Jaron+Meyer

7/22/12 (Tim Conrad): Jaron, excellent summary of ELL-focused strategies that really work! Getting to know your students' backgrounds, collaborative small groups, and sheltered instruction to promote real comprehension. You showed this approaches so well in your teaching this past month.

7/16/12 For our opening exercise we did a TPR activity. Ben started us off by showing us how it is done in English and then we went around and gave many of the ELLs a chance to lead the class. I feel like TPR can be a good method for beginners and low intermediate students but for those that are above those levels it is probably too easy. After breaking up into our groups, we once again had the two intermediate level groups combine and continued with our conversation development. Through the course of the semester I can tell that Karla and Marcela have become more confident and outgoing in that setting but Jisook and Sunny are still rather quiet and don’t speak up unless they are called upon to talk. After our conversation session we split again and I had Karla and Marcela continue with some pronunciation drills. We first reviewed the one and two vowel rules which they had down pat and then we did some specific letter sounds. We covered SS and ZZ, for example, the words hiss and buzz. Marcela had both mastered but Karla struggled with the ZZ sound. We then did the sounds of F and P and they both had no problems with those. We then reviewed past tense words, and in specific, words that end in ed. Last time they both had a hard time with those type of words but did much better on them this time around. Next week Karla has to give a presentation for her internship at Thiokol and so on Wednesday she is going to practice giving it to both Marcela and I.

For today’s lesson we spent most of our time working on new vocabulary and coming to understand new words through the context that they are in within the sentence and paragraph. For one of the activities, one word in a sentence was underlined and above was a list of possible synonyms for the word. By reading and understanding the sentence they could normally figure out what that word meant. There were ten words in total and I think Karla got 8/10 and Marcela got them all correct which was very impressive. However, this little activity did take them quite a bit of time to do and they had to put a lot of thought into each one I could tell. Marcela said this was very good for her and that she needs more practice with that because she will often help her 6th grade son with things similar to that with his homework. Following that activity we used the ten words that they just learned and they had to come up with a sentence for each word and then tell the sentence to each other. They were able to do this right on the spot which surprised me somewhat because the previous activity took them so long but I was glad to see that they retained the information they just learned and were able to put those words to use right away. As we were leaving Karla informed me that she has a big final presentation that she has to give for part of her internship and that her getting a job in Mexico depends heavily on how well she does. She’s going to put together a power-point and have it ready by next week so that I can review it with her and make sure it looks good.
 * 7/11/12**

Our lesson focused on pronunciation and sounds specifics, namely the difference between TH and T as well as R and D. Karla had a pretty hard time with making the D sound and so we did a few activities to try and help her get it down. We also worked on syllables briefly but I could see right off the bat that they had that mastered so we didn't spend much time on it. We also reviewed the sounds vowels make and I was very impressed with how well they remembered, I could tell that they studied what I gave them last time. For next class session, we will continue to work on some different sounds, that seems to be a great point of emphasis that both Marcela and Karla need and want to learn.
 * __July 9th__**

July 7 (Tim Conrad): I really like our openings, as a way to involve everyone in a kind of "team-building" activity. It seems like your pronunciation __work__ is going fine, with some fun interactive games to keep everyone involved in an engaging way. Tell me if there's anything I might be able to do to help or any materials you might need.

__**July 2nd:**__ With the opening activity you could really tell who had the confidence to approach you and talk with you to find out who's name they had. This was a tough activity for some as it took them out of their comfort zone and forced them to talk to others that they didn't really know. To get better though, you have to go out of your comfort zone and this activity did that. We continued with having a group discussion as we combined with one of the other groups again. Our conversation was on the __topic__ of what we like to do in our spare time and the conversation was a bit slow at first but picked up and everyone gave input towards the end, in fact we went longer than planning on because the students kept jumping in and talking but that was a good thing. For our lesson we focused a lot on prefixes, suffixes, and the sounds that vowels make. Where pronunciation is a big part of what they want to focus on I thought it would be good for them to master those three things because they make up a huge part of the English vocabulary. After that, we played a quick game that is similar to Catch Phrase where they pick a card and without showing others what word is on the card they have to describe that word without saying that specific word until we guess what it is. They try to get the others to guess as many words as possible in one minute. This was a great game because it gets them to be descriptive and is fun at the same time.

