Search results matching tags 'esl' and 'english language learners'

A Rootin' Tootin' Time

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 22:51:00 GMT

A couple of days ago I was giving the mid-year writing assessment to two of my fourth grade students. I know it's a difficult assessment, but Mrs. Pokey and I believe strongly that it's important to assess the writing of our English Language Learners at least three times during the school year. We do a beginning of the year assessment, another at mid-year and the third at the end of the school year. We use the grade level tests from the Write Source writing series and also use a rubric from Writing A-Z.

I set up my small room with the appropriate materials including tabletop cardboard privacy shields (corrugated cardboard trifold boards). By small room, I mean that my room is about the size of a large closet. There's enough room for a small round table, four chairs and a very small floor space in front of my tiny meter wide SmartBoard. It's quite "cozy" at times.

My fourth graders entered the room and sighed when they saw the set up. They knew the privacy shields meant serious business. My fourth graders are Taxi Boy (of the "America's Got Talons fame") and California Kid. California Kid was new to our school at the beginning of the year and has some serious gaps in his education. We're working on filling those gaps as quickly as we can, but he'll need lot of intervention to catch up to his classmates.

We started the test and I began to read it aloud to the two boys. (It's intended to be a writing test, not a reading test. Therefore, I chose to use read-aloud as an accommodation.) After about the third question in the first "bubble-the-correct-answer" section, California Kid let loose a loud flatulent blast. Taxi Boy looked up from his test to see California Kid's embarrassed face. California Kid flopped his head down on the table and started to giggle.

Taxi Boy looked at California Kid for a moment and then calmly said, "Dude!" California Kid continued to giggle. ( I thought Taxi Boy showed a lot of restraint because the "toot" in question was quite loud.)

I said something teacher-ly like, "We all pass gas now and then. It happens. Let's keep going with the test."

We continued the test and a minute or so later, California Kid snuck out another little toot. He started giggling again. I continued reading the test aloud. This pattern continued for a few minutes until finally California Kid ripped out another loud flatulent emission. Taxi Boy couldn't take it any more! He sat up straight in his chair and then leaned over the privacy shields between them and said,

"D-U-U-U-D-E!!! SERIOUSLY??????!!!???"

I thought I was going to lose it! I wanted to laugh so much, but I knew I needed to maintain professional decorum.

Who knew that you could have such a ROOTIN' TOOTIN' time in ESL class??

I definitely need to stock up on some air freshener this weekend when I head to the grocery!

Pumpkin Pie and Tamales

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:54:00 GMT

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger, as my dear sweet Granny used to say!

Recently, I've been reading some Thanksgiving themed books from Reading A-Z. The books, Maria's Thanksgiving and Carlos's First Thanksgiving are a great pair for building vocabulary and background knowledge about the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Plus, they're perfect for practicing the skills of comparing and contrasting.

In one of the books (I believe it's the Maria book) they mention eating tamales as a part of the Thanksgiving feast. One of my students is of Mexican heritage, so she was thrilled to describe to us the delicious tamales her mother makes. The other student arrived from Ghana about three months ago, so he had no idea about Thanksgiving nor tamales. I found a You Tube video to use to describe how to make tamales. (By the way, remember to ALWAYS preview any video clip before using it in class! I found one video that did a great job describing how to make tamales when suddenly, in the middle of the clip, the hostess/chef picked up a piece of corn husk from a pot filled with hot water and clearly said, "SH*T!!" Oops. I'm not using THAT video!)

After our tamale discussions, we went on to pumpkin pie. Moonwalk Boy, my Ghanaian student, couldn't imagine what a pumpkin pie would be like. He didn't think it sounded good to eat at all! So, I stopped at the grocery after school and purchased a small pumpkin pie and a can of whipped cream. I brought them in to school on Friday. When class started, I took out the pie, cut it into slices and I talked about how not every American likes pumpkin pie. (I used my own husband as an example. Mr. Gumby does NOT like pumpkin pie, but our sons do. Therefore, we always have pumpkin pie and apple pie at our house for Thanksgiving. I always try to give kids an out if they don't like the taste of something. I tell them it won't hurt my feelings if they don't like a food.) I placed small slices of pumpkin pie on paper plates and squirted some whipped cream on top of each piece. Whoosh! Moonwalk Boy jerked back in his seat at the sound of the whipped cream coming out of the aerosol can!! I guess I scared him? (Mrs. Gumby...scaring English Language Learners with aerosol whipped cream since 2012!!!) After explaining how the cream comes out of the can, I distributed the plates and we began our taste test. Happy Girl delightedly ate her pumpkin pie and whipped cream. However, Moonwalk Boy gently poked his piece of pie and cautiously tried a teeny tiny bit of pumpkin filling. He decided it wasn't something he liked, but he did enjoy the whipped cream. I could just see the look in his eyes, though.

