Living or Nonliving

This past week my group worked in the Kindergarten classroom at Brigham Elementary. We focused on deciding what is living and nonliving. My goal in working with the Bilingual students at Brigham is to find ways to challenge them. I also wanted to find ways to engage them in the activities. Additionally I wanted to become better at accommodating for them in the lessons. I feel like it has been hard to accomplish these goals or even gage how I am progressing because the activity from last week was just handed to me. I was not involved in the creating of it and therefore I was unable to make intentional accommodations to the lesson.  The only accommodations I was able to make were on the spot changes I felt necessary to make the lesson successful. I think I was able to accommodate when we were looking at the picture cards and I was aware of the language barrier and I tried to accommodate for it whenever possible. For some of the pictures the students didn’t know the proper term for the animal or object and I was able to give them simple terms that were more on their level. One of the pictures was of a dove and one student called it a chicken. Instead of talking about the dove we just called it a bird. This was helpful because adding a word last minute to their vocabulary might cause confusion. Additionally since our target is Science I wanted to let them focus on that and not be hindered by the literacy complication.

I wanted to challenge the students and I feel like I wasn’t able to do that with the activity given. However, I do feel that I was able to engage them in the activity. In our small group we took turns going around the circle deciding if the card was living or nonliving. I made sure that every student was getting a turn. Some students at the table were more talkative than others and I made sure the waited their turn and let their classmates participate. When I’ve been in a bilingual class before I’ve noticed that some students are too shy to participate and they get brushed under the rug. That was the justification for my goal because I saw that happen and I wanted to learn how to keep everyone engaged. When I do my lesson I will make sure there are elements where all students will be able to participate. I will also make sure that all students are encouraged to participate.

One of my steps to accomplish these goals is to get to know the students. Unfortunately the limited time we’ve had with these students has prohibited me from gaining the understanding I need to tailor my lesson to their needs. I think it would be more successful if every week we were able to work with the same small group of kids. That way we would build relationships with the students and learn more of their needs. 

Exceeds: Responded to two peer's blogs

First Week at Brigham

This past week was my first week in a Brigham elementary classroom. My group was in the Kindergarten classroom for thirty minutes. In that time we did five stations on the five senses. We started with an introduction, which included a five senses song. Then we broke the students into groups and sent them through four-minute rotations. There was a station for each sense. In the hearing station they listened to different recordings on an iPhone and had to determine what they were. In the seeing station they looked at different objects and talked about the colors. In the touching station they squeezed balloons filled with different materials and tried to decide what was in them. In the smelling station they smelled different materials in paper bags and talked about what they thought they were. In the tasting station they tasted two candies and talked about the characteristics of each. Finally we brought it back together on the carpet and talked about what we did at each station. We talked a little more about why we use our five senses and how it helps us in the real world. We ended by practicing our song a couple more times.

I was in charge of the closing. My only plan was to review all the stations with the kids and review the song. I think the closing went pretty well. The children were getting antsy on the carpet but it wasn’t that difficult to bring it all together. They were also not that engaged in the song and I felt it was easier to practice the order of the pointing before we jumped into the song.

Looking back there were a couple things I would have done differently and I wished my group had done differently. I think one of the most important things is to spend a lot of time planning. Being intentional with everything done in the classroom can insure that the students’ needs are met. For the song I wish I had translated it into Spanish. I thought about it last minute and debated trying to translate it on the spot but I was worried I would make a mistake and embarrass myself. I also wish the visuals we had were bigger so the students could have seen them and used them as a reference. In the groups I think it would have been good to have different pictures of things to help the children understand better. Like in the smelling station one of the bags was perfume and if the students didn’t know that word they might have been very confused. Having a picture to pull out to help them visualize it would have been very helpful. Also in the listening station they played a piano and some of the children might not have been familiar with that instrument. I even saw one student pretending to play the piano but he did not have the vocabulary to express the word. Having the picture could have helped him participate.

My goal was all about keeping the students engaged and challenged throughout the lesson. I think this could have been accomplished more if I would have included their native language of Spanish whenever possible. Also the use of visuals would have insured that every student could participate despite their language ability.

Exceeds:

This video includes a lot of visuals when presenting the words in English which would have been very helpful during the lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cWhNPiZZI 

This is a bilingual video that would have been a great resource.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4qcu-Tc4Y

This image could have been printed out and posted at each center and also at the front of the room for the song.