Teacher’s Name: Carrie Cilvik
School Observing: Flood
Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: Activities and Interactions of My 1st Visit
The students started
their day by turning their homework in the homework bin. Then, they had a student leader point to each
letter of the alphabet. The class would
then go over each letter with a phrase like “j says /j/-/j/-jump”. They then went over certain words, such as
hello, thanks, them, every, etc. They
also focused on the hard sound of g and c and the soft sound of g and c. The class also went over the –ag word family. Miss. Cilvik told me that her students come
from households that speak Ukrainian, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.
The class was learning about onomatopoeia. As a class, the students said certain words,
while acting out the action of the word.
They then, watched a youtube song that sang about what an onomatopoeia
word is. The video gave many examples of
onomatopoeia; the students really enjoyed the song. The students also had to come up with their
own example of an onomatopoeia word and put it on an index card. Then, each student shared their word with the
rest of the class.
Every day the students do a page from a word ladder
packet. The worksheets state a core word
and then give hints and directions about how to change the word. For example, on one worksheet, the main word
was fat. The first clue was a sentence
that stated, “my new shoes blank well” and then gave the instruction to
change the vowel of the main word. The
second clue was “Maria blank a home run” and stated to change the first
letter. The third clue was “Belonging to
a boy that is blank book” and stated to change the last letter. The fourth clue was “Blank or that” and
stated to add a letter to the beginning of the word. The fifth clue was “Opposite of fat” and
stated to change the last letter. The
class started with fat and then went to fit-hit-his-this-thin.
The class read a book called “Too Much Talk”, which is
about an African folktale. Ms.Cilvik
started off by explaining what a folktale is.
She had assigned a homework the previous night, which required the
students to come up with onomatopoeia words and then translate them to the
language spoken at their homes. This was
relevant to the story because it was all about onomatopoeia words. After going over their homework, Ms. Cilvik
went over the author’s name and what an author and illustrator do. The class also reviewed what characters and
the setting are. After reading the
story, the students wrote about what character they would like to talk to if
they had the chance. The class then
shared their answers. As a class, the
students made a story staircase that went over the main points of the
book.
Teacher’s Name: Carrie Cilvik
School Observing:
Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: Classroom
Environment
The desks are arranged in u-shape; this setup allows
everyone to see each other. The white
board is in the front of the room. The
alphabet borders the top of the front wall.
On the far side of the room is the teacher’s desk. Right next to her desk, there is a carpet
that is used for reading time. The wall
in front of the carpet displays the word wall, the word family of the week, a
list of action words, calendar, birthday poster, and the class rules. To the side of that, a behavior progress
poster. The poster has each student’s
name and under their name is a colored square; the different colors represent
the different behaviors: green is good, yellow is okay, and red is bad.
There is a book shelf next to the teacher’s desk. This holds all the teacher manuals, reading
pointers, and other teaching materials.
On the far wall, there is a world map and a globe. There is also another book shelf that is used
for textbooks and other types of books.
Across the room is the student library.
The books are divided into themes, such as fiction, poetry, animals,
etc. They are also divided by grade
level. Everything that the students need
are labeled.
On the windows in the back of the room are the planets of
the solar system. In the back, there is
also a table for students who need to sit by themselves. At the students’ desks, there are the
students’ journals, word family packets, and a bin filled with scissors,
pencils, highlighters, markers, and crayons.
Observation Date: March 26, 2013 Observation: 3
Teacher’s Name:
Carrie Cilvik
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: Making Content
Comprehensible
The first thing the class does every day is go over
the alphabet. The students sound out the
letter twice and then they say it with a word.
Once they have gone through the entire alphabet, the class then goes
over the /ch/, /sh/, /th/, /wh/, /ar/, /aw/, /au/, /ir, /er/, /ur/, /oo/, /ew/,
/ue/, /ou/, /u/, /or/, /ore/, /ow/, /ou/, /oy/, and /o/. They also go over the hard and soft sound of
c and g. They state hard g (g) pairs
with a,o,u. Soft g (j) pairs with e, i,
and y. Hard c (k) pairs with a, o, and
u. Soft c (s) pairs with e, i, and
y.