__**June 27th**__ The opening exercise that consisted of a charades type of a game was good for the beginner ELLs. I could tell some of the students that aren't all that fluent just yet would get pretty excited and shout out what it was that was being acted out. It made them feel successful to know the actions and words for those actions. After the opening activity my group combined with the other group that has intermediate level students and we had a ten minute discussion. Each student was given a __paper__ with a list of possible discussion topics and they chose one and we then had a great conversation with each-other. This was really good for for our students because they don't get much of an opportunity in their day to day activities to speak all English, and developing confidence in theirselves is key for where they are at in developing their language skills. Once going into our own group, I did a listening assessment and a speaking assessment. These were great for identifying the need that both Marcela and Karla have in needing to focus on vowels and the sounds they make. I also gave them a short story to ready and recorded them reading it so that they could hear what they sound like as well as to give me a better idea on what they have a hard time with on pronunciation. Karla was a bit afraid and embarassed to do the voice recording due to a lack of confidence and her accent I think but she overcame that I did it anyway and did a good __job__.

__**July 1, TC:**__ **I like the activities you're choosing based on your students' interests and needs: maps & role playing, advertisements, and continuing to explore what your students would like to __study__ (such as computer type vocabulary). The "exploration" method of teaching involves exactly what you're doing: gathering info about the teaching situation, developing a plausible __lesson plan__, evaluating what seems to be working, what new information about needs & interests arise, then using those ongoing insights to try out the next lesson plan. Your class becomes your personal "research site."**

__**June 20th:**__ I thought that the pot luck went really well and that it was a great way to briefly meet a lot of the students and get a feel for where they are at. I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of backgrounds that there were; I know that there was one lady from Russia, a couple from Peru, a few Koreans, a handful from Mexico, and then one from Spain. I think it'll be a good experience to have such a wide range within the class. For the interview portion of the class, I interviewed a young lady named Karla that has only been here in the states for five days. She is from Mexico and will be here for 6 weeks while doing an internship for Autoliv. Her main goal for the class is to gain confidence in her English and to increase her vocabulary that she could use in a __work__ setting. When she gets back to Mexico she hopes to get __a job__ using English and so she hopes to be able to speak it confidently and fluently enough to do so. Nobody in her family knows English and so while she has been studying it for seven years she hasn't ever really been fully immersed in it until now. Overall, I would say she is on the intermediate level of fluency but she had good conversational skills but needs to overcome nervousness wile speaking.

The opening exercise was a wonderful ice-breaker and from what I saw the students really enjoyed it, props to Connie! Today I worked with Karla and Marcela. They were good to __work__ with because they are both pretty similar in their abilities, although Marcela is more confident in her English as she has lived in the States for nearly 10 years but doesn't speak English while at home.
 * __June 25th:__**

For our activities we started by identifying vocabulary used for giving directions. Then, we each had a map and role played giving each-other directions as one would ask for help in getting to some specific place. This activity was more helpful for Karla as she is brand new to the area and has to get around the area. For our second activity we each picked a newspaper article that looked interesting to us, read it, wrote a summary, and then described to each-other what it was about. They both did a great __job__ but I could tell that Karla did struggle a little bit with fully understanding what it was about, although, I do think she got the main idea behind it. Marcela didn't struggle at all and did very good. For our concluding activity we looked at an advertisement and discussed things such as the target audience, the strategy in the title of the advertisement and the picture within it as well as whether we thought it was an effective advertisement.

All in all, I thought this was a productive session. I also was able to get more insight on what I need to do in the future. They would both like to work more on pronunciation, Karla wants to learn more computer type of vocabulary, and Marcela wants to practice using new vocabulary words in sentences.

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