"Those crazy Americans and their weird traditions! Who wants to eat that nasty orange pie?"

Malapropism Strikes Again

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:02:00 GMT

Yes, the English language is complicated. I see my students struggle every day to conquer the twists, turns and peculiarities inherent in the language. They work hard, but sometimes the results are inadvertently funny to listen to. I try hard not to laugh but to model correct usage/pronunciation instead.

Here is an example of an inadvertent malapropism from one of my students. It was shared with me last week by my neighbor, Mrs. Cheerleader. She and I share a student, Taxi Boy. Taxi Boy LOVES to talk and talk and talk. Mrs. Cheerleader had Taxi Boy and a girl, Quiet Mouse, in a reading group. They read a non-fiction book about eagles and were discussing the information found in the book. The text in the book was about how eagles catch their prey with their sharp talons. Next to the word "talons" was the word "claws" in parenthesis. Mrs. Cheerleader asked Taxi Boy and Quiet Mouse what talons meant. Quiet Mouse wouldn't respond, but after some thought, Taxi Boy piped up.

"Talons! I know...like 'America's Got Talons'!!!"

Mrs. Cheerleader had the hardest time keeping a straight face as she explained the difference between "talons" and "talents"! When she told me the story after school, she and I laughed so hard we nearly fell over.

Yes, indeed...America's Got Talons!

If It's October, It Must Be Pumpkin Time

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:51:00 GMT

This past week, I've been working on the nursery rhyme, "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater" with my first graders. They LOVE this rhyme! I brought in a couple of small pie pumpkins and we cut them open. I cut while they watched (of course!) and then we scooped out the pulpy strings and seeds. I purposely did not make the pumpkins into jack o'lanterns because I wanted the kids to see what a pumpkin "shell" looked like. I left the hollowed out pumpkins in my room for three days and let the students lift off the lids and peek inside the pumpkins. We all decided that living in a pumpkin shell would not keep one "very well" at all! We thought it would be very stinky and messy.

Last week, I found a few interesting activities to add to my Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater lesson. I like the Itsy Bitsy book from Kidzone. ( Note: If you haven't put together one of the Itsy Bitsy books, read the directions first. It takes a little manipulation, but it gets easier once you've made a few.)
Thematic Itsy Bitsy Books

I thought the Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater puppets from First School were fun, too. Puppets are always great activity to do with English Language Learners.

First-School Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater activities

Finally, I found some great graphic sequence cards on a blog called Montessori for Everyone. I definitely will use the Pumpkin Life Cycle cards, but I see a lot more useful materials for future sequencing lessons.

Free sequence cards from Montessori for Everyone

Have a great October!

Expanding Expression Tool (EET)

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:49:00 GMT

Continuing on the theme of teaching writing to children, I'd like to tell you about a great tool I love to use with my students! It's called the Expanding Expression Tool or EET, for short.

The Expanding Expression Tool is a hands-on way for students to think about things they want to write about and how to describe them. Each bead on the strand stands for a different way of looking at the item. For example, the Green bead (with the smiling face) represents "Green - Group" or what group the item belongs to. The Blue bead is for "Blue - Do." It stands for "what does this item do OR what would you do with the item". The White bead with the eyeball on it represents "what does it look like" while the brown wooden bead means "what is made of". The Pink bead is for "Pink - Parts" (what it is a part of OR what are its parts). The plain White bead represents "White - Where" for where would you find it or where does it reside. Finally, the Orange bead with the question mark stands for "What else do I know".

Here is an example of two descriptions of a football. One is written by a group before using the EET and the other description is by the same group after they used the tool.

Mrs. Pokey and I have had success using the Expanding Expression Tool. In fact, we're going to be working with a fifth grade class tomorrow. We have four English Language Learners in the class, so Mrs. Pokey and I will be pushing-in to the classroom tomorrow and working with the whole class along with their teacher, Mrs. Cookie. (Yes, she makes marvelous cookies!) Mrs. Cookie has a whole bag full of Mexican jumping beans. I can't wait to work with the students tomorrow afternoon on how to describe their jumping beans! (I was in the classroom this morning talking with Mrs. Cookie. The whole time I was in there, the beans were jumping in their little clear plastic boxes. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click!)

To find out more about the Expanding Expression Tool, please go to their website at www.expandingexpression.com. I also found few good YouTube links to share with you.