Another strategy that helps is going over the words on
the word wall every day. Some of the
current words on the wall are hello, thank, town, better, best, and many. Constantly reviewing material will ensure
that the students will learn and the knowledge will eventually stick. It is good that Ms. Cilvik constantly
reinforces the information, such as with onomatopoeia. Even two weeks after the initial lesson, the
class still reviews onomatopoeia. For a certain
amount of time, the class goes over a specific word family. When I
was there it was the ag family. The
class would go over the sound and then say different ag words. This helps the students learn the correct
pronunciation and word sounds.
The word ladder packet is a great way for the students to
really learn the English language because they are challenged to experiment
with the different letter sounds and blends.
It also helps that this is a daily practice. It really allows the student to practice
multiple sounds and as each day passes they gain more experience with creating
words and pronouncing them correctly.
The students also practice abc order by doing worksheets where
they have to arrange certain vocabulary words in the correct abc order. This is a good practice to help the students
learn the letters of the alphabet. The
words that they have to order always relate back to what they are learning in
class. For example, when I was there the
class was about to plant plants for spring, so their abc order words were all
words that related to plants and gardening.
The class did poorly on one abc order worksheet, so Ms. Cilvik made the
class do it over again. In order to
learn from their mistakes, Ms. Cilvik required the students to highlight the
first letter of every word. Then, as a class they did half of the worksheet and
then individually the second half.
Observation Date: March 26, 2013 Observation: 4
Teacher’s Name: Carrie Cilvik
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: Instructional
Strategies for Literacy
When reading a story in class, Ms. Cilvik always makes
sure to go over the basics of the book.
She goes over the author and illustrator. She also asks questions that relate to the
topic in the book. At the end of the
story, Ms. Cilvik always incorporates some kind of activity that reviews the
plot and the main events. This helps the
students really review and understand the main concepts.
One way Ms.Cilvik helps advance the students’ literacy
skills is by going over sight words. She
has index cards of sight words and she calls each student up and they have to
correctly pronounce the sight word. This
probably helps the students advance their vocabulary. For sight words, the students are given a
pre-test and then after they have had time to study the words at home, they
take a post test.
When going over the semantics of grammar, Ms.Cilvik
relates it to the students’ lives. For example,
when going over object pronouns she demonstrated all of them by using the
students of the class and the faculty of the school. For them she gave the example of Mr. Mooney
(administrator) and Yosmely (student).
Before
reading stories from the textbook, Ms. Cilvik goes around to each student and
asks them questions pertaining to the vocabulary they will encounter in the
story. She does this to make sure the
students understand the words before they actually read them in the story. The class was reading a story about a boy who
is deaf going to a concert. Before
reading the story, the class listened to a song and then listened to it a
second time with their hands over their ears.
This demonstrated the idea of not being able to hear as well. The class then began to read. First, one student would read a page and then
the class would reread the same page.
Throughout reading, Ms. Cilvik would ask questions to keep the students
engaged.
Observation Date: April 2, 2013 Observation: 5
Teacher’s Name: Carrie Cilvik
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: Teacher
Questioning
Before discussing a new topic, Ms. Cilvik always asks
questions to get the students interested.
She asks questions to relate the topic back to the students’ lives. When students were having problems reading
she would encourage them to sound and blend.
She would never just give them the answer; she wanted to make sure they
came to the answer on their own. If they
were still having trouble reading, she would encourage them to chunk the
word. She would help them sound out the
words if they were having extreme difficulty.
For the plant lesson, Ms. Cilvik started by asking multiple
questions. She asked things like: “can
plants grow from concrete?”, “what is another word for soil?”, “why do plants
need the sun?”. She would ask a main
question and then after that was answered she would have a lot of relating
follow-up questions. When she asks
questions that the students do not know, she gives hints or options, or makes
connections to their prior knowledge.
Another
strategy Ms.Cilvik used was the KWL (know, want, learned) chart for the plant
lesson. The students start with the know
section and share the knowledge they already know about plants. One student asked a question that Ms. Cilvik
knew that if the student thought about it that they would be able to
answer. Therefore, instead of answering
the question, she told them to look at the K section and they were able to
answer their own question. Another
student asked the question, “how do plants spread out?”. Ms. Cilvik responded by asking what is the
word when the flower petals open up? She
then gave them the hint that it started with bl. After answering, the K and W section, Ms.
