My ELL Goal Update

                This past week I was in the preschool classroom at Brigham Elementary School as an assistant. This was my second time in this classroom, my first being when I taught my lesson with Kacie. The lesson being taught was on the sense of taste and I spent my time in the classroom observing a specific child for the lead teachers. Because I was extensively watching this child and writing down everything she said and did, I had little to no interaction with students. This made it difficult to address my ELL goal. At the beginning of the semester, I made my goal to gain experience and confidence in working with ELL students. Even though I did not get much experience working directly with the students, I was able to observe them and see how they interact in the classroom. I noticed that the students who were most vocal, were also the students who are potentially ELL. This surprised me because I would have thought the opposite would occur. I did not expect the native English speakers to be the quietest ones in the room. After looking through some online resources, I found that the classroom environment plays a big role in fostering the engagement and participation of all students, especially English language learners. By having a classroom that encourages language, teachers can help students become more comfortable communicating verbally. Not only should English language learners have ample opportunity to practice their language with adults and peers, but they should also have their native language supported in the classroom. Doing these things will help develop strong English speakers. After being in the preschool at Brigham, I believe that the program and teachers do a good job at doing these things to support their students. Those students would not be as vocal as their language development had not been strongly supported.

On another note, there is one specific thing that happened during my time in the classroom that I found to be very exciting. While one of the boys was looking at a substance, he said it looked bumpy. The word ‘bumpy’ is one that Kacie and I introduced during our sense of touch lesson two weeks earlier. He retained that knowledge and used it in a different context. This was a nice surprise since we weren’t sure how much information the students grasped from our lesson. It was a huge relief to find out that at least one student understood something we taught. Once he used that word, I got a huge smile on my face! Although this was not part of the lesson that day, it was a nice bit of encouragement for Kacie and I.

Here are some of the resources I used when I researched English language learners in preschool. The first link is to a site that outlines effective tips and strategies for teachers to use to effectively scaffold English language learners in the classroom. The second link is to the Illinois Board of Education page addressing ELL in the preschool classroom. This website contains an abundance of resources and websites for parents and teachers to use.

http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/36679/

http://www.isbe.net/earlychi/preschool/preschool_ell.htm

Exceeds: I included resources and links for further support.