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
