2nd Observation

So today's observation got cut short again. Not by sick children (thankfully) but by the lovely snow that is coming down like powdered sugar on pan full of brownies, convincing the district to let the kids go home early. But I did get to spend an hour and a half observing in the kindergarten room. I'm glad I get to observe kids that age because I didn't think I would enjoy that age group, but I really do. The teacher had me take charge of the last 5 minutes of circle time today; I had flashcards with pictures of people and the children had to guess thier occupation--a good way to teach culture. Next week I'm going to have to try and arrive 15 min earlier because I missed out on the beginning of her lesson. She was teaching from the reading curriculum my Emergant Literacy instructor presented last Tuesday in class. So it was nice to see the material in action. She also assigned me to a "station" during writing. I helped the practice writing the letter "R/r". Sadly my r's weren't much better than theirs. I never was good at Handwriting in school.

I was able to observe the young boy who just started learning English at the start of the school year as he was sounding out some words. He was just as good as some of the native speakers, but he did struggle with some of the pronounciations a little more than the others. He was also rather concerned that his letters looked just so when he wrote, which sometimes prevented him from finishing a task on time. I tried to help him with an "n" but he erased it; apparenlty I didn't do a very good job.

On a side note--now can you picture the other half of my photo?

Reading for 2/23

(The picture reminded me of a conversation that occurred when Solon presented)

MCM Teaching Oral Skills



I think non-native and native speakers alike could benefit from some of the suggestions made in this chapter: "opening and closing a conversation, introducing and addressing people, giving invitations, expressing thanks, apologizing, complimenting, getting attention and interrupting, agreeing and disagreeing, controlling the conversation, and getting information" (105). I can't find where I read it now, but the book mentioned practicing keeping a conversation going; I'd like a lesson on that. Anyway, I thought this was an extremely useful chapter and I don't look forward to practicing these skills when I take a foreign language next year. Speaking is an extremely difficult thing to do (when done right, i.e. considerately) and although it is important to practice, as teachers we need to remember it is also quite painful. Especially for students who are not unnaturally overconfident. (I read something the other day how all humans tend to be overconfident, and that people who are depressed just tend to be realists--I thought it was funny).

I thought it was interesting that the book stated that non-native speakers say fewer "um's" during a conversation, and tend to neglect to give other non-verbal cues that they are not comprehending the information a speaker is presenting, than native-speakers; apparently people (I'm assuming mostly native speakers who are not receiving culturally appropriate cues) tend to interpret these actions (or the lack thereof) as understanding.

P&B Ch 4

I love the idea in the opening scenario of giving students class credit to read poems to people in and outside the classroom.

Caterpillar
~Christina Rossetti

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

Although I am not a huge fan of poetry, it does offer a million chances for success for students. And it can be a much simpler way to tell a story. Plus it gives chances for rhythm in language to be decoded easier. At least I think it's easier.

The table on pg 124 offers some excellent guidance on how to achieve a specific purpose with language. I particularly appreciated that they put divertive, or telling jokes, as a function.

Q: How did the farmer fix his jeans?

A: With a cabbage patch!

Ha ha ha! Whoooah.

1st observation

I'm so glad I'm doing my observations at an elementary school. The kids are so darn cute! The teacher I'm assigned to is having me spend the first 2 hours assisting in a kindergarten classroom that is quite diverse. I didn't actually get to talk to the teacher, just because of how the day was going, but from what I gather there are about 16 students in the class (several of them were coming and going with different specialists). At least 3 are English Language Learners, but I think others are bilingual. She had me sit at a table with a student who didn't speak any English at the beginning of the school year, but has learned a lot since then.

When I arrived in the classroom they were having circle time. The teacher was reviewing a story they had just read about a bunny who got stuck on an icy pond. She was also modeling a picture they were going to color, cut, and glue on their own following circle time. I was surprised how squirlly the kids were. The 3-yr-olds at my son's preschool sit and listen much better, but then most of the kids at his preschool have probibly been in a formal child care center since they were infants and know the expectations; whereas a lot of children entering kindergarten have never had experiences with this kind of a setting before.

After group time the kids all went to their tables to work on their projects independently while the teacher worked with groups of 4-5 on phonics. There was an assistant in the class who was kept busy keeping students on track.

For anybody who has not ever worked with young children, just so you know, 90% of a teacher's time is spent addressing social/behavor issues and 10% goes into traditional teaching of the 3 R's. For example, the students at the table I was sitting with kept having conflicts over where the bin of carayons was to sit. It couldn't be exactly in the middle or nobody could reach it. If it went to the left, the students on the right complained, I think you know where I'm going with this. Then at some point the ELL student I was observing started to mimic everything the little girl next to him was saying. He wasn't trying to be bothersome, but she didn't appreciate it. I thought he did an excellent job mimicing her pronounciations!

When it was time for the class to go to lunch I headed back to the ESL room. I observed a 4th grade math lesson (talk about kids off task!). And then I checked my phone, only to see that my son's daycare had tried calling about 50 times. He was running a fever and was really sad. So I left early. I look forward to going back again. I'm going to work on teaching materials for 5-6 year-old ESL students. My lesson should be fun.

Class on Feb 16 09

I appreciated hearing Solon present on his teaching experiences in ESL 101. And, yes, I enjoyed Thea and Stephanie, too. I always like hearing about people's teaching ideas--both philosophy and methods.

