Engineering Lesson

On Tuesday, we taught out final lesson at Brigham. It was an engineering lesson, and we taught in the kindergarten classroom. For our lesson, we talked about sinking and floating, and the students got to design their own boats. They tested them to see if they would sink or float. Overall, I think the lesson went O.K. It was very difficult to have five teachers to four students, but we made it work. My goal is to become more comfortable when working with English Language Learners. During this lesson, it was very difficult to work towards my goal, because there were five teachers to four students. There weren't very many opportunities for me to teach or instruct the students. I was able to work with a little boy while he constructed his boat. During this conversation, I asked him several questions and he responded. I asked him, "Have you ever been on a boat before?" He told me that he had not been on one. I asked, "Have you ever seen a boat before?" He responded, "I've never seen a pirate ship before". Although his answer was a little off, it made be realize that graphics of different boats may have been helpful. Because these students are English Language Learners, I sometimes forget that they may not be familiar with terms I would consider kindergarten friendly. In my classes at Illinois State University, I've learned that images and pictures are always a great way to support English Language Learners. The images gives them something to connect to unfamiliar word to. This child may have actually seen a boat before, but maybe he's used to hearing it be called whatever the Spanish word for boat is. If I had an image, I would'v been able to show it to him, and he might have said he had seen a boat before. It might’ve also helped to have a boat already done, so the students have something to look at to get an idea from, because at first the students seemed puzzled by how they were going to build a boat form the materials we had on the table. We should’ve included an example or images for the students to look at. However, I wonder if we had included an example, if the students would’ve just tried to copy or make the same boat. After the students had created their boats, they got to test them in the water to see weather they floated or sunk. During this part of the lesson, one of the other teachers asked a question, and one of our students responded. I asked the child to repeat what she had said, because I didn’t understand her. Initially, I thought I hadn’t understood, because of her accent. However, when she repeated her answer, I knew that it was in Spanish. This made me rather uncomfortable, because I don’t speak Spanish. I wasn’t sure how to respond to this, because I didn’t know what she had said. This is something I’m still nervous about when working with English Language Learners.  

MEETS: I completed all the requirements to meet

Clinical Lesson

Today I taught a science lesson in my clinical site. I’m in second grade, and we are just starting a new unit about animal classifications and adaptations. My lesson was supposed to be an overview of the new topic. My goal was to introduce the term vertebrate and 5 animal classifications. My teacher wanted me to read them section one of the new chapter, because they’re always read the entire chapter of whatever topic we’re studying. I began my lesson by having the children stand up to feel their backbone. We talked about how animals with backbones are called vertebrates. We practiced the new word while running our hands up our spines. This kinesthetic movement is something my CT has encouraged me to incorporate into all my science and social studies lessons. We have the English Language Learners in our classroom, so these gross motor movements help them remember new vocabulary better. After, the students sat down and I read the section aloud to them. I tried to keep them engaged by having them put their finger on new words and repeating vocabulary words out loud. After we read through the chapter, I pulled up a SMARTboard game. The game had the five different animal categories at the bottom of the page, and a bunch of characteristics at the top. The characteristics were things such as “fur”, “dry scales”, “cold blooded”, etc. We read the fiver different animal categories out loud together, and I called students up to drop the characteristics into the correct animal category. I had more planned for this lesson, but due to late start, our timing got off throughout the day. I ended up only having fifteen minutes to teach my lesson. We ended the lesson with students standing up and reviewing the term vertebrate while doing the gross motor action.  

One strength of my lesson was the engagement level of my students during the game portion of the lesson. Because I let the students come up and move things on the SMARTboard, I immediately had everyone’s attention. Everyone wanted to participate and come up to the SMARTboard. I noticed that the students were even focused when other students were at the SMARTboard. They were watching and waiting to see if the other students were going to get it right. We repeated as a class some of the characteristics that seemed to give them trouble, and we came up with tips and tricks to remember some as well. For example, we can remember that mammals give milk to their young, because both mammals and milk begin with the letter M. Another strength my lesson had was whole body learning. I was able to incorporate gross motor actions into my lesson for new vocabulary. This is an accommodation we frequently use in our classroom to help our English Language Learners, but I think all students in our classroom really benefit from those motor movements.

