Asteroids!

Once again, I should've written earlier, but oh well. 

I am finishing up my full-time teaching this week and I should be completely done with my last group on Thursday. I was supposed to plan for 10-day units, but because I see some groups more often than others, the groups I only see a few days a week are clearly much farther behind.

With my 4th and 5th grade groups we have been working on a Solar System unit. In the Sioux City district for science in the elementary schools, the use FOSSkits. These kits are supposed to be very hands-on, but they do not talk about the Solar System at all. However, this is a topic on the Iowa Assessment. So I decided with the help of my cooperating teacher to do a unit on this. 

Anyway, for the first 6 days of the unit we read short chapters and answered questions. The next day we did a relative size and distance lesson, which the students really enjoyed. After that we did a "scavenger hunt" research project on the planets, which the chapters we read didn't really go into great detail. Last Monday though I watched the news in the morning and saw something else about an asteroid coming very close to Earth and I thought it would be a great thing to show my students. I showed this video from CBS news and we discussed what we saw for the rest of class. The kids loved talking about it and really seemed very interested in their questions about what we watched. So while I was set back again on the unit plan, I thought this was a pretty important thing to show my students. I think I learned from this how important it is to be flexible in my teaching and planning. 

What I've Learned (Thus Far)

Well, unfortunately I haven't been quite as diligent in keeping up with this blog as I had hoped - which I expected would happen anyway! I have taught completely full-time for exactly 8 days and I love it. Some days are definitely harder than others, but overall I could not have asked for a better experience. I've said it before and I will say it again - I know this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I'm grateful I've figured that out as early as I have - some aren't so lucky.

I work with 9 groups of students, the smallest group is with 2 and the largest with 13. I am doing 3 different units with these groups. One is a Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), another is on the very basics of space, and the final is doing different text elements with The Lion and the Mouse fable. I am waaaay behind schedule on the Lion and the Mouse units, but otherwise am doing pretty good. 

I did have an eye-opening experience last week with one of the PWIM groups. The basic aspects of PWIM is to pull out vocabulary from a picture, categorize the vocabulary, use that vocabulary in single sentences and finally a paragraph. In the first week we did a picture of a city. At the end of that unit, we read the book Abuela by Arthur Dorros and did the Google Lit Trip on it. (Google Lit Trips are super cool, but I'm not going to go into that.) As you might be able to tell, Abuela has a lot of Spanish elements. One of the classes I did this unit with is made up of 4 students, 3 of them Spanish-speakers. The other boy is Ethiopian and speaks Amharic. While I realized he does not know any Spanish, the meaning is easy to understand because of context clues in English and in the pictures. 

However, when we began to read this book, this boy was far from excited. After reading the book together, he was asked what was his favorite part. His answers: None of it. Okay, the English part. 

Now, I don't think I picked this book to read because the majority in my class speaks Spanish. I think I picked this book because A) the library had it, and B) the Google Lit Trip. I've always wondered how as teachers we are supposed to show that retaining your first language is important while teaching English. I thought integrating books like this would be a great way to do it. But I do not think I will do what I did again. What I did was make that boy feel like a minority in the only part of his school day where he may not feel like one. The ESL classroom should be a safe haven for students, and I took that away from him. 
The next day before doing the Lit Trip, I introduced Google Earth. I showed the students parts of Sioux City that they are familiar with. Along with this, I showed some places in Ethiopia. However, there is no way that makes up for how I made this boy feel. 

So my conclusion is that if I have ESL classrooms that are totally homogeneous in their first language, I will use resources like this one. If I do not, I will not use these in instruction. It is unfair to focus on one language, where resources may be more easily accessible, and not on another. I do wonder how I can really show that my students' languages are important if I don't use them in instruction however. I do not think that providing books to checkout really is enough. But I cannot allow some of my students to feel like they are less important than others due to this problem. I definitely need to do some more exploring of this issue. 

Week 4

I only realized now that I forgot to post about this week, so I'll keep it short.

Friday was my first day of teaching EVERYTHING by myself, and man was I tired! It was good practice though as I take over all the classes for about 2 weeks starting tomorrow! I'm trying to not make myself too nervous - I'm prepared and excited! I just need to always remember why I'm doing what I'm doing.

I started filling out an application for a job in South Korea tonight. A few months ago I looked at the application and was very overwhelmed by the lesson plan section, but I got that part done in about 30 minutes. If that's not improvement, I don't know what is!

Maybe this week I'll post more than just once - I'm sure ill have a ton more to say!