I first wanted to start by saying how important it
is that we were able to set goals for ourselves. It is great to have an
overarching goal to strive towards every time we step foot into a classroom at
Brigham. While I do believe having the goal is great it was extremely hard for
me to come up with a goal without first meeting the students. The goal that I
came up with is, “I want to be able to actively involve the English Language
Learners in every classroom activity. I hope to learn the tools and techniques
to be able to do that.” I made this goal based off of the English Language
Learners I have at my clinical site because it is something we have to consider
when planning every lesson or activity.
Sometimes I feel like these students do not
receive the education or attention that they should get because they do not
completely know the language. This often leaves them left out or confused. To
me, an important part of teaching English Language Learners is to create an
open and trusting relationship with them. This way the student feels
comfortable telling you that they do not understand what is being asked of them
or trying words in English that they are not used to using. I think I will make
this my second goal while in the classrooms at Brigham. I have a feeling this
goal is going to be harder to reach than some of the goals I have set for
myself in the past because we are not in the classroom every week. It will be a
challenge to build that relationship with these students because by the time I
am back in their classroom two weeks will have past and they may not remember
who I am. The second goal I am going to set for myself is to use the student’s
first language whenever I can to help them understand what is being asked of
them. I have taken six years of Spanish so I am able to speak some short
sentences. However, I am not nearly as good at speaking, as I want to be. I
know that I can use pictures, give longer wait time, and actively use my
hands/facial expressions when I talk which can help them comprehend a little
bit more. However, I still need to learn different tools/techniques that will
aid my conversations with English Language Students
This
week was my first week working within the preschool classroom at Brigham. So,
it was the first week I was able to work on my goal within the preschool
classroom. It was extremely hard for me to work on this goal because I did not know
which students were English language learners. Looking back, I wish I would have
asked before giving our lesson. Now that I know which students in the preschool
class are English language learners I will be able to actively pursue my goal. The one aspect of the classroom that I noticed was that many of the items were labeled in both Spanish and English which is definitely something I will do in my future classroom.
While
I did not learn as much as I wanted to learn about my goal this week I did
learn a very important lesson on time management within the classroom. Our
lesson did not last near as long as we thought it would. This came as a surprise
to all of us and showed me just how important it is to always have a backup
activity incase a lesson finishes early or a students finishes early. As teachers we need to me masters of or minutes.
Exceeds: I went over the word count and I incorporated experiences from my clinical cite.