So I just read the chapter out of my book Eats, Shoots & Leaves on the history of the comma. Good stuff. He explained that it was comma placement that brought about Catholics belief in purgatory vs Protestant belief in, well, jumpin' strait up to heaven when ya die:
"Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise." vs. "Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
And, he also talked about how historically all punctuation was used to help people understand how the written word should be interpreted when spoken--to indicate pause or stress. I think I'm going to assign that chapter when we get into argumentative essays. Good stuff.

Reading for 2/16

My husband found it amusing that I was reading a chapter on Teaching Listening. He frequently accuses me of being a poor listener myself. I argue that he is poor at noticing my subtle body language that I use as a response to his seemingly rhetorical questions.

Anyway, I think teaching listening is an important skill, not to be overlooked when teaching a second language. In fact, I believe it should be taught in early elementary school to native speakers as well. I found some of the skills discussed in HDB ch 18 to be similiar to those taught for academic reading--e.g. scanning for key words and phrases. I suppose that is because some academic texts are similar to reading in another language.

So as I was writing the above paragraph I was wondering about the correct punctuation for "i.e.", so I looked at this web site--http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/e.g.html--only to find that I was mistaken in my use of abriviations. I always thought "eg" stood for example (which I guess it does), but I had the spelling off. Phonetically it would be egg-sample, and that's not correct. Example/egg-sample. Listen. You'll see what I mean.

I'd really like to hear from a non-native speaker on their experiences with English dialects. Although I'm sure they don't run into that around here since we all speak properly don't cha know, but if they've been elsewhere in the US of A.

Class on 2/9

Class this past Monday made me a little nervous about teaching grammar. There is a lot I am going to have to re-learn. It seems natural to teach numbers in order, but I understand that then students will always need to go through the whole sequence to remember the number they need to say. I guess it is similar to learning certain phrases in English, it is best to learn in chuncks; but students also need to become familiar with the words individually, in their other forms. Am I being general enough? :) I would really like to see someone teaching a lesson on grammar. Last night in my Emergant Literacy class we watched a clip of someone conducting some intensive phonics work with three students. It was excellent modeling.

http://www.jimwegryn.com/Words/Words.php - check out this site for a unique look at words you may not have thought about before. Like "butterfly". Think about it. Is it a compound word? What might it mean?

HDB ch 22

I thought this chapter on Form-Focused Instruction was quite helpful for me. I am continuing my research from last semester on Corrective Feedback and I thought this chapter tied in quite well with some of the issues I am grappling with. I was particularly intrigued by the statement that, "research shows that rarely is overt grammatical correction by teachers in the classroom of any consequesce in improving learners' language" (426). Instead it is suggested that teachers focus on helping their students elicit meaning from the texts they read and express their ideas accurately in their writing and speech, whether the grammar be correct or no. :)


The charts and sample exercises were helpful in illustrating possible techniques to teach certain concepts. I particularly liked Exercise 1 that suggested using realia to teach posession. Far more fun than worksheets.

I am 1/4 of the way through Coraline. So far I am not impressed. Maybe this will be the first case of the movie being better than the book.

Class on 2/2/09

I was just thinking how I am far more tolerant of non-native speakers who do or say something odd or insulting than I am of native speakers. One of my students the other day said, "Good bye, Teacher." And one the native speakers in class thought it was really odd. I thought it was respectful, although not common. On the other hand, one of my students today (I teach comp 101 at MSU as a TA) called me Jodi. Although it didn't bother me really--several of my professors at the University of Minnesota-Duluth asked to be called by their first names. Actually I think they were all in the Education department, although I don't know why that would matter. Anyway, I just thought the juxtaposition between the two was interesting.

It was intersting to look at everyone's lesson plan ideas. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is an awesome movie. I'm having my comp class analyze one of MLK's letters for their first writing assignment; an interesting slant at teaching culture for an ESL assignment.

Reading for 2/2

The teaching of culture always seemed like kind of a "duh" topic to me. But I was plesantly surprised with how the concept was presented in MCM's chapter Building Awareness and Practical Skills to Facilitate Cross-Cultural Communication. I think teaching cultural differences should be taught far more in the general education setting of US public schools. Sure we have Black History Month, and are required to read from diverse authors, but I think more needs to be done. The sections on the Invisible Culture and The Importance of Noticing are good examples of this. An appropriate exercise for all students is to look at things that they do and think about why they do them. Why do we say "thank you" even when someone hasn't really helped us with a problem? And why would someone comment on my teaching evaluation from last semester that I seemed "aloof"? Okay, maybe I just have a chip on my shoulder right now. But, what, did this student think I behaved incorrectly compared to how they think a college professor should act? Am I supposed to befriend them and ask how their day has been going? Should I have held an end-of-the-semester get together at the Loose Moose? But I digress...

Seriously, though, I also thought the sections entitled Teacher, Teach Yourself and Making Choices were helpful because they made me think about whether I want to allow students who are uncomfortable speaking up in class to remain silent or if I should pull them out of their comfort zone and force them to engage with the class. In other words, what do I expect from all of my students and how do I plan to make it happen.

I thought the section of ch 17 in HDB about the Episode Hypothesis was interesting, but I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to get from it. The overall topic of the chapter, Integrating the "Four Skills", seemed obvious, but worth the read. Last year I was a reading teacher, but we definitely did a whole lot of listening, speaking, and writing to support the target skill.

The Integrated Lesson that was presented was a fabulious example of how a well planned lesson should go down. I liked how the focus listed three concepts (situational, functional, formal). I always have a hard time picking one goal for my lessons. This showed appropriate options.