Essay Example on Observed reading and writing classes in ESL Services

On December 18th and 19th I observed reading and writing classes in ESL Services I had the wonderful pleasure of being placed in Mrs Amela Omeragic s classroom at Fox Elementary School located in Arnold Missouri She and her students were very welcoming and increased my desire to teach in different ways With this experience I have enhanced my teaching skills social relationship with students and being able to manage the classroom I learned very quickly in his classroom The first group of students greeted me as soon as they walked in the classroom and asked me if I spoke Spanish I informed them that I did and that I was very excited to be part of their class for the day One of the students began speaking to me in Spanish and Mrs Omeragic quickly corrected her and asked her to speak to me in English which she did I would ve answered her in English regardless of Mrs Omeragic s remark because I believe that they should practice English at all times During the third group I was invited serve as an interviewee in her lesson We sat down for a few minutes to discuss her class objectives policies and procedures Mrs Omeragic informed me that her ELL classes were small which made the learning teaching procedure all the more effective because of the time she was able to dedicate to the students individually 

The particular class I was observing today consisted of all native Spanish speakers Mrs Omeragic began her lesson by writing on the board Mrs West lives in Ballwin Missouri Mrs West likes to shop and read books in her spare time Mrs West s favorite color is pink She proceeded to ask the class to read these sentences out loud together She moved close to each student as they spoke out loud in order to hear their enunciation They read the sentences three times before Mrs Omeragic informed them of the days lesson She explained to them that today they would be picking a partner to interview She wanted them to write down a list of ten questions they wanted to ask their partner about themselves Mrs Omeragic gave them prompt question words they could and could not use while conducting the interviews scaffolding Such suggested words to use in their questioning included who what where when and why They were not allowed to use do you or are you because they only required boring yes no answers She wrote the directions up on the board for the students to refer to if necessary Up to this point I enjoyed her anticipatory activity because it grabbed their attention They enjoyed the personal information about their teacher I believe this added a level of comfort in their lessons The connection Mrs Omeragic formed with her students by sharing personal information was well received therefore introducing a warm climate for learning The 4th and 5th graders were working in groups today They were all bosnian I walked around listening to their conversations and helped out where needed My critique for this part of her lesson involves getting more out of the students They were constantly asking for translations of the words in their readings and Mrs Omeragic would give it to them I would have made the students use the dictionary or thesaurus in order to help them find new words and expressions 

The homework assignment was written on the board for them to copy into their planners Mrs Omeragic signed their planners and collected their exit cards as they walked out of class In our discussion before the second days class Mrs Omeragic informed me that these particular ELL students were artistically inclined Knowing this she allowed the students to incorporate art into their work by taking their finished product of writing and making a magazine type article with some kind of revealing pictures about the newly learned information Writing and speaking in a language outside of their comfort zone is intimidating therefore incorporating something that they are comfortable with might have made this project a lot more productive For example if the students knew they were incorporating art into their assignment they might be more inclined to do more detailed work or use a higher level of thinking I had a great time observing and contributing to the ELL lessons The students were a pleasure to work with because they were very happy and eager to learn I see these students and they seem comfortable with peers because to some degree they are sharing the same experiences I have decided to take some time to observe more of the ELL classes while I am student teaching at Fox