Background
Name: Katherine Beare
Age: 8
Grade: 3
Previous Education: Italian through 2nd grade
This week Ms McManus sent along a progress report for Katherine:
The students that I teach are very different from each other due to their English language abilities, first languages, cultures, personalities and families. The majority of students that I teach can orally communicate in English, but are behind their native English speaking peers in writing and reading. Katherine is the only student at this school who speaks Italian; other students speak Spanish, Romanian, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Telugu, Korean, Indonesian, Bengali, Tibetan, Tamil, Arabic, Hebrew and Gujarati. Many of their parents do speak English and others are learning along with their students. Katherine has the benefit of having a father that is a native English speaker, and a mother who is learning English alongside Katherine.
Students come to the ESL room with their grade level peers. Katherine is in the third grade, and there are three other third grade students who come to ESL at the same time. In class we do a lot of writing and reading activities, which are designed to help students acquire English and also prepare them for activities in their regular classroom. For instance, I know that Katherine's teacher intends to teach a unit about imaginative writing. So this week in class we read imaginative books, and the students have begun writing their own imaginative stories. Throughout the year I will also teach some social studies, science and math because of the specific language that accompanies each of those subjects.
Katherine is an amazing student! She is one who is constantly trying to learn more English. She is very willing to talk and write, and is not daunted when she does not know the English word. I have encouraged Katherine to draw or act out the word that she needs. I think that her personality will certainly help her to learn English, because of her desire to communicate her ideas and stories. She tells very descriptive stories which require a great deal of vocabulary (and I would guess that her story telling ability will improve as her English vocabulary expands). In the past month her reading and writing have improved, as well as her pronunciation of English words. As with the other third grade students, we continue to work on writing and speaking using conjunction words (then, and, later) and prepositions (at, near, about), as well as reading with fluency and expression."
Progress Snapshot: Fifth Week October 3 - 7
Objectives: Improving descriptive writing skills by coming up with imaginary stories, pronunciation skills
Exercises: Invent a story (alone), reading aloud in class with a partner (done the main class, but reading from a book taken from ESL class)
Challenges: Spelling, finding the right descriptive vocabulary
The most fun was: Drawing the pictures, inventing a story on your own
Katherine's comments about reading aloud in class: "In the afternoon, my teacher read a story aloud and we listened. We read our own books and we need to be quiet (reading silently). It's easier to read silently than aloud."
Weeks One and Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Weeks Six, Seven and Eight
Weeks Nine and Ten
End of First Trimester
