Progress

Sometimes we don't see the progress because it is slow in coming.  I forget once in a while I forget that second language learners have a silent period.  Quite often this is not just in speaking, it is also in producing anything in the second language.  The silent period can last a very short time to a year or longer.  It depends on the person, their temperament and personality.  If the person is an introverted perfectionist the teacher is in for a long haul.

I know of one such student.  He is very quiet, doesn't ask for anything, and will just sit quietly if he doesn't understand.  Which is most of the time.  He has been informed that he needs to make an attempt and something.  The teachers have said they will even look at work done in his home language (L1) as long as the understanding is there.  He still did not produce.  

The family was contacted, L1 speaking people spoke to him and still no production.  I guess, it wasn't until his grades started seriously reflecting his lack of action, did he finally do something.  He is now attempting to do work.  He is still a perfectionist and very slow at doing the work. But he is producing.  

I'm hoping that he will gather momentum with each grade improvement.  He is fully capable and quite intelligent.  It's just taken 2 years to find out.

The point of this is to keep gently pushing in.  Don't give up or in to popular feelings that a student who 'refuses' to work is 'lazy'.  Consider all the changes, stresses, adjustments these kids have to make.  Consider the personality.  Consider the background.  And wait.  Everyone wants to do what is expected of them, good or bad.

This year, at the MS,  my assignment is a little different than in years past.  On 'B' days (every other day) I go into a teacher's class and observe so that I can then assist with creating classroom modifications to help students better acquire the content being taught.  This helps the teacher help my students but the teacher can also use these techniques with other students who might need help.

In the past I've given advice on what can be done....give fewer words as vocabulary, minimize work, allow extended time, etc.  They are all sound strategies but given each teacher has a different method of teaching, it's hard for me to help more than handing them a list.  Now I am able to give very specific ideas.  

The teacher is a Language Arts teacher.  He starts each morning with word building work.  Learning prefixes, suffixes and root words.  My students have limited vocabulary so I expect them to learn the meanings but not to be able to generate words from these items.  They will also not be able to participate in the fill-in-the-blank sheets applying the learned word parts with words and making it fit.    They can participate but this shouldn't be counted against them.  

Next the class works on grammar and sentence diagraming.  Again, my students lack the basic vocabulary so identifying parts of speech in a sentence is problematic.  I expect them to learn what a subject, predicate,  verb, noun, adjective, adverb, article, conjunction are.  They can do basic diagramming and follow along as the class does the more advanced parts of speech.  Also, since copying the sentences takes so long, because the students doesn't know the basics to copy quickly, I ask them to do the first 2 or 3 to prove basic understanding.

We are working on getting reading assignments completed.  Reading logs and journals are ok since they are allowed to pick a book at their level and attempt to complete journal entries.  However textbook readings are problematic.  Antiquated English is antiquated English whether read to one's self or read aloud by a teacher.  It takes too long to explain each sentence of a story.  Therefore chunks of classwork are missing.  Certain standards are missed. 

This is where the ESL teacher needs to realize what the student will be missing in class and build lessons around that.  Without the cumbersome language.  Never an easy job.  We also have to do this in Math, Science, Social Studies, Technology classes and all the 'enrichment' classes.  An ESL class is usually about 45 minutes long.  In Elementary schools of large numbers, the students might be lucky to go to ESL every day.  Many rural schools have 'pull-out' classes 1-3 times per week.  We have a huge task.  I am fortunate enough to see my students every day.  It's still not enough.

Helping new-comer students is daunting, especially in HS.  We are supposed to teach the ESL curriculum but....the students get nothing out of class...teachers ask for help, some want me to teach their curriculum.  I try to do what is best for the student.  Thank God language acquisition is pretty much, inate and a survival need.  They will get the basics on their own and I try to focus on the academic.

1/25/13
Yesterday the same group of students had another science sheet to work on.  They decided they could work on it without me.  They asked some of the other students, who understood more English to help and once in a while, asked me for help, but they were working autonomously.  That made me happy, to know that they felt they could take it on their own, with some support.

Modifications:
Using notes,
peer help,
teacher help,
bilingual dictionaries,
partner/team work.

Working with my Middle School New Comers is a whole different world however.  They are just learning, in 7th  grade, to spread their wings and do things for themselves.  They do not have the self confidence or higher level thinking skills to take what they know (prior knowledge) and apply it to what they see.  Quite often they don't see the obvious things and have to be lead or reminded.  This is developmental.  So I have to teach them the English and the critical thinking to be able to help themselves.   By 8th grade there is some kind of emotional and mental growth spurt and they are beginning to use the thinking skills and be more autonomous.

