First Day in the Classroom

Recap from the Classroom:
It was our first day! I am a part of Group A and today we got to venture into the Pre-K classroom for the first time. It was really exciting to see their smiling faces and have them welcome us into their classroom. Last week we planned out that we wanted to do a "Get to know you" lesson with the students but also relate it to science and do some sort of introduction. To complete both of these goals, we created a simple get to know you game to play at the beginning and then planned a basic intro science activity. For the getting to know you game, we had the students gather into a circle and introduced the game Step In, Step Out. Step In, Step Out is a game where each person says something they like, and if you as a participant also like that something then you take a step into the circle. Then you have to take a step back out before the next person can do. We took turns going around the circle so each student  and teacher got to take a turn. We noticed that this was a good activity to start off with however, the students started to repeat each other's answers verses saying something more individualized. Next, we read them the story "What is Science?". We incorporated different questions throughout the book that would keep the children engaged and listening to us. After the story, we went over things we saw in the book and presented them with the task of drawing/coloring their own scientist. As teachers, we walked around during this time and asked the students questions about their drawings. As they were starting to finish up, we wrote each student's name on their paper and asked them what they wrote so we could write what it was so we would have a point of reference for later. We also had the students go around one at a time and verbally share what they drew and tell us their names. Sheets were collected and put into the Pre-K folder for assessment purposes. I am excited to continue planning and implementing lessons for these students.

About our learners:
The Pre-K room has approximately 12 students. The classroom is full of diversities. There are students from a variety of cultures that are visually able to see. We also have students that speak a variety of languages. This was made very clear to us during the game. When we got to one student, we noticed that he started responding in Spanish. None of us teachers, happened to speak Spanish, but the student next to him started speaking Spanish to him and began translating and gave the student's response. I am curious to see how this language barrier progresses and I hope to grow in my abilities to communicate and differentiate my teaching to accommodate this needs.

How I am working through my goals:
For this clinical experience I have developed goals on how to develop myself and my skills when working with English Language Learners. My goals are to be able to differentiate my instruction or change the language I use to best fit my students needs. I also want to make a strong effort to get to know their different cultures and be able to take that knowledge and apply it to how I teach and what I teach. For this first week, since we were just meeting the students, this was the opportunity to get to know what languages and cultures are represented in the classroom. In the Pre-K room, there are students from a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds but also different language backgrounds. One student we think can understand English but seems to only produce Spanish, so I am hoping that I can learn some basic words to try and communicate with this young boy. I want to make sure now that when I am planning my lesson, that I am taking into account the students I met and the different needs I see presented. My goals will continue to be worked through as I spend more time in the classroom but for now, just getting to know the students and starting to classify their needs is a good start to this process.

Working with ELL students has always been something that I have high anxiety about. I just don't feel well prepared for this, I mean I know different strategies, but I just haven't had enough actual life experience with it. Most of the classrooms that I have worked in have not had any ELL students and my current PDS placement classroom, has a couple ELL students but two get pulled out for ELL support services. These services seem to help my students and I am considering observing this teacher to see the kinds of activities he presents to the ELL students. I want to do more practice with various languages but one thing I have on my list of things to do, is take a basic entry level Spanish course at the local community college, in our case, Heartland. I think this would help me gain confidence by learning some basic words/phrases. This experience at Brigham will also help me gain experience and confidence.

Attached are some links to Youtube videos on teachers sharing their strategies for working with ELL students (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lARm7Otokzs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCov6tgNgk4 )

Exceeds: I connected to my current clinical placement, and shared two youtube video links on strategies for teaching ELL students.