Because my time was cut down to only a fifteen minute lesson, I feel like I had more areas of improvement. For example, I was only able to read through the lesson with the students, and I didn’t get a chance to really explain or incorporate those gross motor movements like I would’ve like to.  There were many new and rather challenging vocabulary words in this lesson such as reptile, amphibian, mammal, etc. I think my English Language Learners as well as the whole class could’ve used the whole body learning to help understand and remember those words. Since I was limited on time, the students only got the chance to see the words and say them once. If I taught this lesson again, I’d most certainly include some gross motor movements or images to show them. Since I just read through the lesson with them, I think it also contributed to them being a little less engaged. When I debriefed with my CT after, she had mentioned that she thought there was some chatter when students were turning the pages. I know that my class can only stay focused so long when either my CT or me is reading aloud to them.  Although I walk around the room while reading, those small moments of chatter still occurred. My CT suggested having a student volunteer to read, so I could focus more on behavior management. This is something I’ll consider for future lessons, but I’m not sure it’s something I’ll implement. If I were to ever teach this lesson again, where I had full control of what/how/when I taught this lesson, I’d probably eliminate reading from their textbook all together. However, that is something my CT wanted them to hear.  I also wanted the students to be able to apply the skills independently at the end of my lesson, but I ran out of time.

Thinking back on my lesson, I would probably change the whole format of this lesson if I ever taught it again. I think this type of overview lesson would be a great opportunity to use stations in the classroom. I could do an overview with a more child friendly and engaging children’s book. After, I’d break students into small groups where they could work through some different stations and get more practice with this broad yet meaty topic. I could keep the SMARTboard activity, which I’ll include the link at the end of this blog post. Students could play the game in a small group, and I think it’d be even more engaging then it already was. In another small group, I could lay out pictures of animals in different categories, and the students could compare/contrast two different categories of animals. For example, they could choose a bear (mammal) and an iguana (reptile). This would allow them to come up with those characteristics we read about in the book.

Overall, I think the students certainly learned some new information and enjoyed the lesson overall. Next time, I’d just make some adjustments and make sure to give myself plenty of time to teach all of the content.

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/classification/kc_classification_main.htm

EXCEEDS: I included the website where the game comes from, and I gave a copy of the lesson to my CT incase she wanted to use it in the future.

Second Kindergarten Experience

This week, I was in kindergarten for the second time. Kelcey and Annie taught their lesson on the four season to half of the class. The majority of their lesson was large group on the carpet with them in charge, so it was a difficult week for me to work towards my goal of becoming more comfortable when working with English Language Learners. Once they sent the students back to their desks to complete an activity, I was able to interact with a few students. However, I was also in charge of taking pictures. It was also difficult to interact with the students, because there were six teachers and about ten children. Again, I think the best way to work towards my goal is just to expose myself to children who speak another language, so this would’ve been another great opportunity, if there weren’t so many teachers and more small group/individual work. I was able to talk to a few students for a very brief amount of time.

One of my conversations was with a little girl about the picture of a person who was supposed to represent fall. She asked me what season it was supposed to go under. I squatted down next to her to help her out, and I asked her what the person was holding (rake). The little girl looked at me, but didn’t say anything. I waited for a few more seconds, and I prompted her again by asking her “Do you know what we use this for?” pointing to the picture of the rake. She paused for a minute and said, “pile up the leaves with it”. I had to ask her to repeat it again, because I wasn’t sure what she said because of the way she had phrased it. Reflecting back, I realize that she may not have had the vocabulary word to tell me what the rake was called, but she still knew what it was used for. I think this is something I can remember for my future classroom. I think it’s important to phrase a question a few different ways or prompt children a few different ways, because of the language barrier, they may not understand the first time. If you reword the question or ask it another way, you might be surprised to find the child does know the concept or idea, but he/she just doesn’t know the vocabulary to go along with it. This is something I want to remember, because I want to make sure I’m really trying to draw out all the knowledge my English Language Learner’s know before I give them the answer. After the child answered my question, I realized that she knew what I was talking about but just didn’t know the name of the tool. I was sure to tell her the name of the tool, and I had her repeat the name back to me to practice it. She was able to hear the name of the tool as well as see a picture of it. This is something we’ve learned the importance of a lot at ISU. I also found an article (the link is below) that reinforces what I've learned at ISU about using pictures with children who are English Language Learners. 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ell-engagment-using-photos

EXCEEDS: included a link that goes along with my post. 

Taste Lesson at Brigham

Today, I got to teach my lesson at Brigham in the Pre-K classroom with Emily. Our lesson was one lesson in a five senses unit, so we taught a lesson on taste. I've attached the link to our 5E lesson plan google doc at the bottom of this post. For our lesson, we began talking with the children about taste and what they taste with. We gave them the opportunity to use little mirrors to look inside their mouths and at their taste buds. After we talked about what they saw, and we read a book about what taste is and how it works. The children then got to move from station to station to use their sense of taste to taste different foods. After everyone got to taste some the four different foods, the students regrouped on the carpet. We talked with them about some vocabulary such as “salty”, “sweet”, “bitter”, and “sour”. Then we had the children rotate through the stations again, and this time, they got to “vote” (write their name) on which word they thought best described what they tasted. After all of the children had a chance to vote, they again returned to the carpet where we talked about our favorite taste and recapped what we learned.

