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Reflection

Your biggest area of improvement/most realizations

My biggest area of improvement during this class is really understanding the SIOP framework more. We did some work with it in our previous class, but it was really helpful to get to study each component more.

Something about this improvement/How it changed my thinking/strategies

I think the way that this helped me is that I can more easily recognize the framework components incorporate them into my lessons. I can more easily see what I do and what areas need to be included more. For example, lesson prep, assessment and interaction I feel really comfortable with, but building background is something I move to quickly through a lot of times.

One area you could still improve in/working on/what are you doing to improve in that area

I'm really still working on building background. I've noticed that I move through it  pretty fast and so I'm trying to be more intentional about setting up connections and taking that time for it.

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Reflection

In the articles we read for Monday reminded me of how much my school needs professional development on ELL. The teachers are really open to it. It seems that the district is dragging there feet a little bit. Because really it is an equity issue. Teachers at some of the other schools in Kent are not desperate for ELL strategies because of their low ELL population. It also seems that a lot of money goes to the dual language programs in our district, but those types of programs would not work at my school because there are so many languages.

The RTI article also talks about how you should not score accents or dialects lower. This is very tricky with short and long vowels. The other article talked about how a student with college educated parents has a vocabulary 4 times higher than a student who does not have college educated parents. The need for strong vocabulary is  so important!

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Reflection

I've been thinking a lot about the lesson demonstrations. They were very comprehensive...I think I might be a little bit biased but I think that the elementary level lends itself a little easier to the SIOP framework. I'm still struggling with how I might be able to incorporate all of the components into every lesson of the day, reading, writing and math. The amount of time is always an issue. I wonder what the research is on the benefits of just including portions of the framework? Is it still helpful? In our discussion groups some teachers were really concerned about not having a lot of visuals available. It was encouraging to talk about some of the pieces that we are already able to incorporate like wait time, groupings, repetition etc...

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Reflection

RTI

The Language Experience Approach is really interesting to me...where the teacher and student record a story or experience together. I'd like to experiment with that more in writer's workshop.

I've also been thinking a lot about our RTI model and the students in my class that speak languages that are not very transparent with English...Arabic, Farsi etc... We are having some success with our RTI model, but we have a long way to go before our triangle is totally flipped. We need a lot more training at our school for both teachers and paras working with our ELL population.

It was mentioned in the reading to pay attention to frustration levels. I think that is really important...it's developmental as well. Students need to put effort in, but they will shut down if it is too difficult for them.

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Reflection

Practice and Application

I really like the idea of Character diaries. I have a chapter book club in my class right now and I'm having the students write letters to me about their chapter book...the idea of having them write the letter pretending to be the main character from the book is an interesting approach to get them to a higher level of thinking.

Lesson Delivery

During our class discussion time Sara and I talked a lot about pacing and the attention span of primary students. For second grade we really have to keep things moving...and scheduled. It was a good reminder and validating that mini-lessons where teachers are doing a lot of talking should be around 10 min.

My problem of practice is accountable student talk, during the instructional rounds Wednesday, Chrystan and  talked about Think-Pair-Shares, which were also highlighted in the Lesson Delivery section. I'm working on providing more time for my students to think before they share...hopefully then they will share more.

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Reflection

Interaction

-Frequent Opportunities for Interaction
-Grouping Configurations
-Sufficient Wait Time
-Clarify Concepts in L1

I've been working a lot lately on providing wait time for my students. As much as possible I try to give them an opportunity to clarify concepts in their L1. It is sometimes difficult in my class because there are so many languages. I have 1 student who speaks Turkish and 1 who speaks Farsi, so they do not have anyone to clarify with...
I've been experimenting with different groups lately, pairs, small groups of 4...it's true that giving roles works the best. 2nd graders often struggle to work in groups of more than 3. My problem of practice is student talk...so I'm thinking a lot about providing opportunities for my students to talk with one another.

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Reflection

Completing the thinking, language functions and language acquisition with Blooms was a helpful activity for me. Being at a school that is 50% ELL you learn a lot on the job to meet the levels of your ELL students, but it was helpful to really think about and picture how you would adapt questions for different levels during a specific lesson.

Also, I have been thinking a lot about speaking without idioms and repeating myself. I'm really working hard on using gestures....I still think that I could do a better job with that. I do think that I'm doing well with vocabulary, pictures and graphic organizers. I wonder if we might have time to go over some tips on gesturing or if there would be a good resources for me to look into.

The output and interaction discussion was also really interesting to me. I've been working a lot on student talk...that's my problem of practice...and I'm trying to do more interaction. Of course, some lessons/subjects lend themselves to one or the other more easily.

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Reflection

I've done a lot of different things with teaching vocabulary...but I was interested in some of the suggestions for teaching vocabulary mentioned in the building background part of the reading. The word cloud, some of the different ways to organize word sorts...I think I'll definitely try the Word Generation. I like the self assessment piece too. "I've never heard or seen the word before." I've seen it before, but I don't know what it means...." I think that could be a really helpful way to give students ownership and informally pre-test. I've used word study books before, but maybe I haven't quite had the right way to store them.

In class we discussed speaking another language in another country, or trying to communicate... It is really challenging and requires a lot of confidence. It makes a lot of sense that reading and listening would be easier to do in another language than speaking and writing. Ever morning I practice my Spanish for a little bit, but think it would be so hard to be taking a biology in Spanish! I have a lot of empathy for my students.

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Reflection
I really enjoyed our discussion on idioms. I thought some interesting ideas were shared on how to teach them. Someone mentioned teaching one a day, which I thought was a good idea. Idioms can be really fun for kids to learn. I remember thinking the Amelia Bedelia books were so funny when I was growing up. Moving forward I will definitely provide more opportunities for my students to work with idioms.

The Lessons Preparation reading was also interesting to me. During class I read the section on 'How Can We Effectively Teach Academic Language in ELA." Some of my take aways were that formal academic English needs to be a key goal in the primary grades....and that it needs to be intensive and interactive. Also highlighted was providing explicit vocabulary and providing scaffolds, like writing new terms on the board, pointing out sentences, pre-teaching, sentence patterns, the use of word walls and posters.

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Reflection
I appreciated the structure of our first class. Online classes can at times be awkward for discussion, but the structure of the class was helpful.

I posted on the other padlet board that I thought elementary schools seemed to mostly be embracing the sheltered content approach for language learning and not using the content-based approach as much...maybe for newcomers. Perhaps that is because there are so many more language learners now? I think when I first started teaching in Atlanta, it was all pull out.

I've been teaching in the Kent School District for several years now and my school is almost 50% ELL and my class is 60% ELL. That would make it pretty hard to do the content-based approach. It makes me think about how we have great ELL teachers at my school, but so many of the gen. ed. teachers are desperate for ELL strategies.