The first one is from a school district in Ohio:

Expanding Expression Tool

The second is from Expanding Expression:

Expanding Expression Tool, 2

I also found some good PDF's about EET online. They're worth downloading and reading. I hope you'll give EET a try with your students, too.

PDF from the 2012 Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Convention

PDF from the 2011 Ohio Speech-Language-Hearing Convention

Writing A-Z

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:33:00 GMT

At the beginning of last school year, Mrs. Pokey and I sat down and looked at the scores of our students on our annual "Really Big Important State Tests For English Language Learners". The "Really Big State Tests" look at the progress of our English Language Learners in four areas. The areas are reading, speaking, listening and writing. The students receive scores from 1-5 in each of the four areas. The area scores are weighted and combined to make a composite score.

We use the composite scores to decide where the students will be placed in our program. I am the ESL unit teacher and I work with the emergent and beginning students (composite scores of 1 and 2). Mrs. Pokey is our ESL paraprofessional and she works with the intermediate and advanced students (composite scores of 3 and 4). Under current state rules, a student who receives composite 4's two years in a row or a composite 5 after 3rd grade is exited from the ESL program. Our goal is to keep our students advancing and eventually exiting the program.

After looking at the data, we realized that writing is the "make or break" score for our children. It is weighted more heavily and affects the composite score. The writing score makes the difference between a student working with me versus Mrs. Pokey AND determines whether or not they can exit our program.

Therefore, Mrs. Pokey and I decided we really needed to place a high priority on working on writing with our students. We looked at what was available to us from the district and what was available from other sources. Finally, we decided to try Writing A-Z, an online program from the Learning A-Z folks.

We've used Reading A-Z and Raz-Kids from the same company for several years. We like both programs and feel they've been beneficial for our kids. So, we piloted Writing A-Z for the school year to see how we liked it.

Well...our test results came in just before the school year ended in May. Our students ROCKED the "Really Big Important State Tests for English Language Learners"!!! Mrs. Pokey and I were so excited we nearly expired from happiness! Yipppeeeeeeee!! We were able to exit several students while others advanced up from unit level services to tutor level (working with Mrs. Pokey). Moreover, we even had a few students who advanced TWO levels in writing. Hallelujah!

Mrs. Pokey and I are convinced that trying Writing A-Z last year made a difference for our students. We especially liked the way it tied in so well to Reading A-Z and Raz-Kids that we already use. We're excited to keep moving forward with it this year as well. Now that we've had a "shake down" year with it, we have more ideas to try.

And...the best part of all this?? The district bigwigs noticed our test scores and agreed to provide Writing A-Z to all our elementary ESL programs. (Thank goodness I don't have to buy it myself this year! )
Stay tuned throughout the school year and I'll share some more writing tips with you.

If you'd like to check out Writing A-Z for yourself, here's a link. They will email some free samples to you and periodically they have free trial subscription days.

Writing A-Z link http://www.writinga-z.com/razwritingweb/home.do

Here's what they say on their website about Writing A-Z:

Writing A–Z is a website offering a comprehensive collection of downloadable lessons and materials. The core lessons are grouped under five main writing genres: expository, narrative, persuasive, procedural, and transactional. Each genre category is further divided into a subset of text types with accompanying resources to teach each type. Lessons and materials are provided at four developmental levels to meet the needs of students at different writing stages, from beginning to fluent. In addition to the specific text type writing lessons and materials, the website houses a collection of mini-lessons on writing skills such as sentence and paragraph writing. There is also a collection of support resources to aid writing instruction, including writing prompts, wordless books, read-aloud books, rubrics, and writing samples.

http://www.writinga-z.com/

Play Dough

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Another kinesthetic learning activity I enjoy using with students is working with play dough. Sometimes I buy the premade commercial version. (I admit it. I like the smell! It takes me back to my own childhood.) Other times, I make my own. Here are a some great recipes from a blog called Pre Kinders.

I've taught students to roll the dough into "snakes"and then make letters, numbers and shapes. They've made their names in dough and let them dry. I have a set of alphabet "stampers" students can use to write words in slabs of play dough. Other times, we've done life cycle representations, rock layers and other science concepts. The possibilities are endless AND lots of fun, too!!

Finally, I wanted to share a great website with a wonderful play dough theme section. I've used the emergent reader book and many of the activities with my kindergarten students with great success. The website is Making Learning Fun.

Oh...Wikki Sticks!

Anonymous — Mon, 28 May 2012 23:55:00 GMT

As you may know, I work with elementary age English Language Learners. One very cool product I enjoy using with my students are Wikki Stix! Wikki Stixs are colorful pieces of yarn dipped in paraffin wax. They are sticky, bendable, flexible and lots of fun to use!

