6th and 7th observations

This week I completed my observations at the elementary school here in Mankato. On Tuesday I was asked to give two different kindergarten students (one at a time) their unit test in Reading. I thought the test did a wonderful job of pointing out the skills and concepts the students were struggling with. There was one question, however, that I thought was misleading. The students were supposed to point out which picture, out of three choices, had a cat in the middle of the tree, meaning the picture with a cat sitting on a branch half way up the tree. Unfortunately, the picture with the cat on the top of the tree had the cat placed right on the top center, so one could argue that cat was also in the center of the tree.

One of the students really had a hard time differentiating between the words 'bud' and 'bed'. The test covered several beginning, middle, and end sounds.

Today I learned an interesting technique used by one of the ESL instructors. She pre-teaches several of the concepts that are going to be covered in the classroom the following week. She does this to give the Ell students background knowledge before the classroom teacher introduces new topics. Today I worked with 2 boys on comparing and contrasting by reading a book about elephants and ants. Next week the teacher is going to start a unit on bugs so I highlighted the parts of the ants, such as their antenna and jaws. She will also be having them start comparing and contrasting items.

When I interviewed the classroom teacher I asked her what the most important thing a new teacher needs to know, and she said hands down it is classroom management. She recently went to a seminar about the Responsive Classroom (http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/about/aboutrc.html). I'm really hope that classroom management is addressed at some point during the TESL program. It really is just as important as content knowledge.