Practicum Experiences (10/31- 11/4)

Last week, the students chose new books to read individually for the Quarter Two Book Projects. To begin, the class was taught a new reading strategy, "asking questions." We attached sheets into their notebooks where they could write questions for before, during, and after reading a section, giving them an opportunity to output and them give input for what they understood of whichever passage they were reading through. *A cool tool that the students used during silent reading times were "whisper phones." Whisper phones allowed students to speak into this plastic item that appeared as a phone, where they could hear themselves read and pronounce the words in the book, but not distract others around them.

One day last week, their was a student field trip that took students from several places to a career fair. Therefore, certain teachers had to leave the building to chaperone. Our ELL classroom that morning had students not in the ELL program sitting-in for a study hall "type" hour. During the hour, it was very noticeable to see that the ELL students were nervous. The "cat seemed to have their tongue" in that they were silent. They did not want to ask nor answer any questions. I talked to one of the students later, a boy from Pakistan, and asked him if he was alright, because usually he is very talkative during class. He told me, "I don't know, I get nervous with them (Non-ELL Students) here. I don't want to be made fun of." I then asked him if they make fun of him, and he just shrugged his shoulders.

One thing I enjoyed that the teacher did this week was that she held individual conferences about the new books that the students were reading. She had them tell myself and her about the book, to see if they are understanding, making connections, and asking questions. One student, from Africa, was able to connect to one of the characters in the book that reminded here of a teacher she had back in her home country. However, she, and many of the others as well, only focused on single strategies that they were comfortable using. Many were not connecting the new reading strategy (asking questions) to their books. It seemed that they were still confused on how they should do that. The teacher allowed me then to give a mini-lesson on how to use the strategy. They seemed to pick it up, but I won't be able to see if they were able to until I check their notebooks tomorrow.

Blogfully yours,
Tommy T.