Becoming an ESL Professional...

Although I still lack 2 classes to complete my endorsement in ESL, I am very confident in saying that if you are at all interesting in working with ESL students, the add-on endorsement is a great option. I particularly appreciate that all of the work in fieldwork classes and others has been relevant and useful in my current classroom. Never once have I felt as though I was completing busy work assignments that would not help me become a better teacher. I think that this must certainly be rare in graduate studies. ;-)
I feel grateful to be able to finish my endorsement while also working to add a masters. Many other programs offer only the endorsement, but if I'm going to grow in my career, I need to be able to add a masters degree. The projects were also helpful because we have all created our own Wikis. They become a great resources for us and others. I know I will be using mine because how often do we forget something we have learned if we are not applying it constantly??? The Wiki is a great refresher even for those of us who have gotten our endorsement. I also am hoping to use the Wiki to help me organize my thoughts and processes for the Praxis exams.

If you are going to take on ESL, it is very rewarding. It's a huge challenge to work with students that are acquiring a second language while simultaneously trying to gain content area knowledge along with their peers. However, your life will be greatly enriched by all of the diversity that will come into your world. Enjoy your students and try to focus on doing what's right by them. Everything else will fall into place. :-)

Reflections on Literacy Circles...

In my early elementary world, ESL can be exciting but also a big challenge! In addition to teaching a new language, we are teaching the most basic skills and concepts and building the background knowledge and providing experiences that students will use in the rest of their educational career and lives! I did my literacy circle fieldwork with Kindergarten students who all had one year experience in school as former Pre-K students. I worked with 4 students, and I think the process can be really great for the students. They really enjoyed being the "stars" and sharing with each other their thoughts about the stories. Implementing the literacy circles with Kindergarteners is certainly a challenge because there are certain functions they will not be able to perform independently. We still read aloud the selection at this point in the year and some of the research function. If I were redoing this fieldwork, I would have probably started with something other than Christmas, because I was a little limited on some of the literary elements I could discuss. For example, I did not want to touch Fiction v. Reality. ;-)

As a foundation for literacy discussions and for future literacy circles in subsequent grades, the process can really benefit the younger students. I think it would be a great concept to implement across classrooms, content areas and grades. This type of activity would also benefit non-ESL students, and if it was a school-wide process, the students would become so efficient with the process. Their discussions could become really in-depth and great learning opportunities.

In implementing literature circles, I would urge teachers to remain patient! It's a learning process for teachers and students during the implementation process! I imagine that the students will get much better as they have more practice and being comfortable and confident in the process!

Ethnographic Narratives in the ESL Classroom

I just completed my first ethnographic narrative with one of my 4 year-old Pr-Kindergarteners. The aim of the interview and narrative is to find out about the child's perspective. Looking at culture through the child's eyes puts us into their world. I really enjoyed spending this time with my student and probing life through his eyes. I really think I am going to add this format to the unit we do at the beginning of the year. Our first unit is about Family and what better way to learn about my students by following the format of an ethnographic interview and narrative. This will allow me to get to know my students and see what their backgrounds are. By knowing about their prior experiences, I can understand how better to reach them and make learning meaningful.

From the interview, we can see through our students' perspectives. I can pass on information to his next teacher about his home life, his values, and the aspects of cultural which are important to him. Basically, it allows us to present a more complete picture of the student to the next teacher beyond just test scores and language proficiency. We are able to show them the whole child and not just some number. How can we meet the needs of our students if we do not even know who they are? 

Action Research: Not So Scary!!

We just completed our action research projects for our fieldwork ESL class. I have a little confession to make...I have actually fallen in love with the concept of action research. When I first started this class, I was a little intimidating at the notion of observing my own class and scrutinizing my own teaching for anything more formal than my own random thoughts. However, now I think the format and concept of action research as we used it were very easy to follow and so helpful. In the past, my experience with self-evaluation was often contained to our formal evaluations by administrators. In the teacher evaluation process the self-evaluations are often very broad. Action research is a great way for us to get more focused and look at questions that are relevant to our individual learning environments and students.

For my project I looked at the idea that ESL preschoolers are developing BICS and CALP, interpersonal and academic language, simultaneously. Because my classroom is not a contained ESL environment, I had to look at how I could present the material to both ESL and non-ESL students. One way I found was to supplement my typical teaching practice with more ESL specific strategies. For example, when doing our morning meeting, several of my ESL students have a hard time focusing. For those not in the early elementary world, a morning meeting (sometimes called circle time) is just the time when the whole class comes together for instruction. Because of the age and attention span of little ones, this meeting time is usually minimal and the rest of the learning occurs in smaller group settings. The action research has prompted me to start presenting some of the morning meeting material a second time in a smaller, more intimate setting with my ESL students. I really think this provides less distraction and allows students to shine who usually let the more gregarious and confident students lead the class discussions.

As a result of this research, I'm also playing around with my instructional groups. Most of the time I group based on academic level, but I'm making a conscious effort to group based on communication skills and language levels. I think this is especially important in the first semester of the Pre-K year because so much of the academic growth actually occurs in the second semester of the year. We, of course, are teaching it all along, but the students really bloom after the Winter holiday. If I can strengthen language skills and the confidence of my students now, they will be more ready to learn and absorb the material in the second semester. 

