Background
Name: Katherine Beare
Age: 8
Grade: 3
Previous Education: Italian through 2nd grade
Katherine had extra free time over these past few weeks. There was a staff development day, and then teacher-parent conferences. Katherine has done extremely well since the beginning of the school year. Her 3rd grade teacher, Ms Katagiri, reports that Katherine is taking clues from those around her including visual clues and behavioral clues which help to fill in the gaps that naturally occur for a non-native child listening to normal 3rd grade explanations. This ability to act on non-verbal clues is a key element in the successful integration process of an ESL learner into normal studies.
In ESL class, students created a story - going through a number of steps to produce a final copy. First they made up a story on their own. After this, they wrote out a rough-draft and, finally, produced a final copy. Katherine's comments:
"Friday was a lucky day. We told the story and took pictures to show the others - through, like, a movie thing, and after we read our own story. My story was about a mouse and a dolphin and a cat. This cat wanted to eat the mouse, so the dolphin saved the mouse because they were friends. They went to an island and the cat never saw them again. They played and they swimmed. The End."
Progress Snapshot: Weeks Six, Seven and Eight October 8 - 25
Objectives: Developing writing skills through revision.
Exercises: Refine a story through writing an original story three times. The idea - the rough draft - the final copy.
Challenges: Writing quickly, rewriting and improving the same text
The most fun was: Creating the ideas, drawing pictures and making a film
Katherine's comments about her last few weeks: "The last few weeks was, like, fun and we, this week we did a Halloween party. We helped the class of music to move all the instruments. After we did that, we saw Anymusic"
Ken's Note: I have noticed that Katherine is starting to integrate the infamous "like" into her sentences. While not the most impressive improvement in terms of language skills, this integration of idiomatic speech definitely shows progress in "native" speaking skills. Katherine's intonation is also beginning to take on the characteristic "question" raising at the end of statements that seems to be so common in the US today.
Weeks One and Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Weeks Six, Seven and Eight
Weeks Nine and Ten
End of First Trimester
