Introduction
Day 1 of observation- March 7, 2011
Setting: Kindergarten Transitional (ESL) classroom
Today Ms. Tavares is teaching students about our neighborhood. She starts out by playing a cassette tape to students while showing them a story book. Students seem very interested and excited to learn about their community. The teacher stops the tape a few times to ask students questions. The first time she stops the tape she asks them “what kind of things do you see around your neighborhood?” One child raises his hand quickly and replies “uh I see houses and trees”, and other children yell out “cars and trucks”. Ms. Tavares writes their answers on the dry erase board. She continues to play the story on cassette. We noticed some students not paying attention and playing with their shoes laces or hair.
We asked Ms.Tavares why those certain students did not seem interested and she replied “because they are new to the country and English”. However, she also said that she pairs the students together that are at different levels in order to help each other. Then when the story was over, Ms. Tavares asked the students to pair up with their partners and passed out sheets of paper. On the paper was a drawing of many different buildings and figures commonly seen in a neighborhood. The vocabulary words were written on the dry erase board, and students worked together to fill in the empty spaces underneath each picture. They also colored their pictures together.
When all the students finished their work, she asked them to present their neighborhood pictures in front of the class. Each pair of students went up and took turns explaining what they wrote. Some children gave little stories and descriptions of their neighborhood. For example “this is where my daddy works, and I go to school here, this is my brown house and I have a dog, this is where my car stays outside on the street.” We noticed Ms. Tavares repeat everything back to the class clearly and loud for everyone to hear. Once the lesson was over she had them hang their neighborhood pictures outside the classroom hallway. She also gave them homework sheets to review. Overall, the classroom seemed to understand the lesson and comprehend the story. We thought the story and activity intertwined the lesson well giving students the opportunity to collaborate together, verbalize, and attend appropriately.
Day 2- March 14, 2011
Setting: Second graders pull out lesson
Today was the second time we observed Ms. Tavares. We were in a different classroom and there were nine second graders that Ms. Tavares taught. Most of the students knew English enough to be able to communicate with the teacher. She introduced us to the class, and after they all greeted us she started the lesson.
Today’s lesson was very interesting; it was an English Grammar Lesson and was about prepositions. The teacher’s aim was that by the end of the class the students would be able to identify and define prepositions and also be able to demonstrate correct usage of them. Ms. Tavares used a small box as a visual aid and asked students to think of words that describe where they could put the box. Examples of student’s answers: “I will put the box on the floor. I will put the box under the table.” Ms. Tavares wrote all the prepositions that were used on the board. (Examples: inside, into, under, by, over, in, on, next to…). While the students were giving their examples, there were a couple of students that made mistakes so Ms. Tavares corrected them saying “Do you mean on the table”. This is a great way to correct students instead of saying “No this is wrong, you must say on the table.” We learned Corrective Feedback in class, but seeing it being applied in an actual classroom is much greater, we were able to see student’s response “oh, yes that is what I mean”, instead of seeing them being discouraged from participating in the discussion.
After the discussion the teacher gave a definition of preposition. “A preposition connects a noun to other words and shows the relationship between them.” For the next activity she divided the students into three groups of three students and gave them an exercise to work on. Every group had a picture and a list of prepositions and were supposed to complete the exercise according to the picture using the list of prepositions. After the groups were done Ms. Tavares went over the exercise with the class and wrote the correct answer on the board.
Overall, today’s lesson was very interesting, and we look forward to the next observing period.
Day 3- March 21, 2011
Setting: 1st graders pull out lesson
For our third day of observation, Ms. Tavares taught the first graders, that she pulled out from their regular classroom. There were only five students for this lesson. All five students understood English very good. Her lesson was about demonstrative pronouns- singular/plural- this/these, that/those.