Last night my Juntos (Together) 4 H club hosted the first of 5 workshops designed to educate families on how the educational system works, how to help the student have success in school and go on to higher education.  The families that came were all Hispanic - mostly club member families.  It was interesting to see them work on projects in mixed groups of mothers, fathers, students and some grandparents.  It seemed that In one project they had to create a bridge with very limited materials.  Creativity was needed.  It seems the women did most of the work.  Granted there were more mothers in attendance than fathers, but it makes me wonder. Maybe the dads were just tired. Maybe they don't seem much stock in creative thinking?  If it's not practical it is not important?

Part of the reason I say that is because of a speaker I heard once, whose topic was living in poverty.  My family had lived in poverty at a jobless time,  without really realizing it and much of what the speaker said hit home for myself and my husband.  It showed us too, that God had us experience poverty so that we could see what our students might be living through.  Many teachers have never lived in poverty so they have NO CLUE.

This speaker talked about how the average words spoken to a child of poverty (or of uneducated parents) per day is so much lower than that of a professional.  [http://centerforeducation.rice.edu/slc/LS/30MillionWordGap.html]  I feel that critical thinking skills go along with that.  The parents don't use the words, have the skills and are too tired.  It's just not important.

In my family word games and thinking creatively are pastimes for us.  We try to out pun each other and we try to create with what we've got.  I save things for repurposing in my classroom.  Therefore I have to teach my students the skill of repurposing too.

This blog came about because of a suggestion by my husband +Cj Flay.  I was telling him about working with my High School New Comers and my observations on their abilities and how they are handling taking an Science Class.  He said, "This is the stuff you should blog about."....so here it goes :)

I teach ESL (English as a Second Language) to Middle School and High School, who, thankfully all speak Spanish (I do too).  Most of what I do is helping kids who have been here a while and speak English pretty fluently, get the reading and writing down better.  This year, however, I have gotten an influx of New Comers (brand new to the country with little to no English).  Most of them are at the HS level which gives us less time and makes it so much harder for them to pass the required classes.  

My job is to teach the academic language to help the student understand the curriculum better and function in the classroom.  The classroom teacher's job is to make sure the student understand the curriculum.

Yesterday 4 of my very new, New Comers were working on a science assignment.  The language of the questions was very high educational language.  Many of the words and phrases that were throwing them were things like "was known for;" "concluded;" and "all of the above".

I was teaching question words and word order and the level 2 educational words found in the questions.  

I asked them to have their notes handy and they had old quizzes to help.  I did not read the questions in English to them.  I let them look at the questions and they started reading and simultaneously translating into Spanish.  They were doing a pretty good job.  The words that threw them were few and I helped out with those.  

It was very interesting to watch and listen to them work on these questions.  On their own they struggled.  In attempting to reading the questions out loud, in Spanish, they helped each other.  They are learning word order in English and the fact that many words are cognates - words that look the same and can sound the same, with the same meaning, in bot English and their native language - between English and Spanish.  Eventually they began trying to read in English and clarifying the meaning in Spanish.

Next they would look at the answers.  If they were one word answers they didn't have a problem.

Which planet has a greater mass than all the other planets combined?

1. Jupiter             2. Uranus

3. Neptune          4. Saturn

Of course the complete question had to be simplified to:

Which planet has the most mass?

and the answer was simple.  Especially with a visual of the solar system on the smartboard.

But if the answer was complex it would have to be explained: 

What causes the tides to change?

1. the revolution of the earth around the moon,         2. the revolution of the moon around the earth,

    and the rotation of the earth.                                     and the rotation of the moon

3. the gravitational attraction of the sun on the earth   4. the rotation of the earth around the sun

The words highlighted are the words they learn in the classroom.  The other words or words they are expected to already know. So, therefore. the words I need to teach.

Their notes were in English, copied off the board.  But they could go back and find the answers and have further understanding.  If they argued over an answer that wasn't clearly in their notes I would make them explain it however they could.  They were proving to me they could understand the curriculum. I got a kick out of that.  One kid kept saying 'the internet knows'  so I wouldn't let them look things up there.  You can't do that on a test.  We would discuss, look in notes and if still nothing I would pull up a visual aid or a website they could 'read' and determine the answer by looking for the key words from the question.

When we got to the question with 'all of the above' as an answer they were completely thrown.  They did not know the word 'above' so I gave it to them.  Then the concept had to be explained a few times until they got what it meant.  One told me he had seen it on a test last semester and just didn't answer that question.

We are supposed to be teaching critical thinking and language with our new Common Core Curriculum.  My students are getting a lot of that in just trying to understand notes and assignments.  They are still unable to 'explain' how they got to the answer,  in English.  We need to let them show us.

Modifications to the assignment:

Allow notes,

bilingual dictionary,

visuals,

peer help,

extra time.

Further modifications needed:

simplified language

shortened assignment (if time is an issue - it is taking us 3 days to get through 50 questions).