I bought a set of alphabet cards that use Wikki Stix to form the letters. My kindergarten students especially enjoy making upper and lower case letters with them. And, once the yarn is pressed firmly to the pattern, the letters stick to the tagboard! I can hang them up on my white board or tuck them into a sentence strip chart to display the completed letters.

According to their web site,

Wikki Stix are made of hand-knitting yarn enhanced with a microcrystalline food-grade, non-toxic wax, the kind used in bubble gum and lipstick. They do not contain latex, gluten, nor peanut or other nut oils or byproducts which makes them an ideal creative activity toy for children with allergies.

How do they work?

Simply stated…they stick! No glue, no paste, no mess. Just press them down with light fingertip pressure and they will adhere to almost any smooth surface. They are also easy to peel up and reposition so“mistakes” virtually disappear, which helps build self-confidence. There is no preparation, no clean-up, no mess. Press ‘em down, peel ‘em off… it’s that simple!

I use Wikki Stix to form alphabet letters, but after looking at the website, I can see lots of other uses for these incredibly addictive kinesthetic waxy sticks of fun!!

Home Visits

Anonymous — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:13:00 GMT

I recently was a guest blogger on Raki's Rad Resources. I posted this entry there. If you haven't checked out her blog, please do so...right now!

Raki's Rad Resources

Home Visits: Making Connections with Students and Their Families

One of the most powerful strategies a teacher can use to make connections with students and their families is by making home visits. Over my past few years as an English as a Second Language teacher, I have made several home visits. I have found that they take extra time and effort, but the eventual results are worthwhile. In fact, I believe the “payoffs” are huge!

One of my students was struggling to access an online student reading program. After trying several notes back and forth with the child’s mother, I offered to make a home visit to see what I could do to help. When I arrived, Mother and the three children welcomed me to their home. They offered me a tray of traditional sweets and pistachios along with a cold can of Pepsi. I sat and chatted with Mother for about 20 minutes before I began to work on their home computer. It took me more than an hour of tinkering with several possible solutions to figure out why they couldn’t access the online reading program, but finally, it worked! Hurrah! We celebrated and then I waited while my student completed one of the online lessons. I wanted to make sure she was successful before I left. Mother observed how the online lesson was supposed to work so she could help her daughter in the future. While we were waiting on my student finish her lesson, Father called on his cell phone. He couldn’t be there in person to meet me, but he wanted to talk with me and to thank me for visiting his home and helping his child.

Another time I visited a family who lived in an apartment complex housing many families from the same country and culture. As a teacher colleague and I along with our school district interpreter walked between buildings, a cry arose of “Teachers are here!” Suddenly, doors opened and children streamed out. They were excitedly yelling at each other in their first language while interspersing their conversation with the English words, “Teacher, Teacher!” We were quickly engulfed by a crowd of children hugging us and saying our names. As we made our way to the apartment, we must have looked like a small parade to any onlookers! The children of the family we were scheduled to visit thrust themselves importantly to the head of the group and led us to their home. They escorted us into their apartment and sat down cross-legged on the floor. We greeted Mother and Auntie and started our meeting. During the visit, other children kept peeking in the open door of the apartment. They giggled, whispered and waved to us as we talked with the adults of the family.

I’ve met many families and found that every one of them appreciated the time I’ve taken to visit their homes. I’ve eaten a variety of food such as Latin American candy, Middle Eastern pastries and cookies, spicy Asian hot wings and Somali sambusis (triangular shaped fried pastries filled with a spicy ground meat, onion and peppers mixture). I’ve sipped hot tea, spiced chai, assorted soft drinks and unfamiliar fruit juices. It seems to be a universal gesture from all of the families I’ve visited to offer the teacher a treat or drink. I always try to accept graciously even if I don’t care for something because I know it’s important to my students.

Home visits have made a difference for me in how I relate to my students and their families. Parents are always more comfortable communicating with me after they have hosted me in their homes. I find now that mothers, fathers, “aunties” and others make the time to stop in my classroom when they come to school for Open House nights or when they come to pick up their children during the school day. I see them at district meetings and cultural events and, yes, sometimes even at the grocery store, hardware store or the mall! Without fail, they greet me with a smile, a handshake or even a hug (from the women). If you have not tried home visits with your students, I suggest you try. You may be pleasantly surprised at the positive results.

School Sparks

Anonymous — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:07:00 GMT

I enjoy finding new websites to help me with my teaching. This week, I've had a great time discovering School Sparks.

It's a wonderful resource for preschool and kindergarten readiness skills. I know several of my students will love using some of her worksheets and activities. The deeper I get into the School Sparks website, the more treasures I find!

Go now and check it out!!

http://www.schoolsparks.com/