This
past week I had the opportunity to observe and help teach in the kindergarten
classroom at Brigham after being in and teaching in the preschool room. I enjoyed
it a lot and I could immediately see numerous differences between preschool and
kindergarten. They were much more mature and outspoken. They were definitely
more outgoing than the preschool class and wanted to participate more in the
activities and discussion.
My goals
that I have set for myself were mostly geared toward the preschool classroom
but they still apply for kindergarten because there were still some English
Language Learners in the kindergarten class. The goal that I came up with is,
to meet and interact with the students who are English Language Learners so I
gain some insight on how they learn best. Since the kindergarten students
were much more active and participated more than the preschool students, I was
able to work more on my goal. I got to interact and talk more with the students
during the activities. Although, it was hard to do a lot of interacting because
of the note taking that we were required to do. In the preschool room, when we
would give the students directions, probably about half of them would not do
anything and the other half would follow directions. So the teacher would
repeat our directions in Spanish and then everybody would participate. But in
the kindergarten room, barely any Spanish was spoken which was really great to
see because that means that they are understanding English better. Although I did
see many directions, labels, etc. around the room in both Spanish and English but
that is something that is needed and very helpful when there are English
Language Learners in a classroom.
I
think that a big part of my goal was to really get to know individual students
and I feel like I did not achieve this aspect of my goal. It is really
difficult to try to get to know students when you only see them maybe once or
twice a month. I think that this is difficult for the students too because it
is important for them to have routine and for us to come in and have different
teacher each week could be stressful for them. But it is definitely hard for us
to make progress with them.
But
it has been beneficial to learn about and try to accommodate young English
Language Learners when writing lesson plans. In my clinicals so far, I have not
had a lot of experience with teaching English Language Learners so this experience
so far has helped me learn as a teacher.
I think
that the teachers that taught this week did a good job when it came to accommodating
English Language Learners. They included a lot of visuals when teaching and I even
heard one of the teachers speaking a little bit of Spanish to the students. This
is a great way to connect and get to know the students better. It shows that
you care about them and their learning. Learning simple words and phrases in a
different language that your students speak will be beneficial to you and to
them!