Cilvik showed the class books they could read in the free time to learn more
about plants.
When the students were doing worksheets, Ms. Cilvik was
constantly monitoring what they were writing.
If the sentence did not make sense, she would make the student read
their sentence out loud and asked them if they thought if their sentence made
sense. This helped the student realize they need to take their time when doing their work and they should
always double check to make sure their answers make sense.
Observation Date: April 2, 2013 Observation: 6
Teacher’s Name: Carrie Cilvik
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: Assessment
It seemed that Ms. Cilvik assigned at least one worksheet
for homework each night. The students
would turn it in the next day and Ms. Cilvik would correct them when she had
time. The homework results showed if the
student understood the lesson. Ms.
Cilvik also assessed her students just by listening to their responses in class
and by constantly monitoring what they were writing on their worksheets.
When studying the sight words, Ms. Cilvik would first
give a pretest and then later a post test.
This allowed Ms. Cilvik to evaluate the progress of each student. Also the results of the pretest can help
determine at what basic level the students are at, which helps her decide how
to teach the material and what stuff she should focus on.
Ms. Cilvik does give quizzes and tests. To test her students’ knowledge of
onomatopoeia, Ms. Cilvik read a few poems and the students had to highlight the
onomatopoeia words on the printouts of the poems.
The KWL is another effective tool of assessment Ms.
Cilvik implemented in her classroom.
This strategy allowed her to see what basic knowledge her students had,
what they wanted to learned, and at the end she was able to evaluate if they
learned what she wanted them to.
Ms.
Cilvik would ask students different types of questions during reading time to
make sure the students understood the story.
By listening to the students’ answers, she was able to evaluate whether
they were listening and understood.
Observation Date:
April 4, 2013 Observation: 7
Teacher’s Name: Carrie Cilvik
School Observing:
Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd/3rd
Topic: ELL Teacher’s
Role
During the time I observed, Ms Cilvik met with two
different groups of students. She met
with the first group from 9-10:30. This
group was made up of second and third graders.
They went over the basics: homework, classwork, reading, etc. There were
about ten students in the class. After her class, they would go back to their
main classroom.
Ms.
Cilvik would work with the other ELL teacher, who was right next door. When I was there they were working on the
plant lesson together. Ms. Cilvik taught
the basic plant lesson by herself, but when it came to the actual planting,
both classes planted together. After
they planted, both classes watched The Bee movie together.
The
second group was also second and third graders.
They came to Ms. Cilvik at 10:30 and left at 11:00. They were the beginner students. It is required by the state that the ELL
students at the beginning level read for two hours, but the regular reading
time at Flood is only an hour and a half.
Therefore, the students complete their last thirty minutes with Ms.
Cilvik. There are only about five
students in this class. Ms. Cilvik said
most of the students were identified with a learning disability. A teacher aide comes and assists Ms. Cilvik
with these students. They practice sight
words, abc order, and letter sounds. One
assignment was to find pictures or words in magazines that start with the long
a sound. After meeting with Ms. Cilvik,
these students go to lunch.
With
both of the classes, students would go to the other classroom for a little
while and would work with the other ELL teacher. I am not sure what they were doing over
there, but it seemed that they were just being evaluated or tested on something
every few days.
I
did not find how Ms.Cilvik communicated with the mainstream teacher. I assume she would check in often to make
sure she stays updated with each of her students.
Observation Date: April 9, 2013 Observation: 9
The last day I observed in the mainstream classroom. The class was going over main ideas of paragraphs. There was a paragraph displayed on the board and the students had to identify the main idea. They also had to identify details and supporting details. Yosmely, herself, was very slow with reading aloud. The teacher also tried to encourage the students to figure out the meaning of certain words by looking at surrounding sentences. The class also discussed what an inferred main idea was.