My advice to other ESL professionals is to not be afraid to scrutinize your own teaching and learning environment. What works with one group won't always work with the next bunch, so constantly monitoring the environment is key for student success. If something is not working, don't be afraid to stop midstream. It's better to move forward and try new things than to continue doing something you know for sure is not working! :-)

Classroom Observations, Post 2

At first it's a little odd to "observe" your own classroom. Teachers are, of course, more than used to evaluations and observations. We observe and evaluate our students constantly, and we, in turn, are being observed and evaluated by principals, department of education representatives, directors and central office staff every time we turn around. In fact, I think many teachers are sick of the word "evaluation" as we hear it constantly. :-) Part of our yearly evaluations include self-evaluations, but looking at my classroom environment with ESL eyes is a bit different. It's actually been very illuminating, and I'm grateful for the process that has unfolded in this graduate class because I'm getting input from students that I would not have gotten otherwise.

There are a few issues and problems that seem to arise with Pre-K ESL students. If I look at my current class and also reflect on previous years, I see that I have a huge challenge with the group of students that is timid and ELL. What a challenge! Even though I am bilingual, with a select few students, I cannot even get a non-verbal response to questions/comments/activities!!!! Is this just part of the silent period, or is this timidity and introversion colluding to challenge the teacher even more?! This becomes an issue because it is difficult to engage the students in some learning activities, and it can be extremely difficult to assess what the child knows.

Another pressing issue in Pre-K is language level and acquisition. For many of my students, this is their first year in a school setting and most have not before been to a daycare. For these ESL students, this is their first intense and prolonged exposure to English. Therefore, my focus has to be on developing BICS (basic interpersonal communicative skills) with my students. While we also introduce and discuss content-specific vocabulary, my first goal is to build the social vocabulary of my students. Pre-K is a language-rich, social environment, so it is, in my opinion, the perfect environment to plant the English language seed and watch it grow. My challenge comes in teaching the necessary content while working with students who are still acquiring BICS.

I feel so lucky to be able to work with my two favorite populations--early childhood and ESL. It's not always easy, but it is always rewarding!!!! 

Fieldwork Observation 1

During my first fieldwork observation, I sat in on a Kindergarten ESL pull-out class. That day, the teacher was only working with three students, 2 boys and 1 girl. All three students were native Spanish speakers.

The purpose of the lesson was to practice using and finding high frequency words and vocabulary words. The lesson was structured in a small group setting where the teachers and students were all active participants. The students each read from a reader and made a list and note of words they encountered that were on their high frequency or vocabulary lists. The students added these words to their personal word walls. Adaptations of more time and one-to-one assistance were given to the students as needed. The students eagerly answered questions and gave responses to teacher inquiries, and all of them took turns reading to the group.

The evidence of "community" in the classroom began outside the door. All of the ESL students their name on a crayon outside the door showing visitors who belonged to the class group. Birthdays for the month were posted by the calendar and multi-ethnic displays were found around the room. A display of country flags, native costumes and languages are on one wall. This includes heritage countries of the students such as Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and this would welcome a second language learner into the class environment. Pinatas decorate the room, and books in English, Spanish and Chinese are seen on the shelves. Members of this classroom know they have a work area where they will join their small group for learning tasks. Their posted work, birthdays and names show they are full and welcome members of the class.

Fieldwork Observations

Again, I am Christina Ontiveros and I currently teach an ESL Pre-K class. I have 14/19 students who are native Spanish speakers. 

As I continue in my studies toward an ESL endorsement and degree, my blog will be evolving to include fieldwork observations. These observations will definitely include students from my classroom and also from the ESL classrooms at my school. Of course, everything will remain confidential for my students.

Enjoy the ride! :-)

Literacy and ESL Students

Well, my second graduate class is coming to a close and so is my summer. I am getting ready for a new school year, and I am realizing I have some big challenges before me. This last unit we focused on literacy and ESL students, and while I am not in a position to teach fluency, I need to work on phonemic awareness, phonics (with those students who are ready) and vocabulary! I need to be conscious of working on vocabulary and listening comprehension with stories so that my ESL students will be ready to make the transition to reading when it is time and developmentally appropriate for them to do so.

Reflection on Unit 3 and ESL Assesments

As my classmates and I move through Unit 3 of our graduate course, we are discussing more challenges related to teaching ESL students. One of the challenges before is is accurate assessment. A group of us worked together to compare our results when evaluating the same clip of student speech. We all gave different scores with the same student and same assessment. This experience definitely created an awareness that the training of the assessor (me!) is key, and also that no assessment (or assessor) is perfect. We all agreed that the subjectivity of certain rubrics and evaluations can be very helpful because the teacher can consider the student's typical, overall performance and not just a snapshot of a one-time performance.

Beyond assessment, ESL teachers and any teacher working with ESL students has the added responsibility of  modifying texts and literature and finding those texts that are most appropriate for ELLs. Working with ESL students can be a big challenge in all areas from instruction to assessment, but it is a challenge worth facing every day! 

Reflections on Teaching ESL

Having a classroom with 50% ESL students can be a big challenge. It changes the dynamic of the environment, but I think it changes it in a good way. From focusing on how I need to teach to meet their needs, I find that many of my other students need similar support, even if they are native English speakers. I love the diversity and variety of students, families and cultures in my classroom.

As I move through my grad classes, I find myself thinking more and more about the ESL kids in my class. I thought I was doing a lot of the right things with them, but my eyes are certainly being opened to things I never considered. As the summer flies by, I am eagerly awaiting Pre-K registration. I look forward to finding out what little stars will be in my class this year and finding out how many ESL students I will have.

Welcome to SES Easy ESL!

Hello, and welcome to my new blog! This is my first blog, and it is one of the fun requirements of my graduate program in ESL.

I currently teach Pre-K and have a large population of ELL students each year. I am very excited to be in the Master's program. I look forward to adding to this blog through my class Reading, Writing & Learning Methods for ESL. I love teaching my ELLs and am just amazed at their ability to acquire a second language and move seamlessly between worlds. :-)

Join me as I navigate the blogging and ESL worlds simultaneously! Comments and suggestions are always welcome! :-)