For this lesson, the teacher had to use objects in the classroom that we were in, to show the students the difference between the demonstrative pronouns. She started off by telling the children that they were going to learn about how to use “this”, “that”, “these”, and “those”. She started with “this”, and explained to the children that:” We use ‘this’ to show or to point to one thing that is close to us”. She had a book in front of her and showed the children what she meant, for example: This is a book. She asked the children if they understood, which they did, and then had them make a sentence, having ‘this’ in it. All five did a very good job, using examples that they had in front of them. Then she continued with ‘that’ and said: “We use ‘that’ to show or to point to one thing that is away from us”. She pointed to a chair on the other side of the table and said: “That is a chair.” The children were asked to give examples and did a good job on those, too. She then talked about ‘these’ and said to the children: “If we want to talk about two things that are close to us, we use the word ‘these’”. She gave the same example as the first one, only in plural form, “These are books” pointing to two books in front of her. The children did their own examples, and they showed that they understood. Then she did ‘those’ telling them in the same way as before: “We use ‘those’ to show or to point to two things that are far from us” and used the example “Those are chairs”. After that, the children gave their examples. She repeated everything again, and the students seem to understand her. She then started to ask the students one by one “What is this?” or “What is that?” pointing to different objects in the room. When the children had difficulty determining on what to say, she would help them out by saying that the object is close or that the object is far. She did the same with the plural version.
Before the lesson was over, she gave out papers to the students to do in class, that had pictures of a person pointing at the object or objects which were either close or far in regards to the person. The students had to determine whether it was ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’ according to what the picture showed. She helped them out again by doing the first two examples, which were ‘this’ and ‘that’. If they needed more help she would do the same thing as she did before, ask the student whether the objects were close or far from the person. They all did very good on this exercise. Ms. Tavares told them that they have to practice in order to get better. Before they finished with their lesson, she gave them another paper with demonstrative pronouns to do for homework. All five students seemed to have understood most of the lesson.
Day 4 – March 28, 2011
Setting: First graders pull out lesson
Today was the fourth time that we observed Ms. Tavares ESL class. Ms. Tavares took five students to the ESL classroom. As they walked in she said “Hello! How are you?” the students began to shout “Fine! Good!” as they walked in the classroom and sat on chairs. We introduced ourselves to the students and they shouted “Hello!” Then she started the lesson as follows:
Students today we are going to learn vocabulary words related to transportation, we will also learn how to express these words in a sentence. I will introduce to you many different kinds of transportation that people use to get to different places. I will ask a question, and you will answer the questions with our new words, related to transportation. Listen to this question “How do you come to school?” Now that you know the question repeat it with me together as a class “How do you come to school?” Now that you know the question, let’s learn some new words related to transportation. “Car” the teacher pulls out a word card with the picture of that word and says the word, “Car” to the class, and the class repeats after her. The teacher takes that card and places it on the word board for all the students to see. Then she says, “School Bus” the teacher pulls out another word card with the picture of the word “School Bus” on it and raises the card up for the class to see and the students repeat after her “School Bus”. The teacher follows these steps four other times using the words, “Taxi, Train, Bicycle, and School Bus,”
Now that we have these new words lets now put them in a sentence. I will ask you this question “How do you come to School?” and you will say “I come to school by____?” We could start with the first vocabulary word that we just learned “Train” and say “I come to school by train.” Repeat after me, “I come to school by train.” The teacher points to the picture word card “Train” as the students say “I come to school by train.” She continues to do the same routine with each new word, “Bicycle, Taxi, Car, and School Bus,” as the students repeat after her. Now let’s learn how to express our self by one person asking the question and another person answering, for example; I will say, “How do you come to school?” and someone else will say, “I come to school by _____?” and add in one of the new words. Let’s practice this as a class then I want you to turn and talk to each other and do the same. The teacher walked around to listen as the students turn and talk to each other. She was careful as she corrected some of the student’s pronunciation if she observed them having trouble saying a word.”
Lastly, the teacher said to the student you all did a wonderful job, now we are going to open our ESL journals and write down these six new words that we have learned in class today. She gave the students some time to do this, as she walked around, to make sure that all the students had written all the six words correctly. Class was dismissed.