Throughout our lesson, we ran into some issues, which changed the flow of the lesson. In today’s classrooms there are many allergies that we must be aware of. Emily and I thought the only foods we had to avoid bringing into the classroom were peanuts and raw eggs. On the day we taught, we found out that lemons were going to be the only food the children were able to taste out of everything we brought in (M&M’s, pretzels, cocoa powder, and lemons). We had to quickly change the other three stations, and we were lucky enough to have teachers in charge of each station. Instead of actually tasting the three items (M&M’s, pretzels, cocoa powder), the teacher just engaged the children in a conversation about what they thought the food would taste like, and if they’d had anything like it before. This was rather challenging for many reasons. First and foremost, teaching children that you don’t know is always really really challenging. Second, some of these students are English Language Learners, so they’re vocabulary is rather limited to begin with. The students were really having trouble with trying to describe what something might taste like without actually getting the opportunity to taste it.

Since the students weren’t able to taste three out of the four foods, the discussion about the vocabulary was rather difficult to complete as well. I also noticed that when the children “voted” on which word best described the taste, their answers were all over the place. This probably occurred for two reasons. First and again, the students may have another language at home, which prevents them from having heard some of these words before. Second, the students didn’t actually get to try any of the foods, so it was challenging for them to try to guess or assume what a food would taste like.

This lesson did allow me to work towards my goal of becoming more comfortable when working with English Language Learners, because I was able to actually interact with and teach them for the full thirty minutes. For me, English Language Learners sometimes make me feel uncomfortable, because I can’t always understand what they’re saying. I feel bad having to ask them to repeat what they’ve said (especially in this particular setting, because I don’t know them at all). I think the best way to overcome that nervousness or to achieve my goal is to simply practice talking with students who are English Language Learners. I was fortunate enough to pick to be in charge of the lemon station, and the students were actually able to taste the lemon wedges. I was able to interact with and talk to each student on a 2:1 or 3:1 basis. This really helped me work towards my goal, because I was interacting with the students almost individually. I realized that when I’m working with or talking to English Language Learners that pictures or visuals are important. For example, after the children had tasted the lemon, I asked them, “Do you think this is a good taste or a bad taste?” The first two students I asked this two just kind of looked at me really confused. I decided to let them show me by using thumbs up or thumbs down. The students then seemed to understand very quickly what I was asking them. They were successfully able to answer my question. This is something I will keep in mind for my future teaching when I’m working with English Language Learners.

Reflecting back, there are a few things I would change with this particular lesson. First, I would include more visuals or motions for the children. After seeing how well the thumbs up or thumbs down worked with the students, I think visuals or motions would’ve really improved the entire lesson. I also think translating those vocabulary words into their native langue might have helped. The students might have better recognized what those words mean, and how to apply them to the foods. I also think having the vocabulary words written out would help, because we’ve learned in one of our modules that visuals and pictures help English Language Learners better understand things. I think writing the English word next to the Spanish word would’ve deepened and really help them understand and grasp the vocabulary.

I think some strengths of our lesson were the engagement level of the students. Although they only got to taste one of the foods, the children were really engaged at my station. They were excited to get to try the food, and they wanted to know what it would taste like. I think it the children were able to taste all of the foods, they would’ve been very engaged throughout the entire lesson. Another strength I think our lesson had was building on each part. I think the lesson seemed to have really nice flow, because the concepts started very simple and built off one another. For example, the beginning idea was simple to explore what we taste with (taste buds and tongue). Then the children got to use their tongue and taste buds. After that we talked about vocabulary to describe what they tasted with their tongue and taste buds, etc.

Link to our lesson plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HTXYBDmYL-s6VVQXBTearP11f2y4-uGL-X3YvrMos0A/edit

Exceeds: I went over the word count and included a link to our lesson plan for anyone to view and to help them better understand my reflection.

