Brandy+Cimmino

This page is for Brandy to post her goodies :D

(Tim Conrad, July 22) Thank you, Brandy, for your "self-starting" work during our whirl-wind community ESL class. Your bilingual abilities and ESL teaching added quality to our little experiment in reaching out to our community.

So ... I am a slacker on my journal writing ...

July 18 - PARTY!!! :D

July 16 - I don't even know what I am going to teach tonight. Even though it is summer, my brain is spent. My students, though eager to learn, are hard to teach. It is 6:20pm and they haven't come yet :( A few times they have missed their bus and come 30-40 minutes late. Looking back, I really would have liked to have done a pre-assessment. This would give us an opportunity to do a post-assessment and see what their progress was. It would also have given them a benchmark to know where they can go from here and other areas of improvement.

July 11 - Ben worked with me since Gregg was working with Connie. Marisol and Vanessa both chose a magazine and we had them read some articles out loud and do some translating. They had some fun reading magazine style writing. I did this because it is the kind of language Vanessa will hear when she starts high school this fall and Marisol will hear when talking in the community. Their assignment was to go home and read another article, then give a five-sentence summary in their own words in English.

July 9 -We talked about grocery stores, shopping, and Emergency vocab. They seemed to really enjoy working on this. Gregg and I really found some excellent books that incorporate pictures, vocabulary and sentences that would be used in every day life. Another thing I like about the books is the language is very conversational. This helps students to really start to understand every day language.

July 4 - PARTY!!!

July 2 - No Vanessa :( We worked on more numbers, careers, money, and store stuff. We really want Marisol to have a base of language skills that she will be able to navigate and survive. She found a friend through a Zumba class and I hope she will really start to progress in her English.

June 27 - Again, Vanessa did not come. But we worked on more vocabulary and sentence structure dealing with going to the store, directions, numbers, and money. Marisol is such a quick learner! If she will get out and meet people, she would progress so much faster. My ah-ha is that I talk too much ... But out of nervousness, and not really knowing what I am doing, it is habit.

June 25 - Gregg and I got the group of beginners. We had one Brazilian and two Peruvians. Although, Vanessa was going to be in a higher class to help her mom not rely so heavily on her. Vanessa, however, did not come because she was sick. We worked on some speech and vocabulary dealing with family and every day life. Marisol is much more advanced than she led on. Perhaps I did too much talking the first night and it did not allow them an opportunity to really express all they know :/ How fun to have Eulda and Marisol!

June 20 - We got to know everyone. I was a little late, but it was fun to get to know everyone. I was surprised at how many diverse cultures we had! :D