SPSE 6712-Observation #2

Teaching Issues

The biggest problem I have noticed during my observations has been regarding the student’s prior knowledge. Building on student’s prior knowledge is an important part of teaching. Sometimes it is difficult because not all our students have had the same experiences. Unfortunately, this is an even bigger challenger with second language learners because even though they have prior knowledge to build on, they don’t know how to express it because of the language barrier. I feel like this problem is easily fixed simply by bringing in more pictures, videos, or hands on objects so that the students can associate them with the word/topic. Another problem I noticed was in regards to conducting the lesson in a small group. Even though the students are all level 1 ELL they still have a very broad range of skills. During this lesson the same students would point out the high frequency word every time. I felt like the ones that needed to learn it the most didn’t have a chance to look because the higher level students would find the word and point it out before the lower level student had a chance. I have also noticed this happening with other lessons as well. It seem like the students are all working together at the same time instead of them each getting their own chance to answer the question. This particular lesson might reach every one better if they took turns pointing out the word can on each page. This way only one student was looking at a time and you would be able to tell if they were getting it or not.

Second Language Acquisition/ Ethnographic Perspective

The ELL teacher has been working on the high frequency word can this week. The lesson today consisted of reading the Eric Carle book, From Head to Toe. Kindergarten high frequency words are something that the regular classroom teacher works on a lot but the ELL students need extra one-on-one help with them. The lesson was very appropriate for second language learners because it used a children’s book that repeated the high frequency word on every page. Mrs. Horton gave the students pointers (glittery unsharpened pencils) to use to find the word can on every page. The students LOVED using their pointers and responded well to the story. Mrs. Horton would read the page and then the students would use their pointers to find the high frequency word. She also would pull them into the story by asking if they could do what the animals and kids in the story were doing, like scratch their head or beat their chest. The students enjoyed this because they were actively participating in the story. The book chosen also had lots of wonderful pictures that portrayed the words so even if the students didn’t understand all of the words, they could figure out what was going on through the illustrations. Another thing I liked about the book was how much repetition it had in it. Repetition is great for young learners and especially ones who are second language learners. The phrase, “I can do it” was repeated at the end of every page. By the end of the story the children had memorized it and would track print while saying, “I can do it.”Also, there was a sentence strip with the word can that each of the students could hold during the story to remind them what they were looking for, I thought that this was very helpful to them. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like Mrs. Horton incorporated a lot of culture into the lesson. But I am sort of unclear as to how one would do that with this lesson. Perhaps next time the instructor could choose a multicultural book to use for the lesson.


Anna