Observation Date: April 9, 2013 Observation: 8
Student’s Name: Yosmely
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade:
ESL 2nd
Topic: Mainstream Classroom
In the classroom, their day schedule was posted. From 8:30-9, they had morning work, 9-10:30
Reading, 10:30-10:45 Spelling, 10:45-11:00 Handwriting, 11-11:30 Lunch,
11:30-12:45 Math, 12:45-1:15 Reading Groups, 1:15-1:30 Recess, 1:30-2:15 Art,
2:15-3:00 English, and 3:00- 3:05 Dismissal.
The schedule changes with the specials, such as Art and PE. The schedule, when I was observing, was also
changed because of testing.
The first thing the class did was go over a long e
worksheet. They had a sheet with
different e words and the class had to cut out the words and paste them in the
right category: ee-ea-ie. The class then
went over the words together. While the
class was finishing up their worksheets, many of the students were conversing
with each other. Yosmely stayed quiet
and simply listened to her other classmates.
She is very sweet. I know her
from tutoring and she is usually quiet, but she always smiles and waves.
The class then read a book. They read out loud by popcorn style
reading. Yosmely hesitated a little bit
when she had to read.
After about an hour, some of the students would leave and
go to another class and then other students would come to the classroom. Yosmely remained in the same classroom for the
duration of my observation.
Student’s Name: Yosmely
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade: ESL 2nd
Topic: Mainstream Classroom
After
some of the students switched classrooms, the class focused on reading. The teacher divided the class into groups of
3 students. The group would read the
story together and then a worksheet. The
groups were randomly chosen by popsicle sticks.
I liked this strategy because the students were able to help each other
with reading difficulties. However, in
Yosemly’s group, there was a very strong reader. She took control more than actually
helping. There was one student who has
not focused and could not read very well.
The teacher told the little girl to help him, but instead of actually
allowing him to try, the girl would just read and the boy would reread what she
said. He sometimes did not even know at
the book when he was rereading, he just remembered what she had said. I know the girl thought she was being
helpful, but I think it did not help him at all. Yosmely had some struggles with reading,
especially with contractions. When it
came to answering the worksheet, Yosmely wanted to read some of the questions,
but the other girl overshadowed her and she made sure to read the questions
aloud.
After
reading, the class worked on spelling.
The teacher would say the words and then the students would repeat and
spell out the word. They had a spelling
worksheet, where they had to complete the sentences using core words.
Then,
they worked on handwriting. They learned
the cursive w. The teacher would write
the letter on the board, while the students wrote it on a paper or white board. They would also write words with the letter w
in it. The teacher tried to pick words
the students were familiar with, such as students’ names and Wilkes-Barre. They then had a worksheet, where they had to
trace and write four w’s. They also had
to write the words: Washington, Wednesday, and Wes feels the
wind.
Observation Date: April 9, 2013 Observation: 10
Student’s Name: Yosmely
School Observing: Flood Elementary Grade:
ESL 2nd
Topic: Mainstream Classroom
The last day I observed in the mainstream classroom. The class was going over main ideas of paragraphs. There was a paragraph displayed on the board and the students had to identify the main idea. They also had to identify details and supporting details. Yosmely, herself, was very slow with reading aloud. The teacher also tried to encourage the students to figure out the meaning of certain words by looking at surrounding sentences. The class also discussed what an inferred main idea was.
The class also went over facts and opinions. First, they went over the different examples of
what facts and opinions were. They had a
power point that went along with the lesson.
Then they had sentences projected on the smart board. A student would go up to the board and say
the answer and then they would play with the smart board for the correct answer
to be shown. The teacher would call the
students up by picking random popsicle sticks.
The next subject was spelling. They first went over all of their spelling
words, saying the word and then spelling it out. Then, they did a page in their workbook. They had to read a paragraph and correct the
spelling mistakes. Yosmely did this very
well; she even helped the boy sitting next to her.
They then worked on handwriting. They had review of the most recent letters
they studied, so they went over cursive V,Z,V,W, and X. The students then worked on worksheet that
`was going to be graded. Yosmely had
very good handwriting.
The main difference between the mainstream and ELL
classroom was the number of students. I would
say the ELL classroom had half the amount of students that the mainstream
classroom had. It seemed that the
teacher in the ELL classroom was more involved with the students and constantly
knew what was going on. The mainstream
teacher had more students, so of course she was a little busier.
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