level or reading. His reading is not very good but it’s okay. He just need that extra help to get him sped up. Noon came around and the kindergartners had to go to special class. Overall, I thought it was a great day!

March 2 2009

Class started out with Mariya’s presentation. She presented about speaking. She brought up the question of which is more important: accuracy/ fluency and segmental/ supra-segmental. I think that it depends on the levels of the student, environment, and what is the focus of the lesson being taught. Between accuracy and fluency, I think that both of them are important. I would say fluency should be taught first and then incorporate accuracy. I think that many people would say segmental is more important than supra-segmental because you would think that people or students should learn the sounds first then the intonations. However, according to research it is the other way around. Learning the supra-segmental first is more important. Interesting, I thought!
We left for the GLL after Mariya’s presentation. We came up with an activity using the list of speaking items in each group that we picked, and then we rotated to the other group’s item and created an activity, lastly, we commented on their activity as we rotated again. I thought it was interesting just to see how people can up activities for students to speak using different item. Mariya, JoAnn, and I did our activity using flashcards with the article a/an. We had time to do our peer review. I got some good feedback from JoAnn and Mariya when it came to the portfolio. The class ended with a mid-term survey.

February 23 2009

Class started out with Aaron and Kizuna’s presentation. I thought their presentation was interesting because they talked about why and what ELL students have difficulties with. Some of the difficulties that Kizuna mentioned were stress patterns, intonations, rhythm, and so forth. I think that ELL students have many difficulties that many native speakers may or may not know about. A couple of the difficulties that I think that ELL students have are the language structure differences and the amount of exposure to the second language. During a discussion of Aaron and Kizuna’s presentation, Stephanie mentioned that she thinks non- native speakers actually speaks more formal. I think that many ELL students or non- native speakers want to sound know and feel like when they are speaking, they sound correct. Therefore, it makes them sound very “bookish” and ELL students don’t want to sound that way. We went to the GLL room and attempted to do a listening activity but some of the computers were not working so half of the class was assigned with an activity for ELL students.

February 16 2009

We started class with answering what kind of listening activities our group has experienced or taught in the past. After sharing our experience with our small group, we shared it with the whole class. Kizuna said his worst experiences were dictation. Bekir and Chris loved dictations. This is especially a great example of different learning style. Thea’s listening experience was with teaching students the game “Whatcha doing?” I thought the game was a great idea because when students are playing this game, they really have to listening to what the other person is asking or doing. I think that students would really like and enjoy the game. This game is fun and interactive. Thea and Stephanie presented their presentation. As an activity, they had everyone did a listening activity. Bekir and Aaron were in my group. One of the group members was the reader and the other two would draw what they were hearing. Bekir was reading while Aaron and I were drawing. I had some difficulties because I wasn’t able to catch up with the story. In the text, some of the listening difficulties were the rate of deliverance, reduced forms, clustering, redundancy, performance variables, interaction, stress, rhythm, intonations, and colloquial language. I guess I was having trouble with the rate of deliverance

Feberuary 9, 2009

Class today started out with Stephanie and Rachael’s presentation. Rachael passed out chocolate hearts for everyone which was very yummy! I guess I had such a bad sweet tooth earlier; the chocolate was just very yummy! Yes, it was. They presented on vocabulary. Unfortunately, we had to stop because the laptop was not working. After a five minute break, we sat down in a circle to talk about our observation. I though the observations from other students were very interesting. Most of the observations that I heard was from Lincoln Community Center; my question that I have is, are students placed with the same level of students? How many levels are at Lincoln Community Center?
Diana came in to talk about her projects on vocabulary too. She talked about what she is doing with her students. It was interesting of how Diana is working with her students to learn vocabulary in her Spanish class. I thought it was a great idea of her divided cards. Coming back to the vocabulary in different time period will help retrieve the vocabulary better.
We went to the GLL to finish up Stephanie and Rachael’s presentation. They did a great job. I love the idea of word association. I think that some students may find it not confusing and again some may find it confusing. Students may find it not confusing because the words are words that associate or (connect) with the vocabulary word. Students may find it confusing because the words that are associated with the vocabulary word are different.
We worked on our last week lesson plan; adding what things students need to know in order to participate in the activity. My group added things into our lesson plan and then looked over Thea’s group’s lesson plan. They did a great job with their lesson plan. My group did not have any questions. Then we worked on corpus of English.

February 2, 2009

I thought that Thea and Rachel did an awesome job on their presentation. I found many of their points when they asked the question of “why” interesting. The reason is because if I was to ask someone for their notes and if they said no; I would not ask them why. I agree with Mariya and Esther’s why they too would not ask the question why. What I found that was nice to know was the different reasons why native speaker may not want to share their notes to non- native speakers. It is nice to know that at least there are nice people out there =) and that what the book said Thea, Rachel, and other students disagree with it. Although I did not speak much in our conversation, it was a learning experience for me. I did not know much about “double- dipping”. I agree with many of the reasons why people are or are not comfortable double- dipping. I really liked JoAnn’s reason which was that it really depends on the relation of the two people too. Personally, I do not mind double- dipping and I feel good when someone is willing to eat off what I was eating or share something with me. It just shows me that this person didn’t mind that I was eating it before them. The activity of practicing for our unit plan really clarified many questions that I might have had. I had a great group and it helps me understand more what I am supposed to do in my real unit plans.