Brigham Week 2

This week I was in the pre-k classroom for the first time, and it was a really different experience compared to the kindergarten classroom. The children's behavior was the first thing that was very different. In kindergarten, the children very much so wanted to participate, talk, and interact. While I observed the two teachers teach the pre-k children, I noticed this group was the opposite of the kindergarteners. The pre-k children have a hard time answering simple questions, and it seems difficult to get them to engage.
This week, I mostly got to observe two teachers teach a lesson on the sense of touch. I did get to briefly interact with two children in a small group activity. This is where I was able to work more towards my goal. My goal is to become more comfortable when working with English Language Learners. I made this my goal, because it's sometimes hard for me to understand what the children are saying, and I honestly feel really bad asking them to repeat what they've said. This week, I worked with two children, one boy and one girl. The boy was very easy to understand, and I'm assuming that English was his first language. The girl on the other hand, spoke very soft, and it was difficult to understand her. I'm not sure if she was an English Language Learner, or if she was just shy, because she didn't know me.
During the interaction with the little girl, I was supposed to have her close her eyes and place an orange on her leg and a baseball on her arm. She was then supposed to guess which one was touching her arm. During this little activity, she struggled with keeping her eyes closed. I'm not sure if she was just afraid or nervous, because she didn't know me or any of the teachers in the classroom. Another thought was (if she is an English Language Learner) maybe this activity or telling her to "keep her eyes closed" didn't make sense. Reflecting back, I think this might have been the case. If this was my lesson and I was going to teach it again to a group I know would have English Language Learners, I might include a picture to help demonstrate what it means to "keep your eyes closed". This is something we've talked about in 276 along with most of my other classes. Lots of times pictures will help children who aren't as familiar with the language, because they can visually see what they're supposed to be doing. Instead of having to listen to directions, process, and try to figure out what they're supposed to do.
In the second part of the activity, I was supposed to have her put both hands out in front of her and place an orange in one hand and the baseball in the other hand. She was then supposed to guess which item was in which hand. Again, she struggled keeping her eyes closed, and she also didn't really understand what it meant to guess which item was in which hand. Reflecting back, this may have been because of a language barrier. Again if I was teaching this lesson to a similar group, I'd probably have pictures printed off to represent what I wanted them to do. Another idea I had was to maybe do a "trial" run first, so that she could understand the concept of closing her eyes, putting her hands out in front of her, feeling two items, and guessing which was which. Thinking back again, I think my directions to her may also not have been clear. When working with English Language Learners, it's very important to give very simple and clear instructions, and I'm not sure I did that with her. This is something we've talked about a lot in 276 and also in many of my other classes. This is actually an accommodation we had to make for our Bag-It project. This maybe something I can work on next in order to move towards my goal.

EXCEEDS: I went over the word count and I commented on Kacie's post

First Kindergarten Experience

My general goal is to gain more confidence with English Language Learners. Growing up, I didn’t go to a school with too much diversity. If there were children who were different from me, they usually always spoke English. Sometimes being around children who can’t fluently speak English makes me nervous. I always feel bad having children repeat what the say, because I can’t understand them. On Wednesday, I went into the bilingual Kindergarten classroom for the first time. It was certainly a new experience. After completing the module on culture, I was expecting to encounter students who didn’t speak English very well. Although most of the children spoke English pretty fluently, they most certainly still had an accent. This was difficult to understand at some points. In order to reach my goal, I tried to talk with as many students as I could.  I was hoping that if I pushed myself to be in those situations where I feel uncomfortable, it might eventually start to feel more comfortable. Some of the children were much easier to understand then others. We talked about what they were drawing, what their scientist looked like, etc. It made me feel uncomfortable when I wasn’t sure what the child said to answer my questions. For example, I talked to one little girl about her picture. I asked her what she was drawing, and when she answered me, I didn’t understand anything she said. I tried to look at her picture to see if I could connect what she said with her drawing, but her picture didn’t look like a scientist to me. I had to ask her three times to “tell me again”. During this interaction, another teacher was nearby and heard what was going on. After the third time I asked, the other teacher told me she was saying “volcano”. Once I knew what she was saying, I was able to connect her words with the picture. Her accent was very thick, so it was really difficult for me to understand what she was saying.  I felt really uncomfortable and awkward for having to ask her three different times what she said. I don’t want to make a children feel bad about themselves just because I cannot understand them, and I feel like that’s what happens when I have to repeatedly ask them what they’re saying. The diverse linguistic module prepared me for this experience, because I went into the classroom with an open mind. I knew going into this that Spanish was the second most common language following English. However, since we learned in the module that Polish was third most prevalent, I thought I might encounter that language as well. As far as I know, however, that didn’t happen. Also after completing some of the modules related to diversity, I expected children in a bilingual classroom to be speaking two languages interchangeably or regularly. However, that didn’t happen in this classroom. In fact, I don’t think I heard any of the students speak Spanish while we were in there.

Exceeds: Will comment on more than 2 classmates blog posts.