This week on Monday, I had pleasure of visiting with another colleagues ELL students because mines was absent. She started of by recapping on the conversation from the last meeting. She asked each of them about what they had been up to since they last talked. She asked them how they thought they would do on the TAKS test which they were going to be taking in a couple of days. My colleague then went on to explain today what she was going to be working on with them today. She explained to them she would be assessing their level of language proficiency during the session. She explained to them that she would be talking to them about a family and at the end they would be making a family tree describing their own family.
My colleagued seemed to have a pretty good rapport with her little buddies, though these two girls may look at this as time to socialize. She begin the lesson by reading the first passage and after doing so I was able to conclude that one of the girls was on the novice level and wasn’t as proficient with even BICs. also that same girl seemed to be experiencing the affective filter which is something that was taught during Prof. Bond’s class. The girl was quiet and then just didn’t want to participate at all. The other girl seemed to be on an intermediate level, she was able to communicate much better than the other girl. When asked to respond to the questions being asked both girls were really slow to respond if they responded at all. Some of the questions had to be re-stated in order for the girls to understand. When it came time for the girls to read one girl had no really problems she did it without hesitation where the other girl didn’t want to and even experienced that she didn’t want to read and that the intern should do the reading for her and once again the affective filter was put up. Even when asked did they understand they said yes but I don’t think they really got the lesson. The girls did not have a hard time creating a family tree about their family because at the beginning of the lesson we had already modeled one for them so they had to problem. the modeling made this an easy task for the girls to complete. I learned how to assess language but I’m not sure what they girls really gained from the experience.
This was a great experience for me, I learned a lot. I learned that it is ok to have a good rapport with the students but is pointless if the kids don’t respect you or don’t see you as an authoritative figure, which these girls clearly did not. It is important to make your role known up front on the first meeting which is something that has been stressed throughout the (classroom management). Also knowing which level of proficiency is important when trying to teach ELL students. If this was my situation I would have handled it differently, I would have made it clear what there roles where and what mines was.
