Wednesday May 29th, 2013

I had trouble coming up with an ESL strategy for the students to do on Wednesday.  Many of the ESL strategies are used to teach new content, not review.  However, after talking with some peers, I decided to do a strategy called Quiz, Quiz, Trade.  At the beginning of the hour I read a story that reviewed clothing, colors, and adjectives with the students (this is what they have been working on for the past two weeks).  Afterwards I gave each student a notecard.  The students were instructed to write a question they could ask their friends about the story and the write the answer under the question.  Once students finished writing their questions, I asked them to line up facing a partner.  This is when it got tricky.

Before I go into further detail, you should know that I teach two sections of third grade - the stars and the moons.  The stars is a smaller class and they are very well-behaved.  The moons are a larger class and are a little more rambunctious.

I first completed this activity with the stars.  They had a little difficulty understanding what I was asking of them, but once I put them into two lines facing one another and explained to them that one line was going to ask their question first, then the other line would ask their question, and then they would trade question cards and partners, they were able to complete the activity perfectly.  One thing I have learned is that English Language Learners need directions given in specific steps.  For example, first do this, second do this, etc.    

The second time I taught this lesson was with the moons and it was the last hour of the day.  Like I said earlier, I have been trying to teach students to not talk when I am giving directions and raise their hand if they need help.  Well, the moons were not following any of these expectations today.  They completed their question and answer cards very well but once I had them line up, their behavior was out of this world.  There was talking, shouting, laughing, and nobody was even pretending to pay attention to me.  After asking the students to quiet down so I could give directions, I told them to go sit back at their seats and try to line up again, quieter this time.  They did, for about a minute, and then everything went back to what they were doing before.  I had had it with them.  I told them that if they did not want to listen to my directions they could go sit back down in their seats for the rest of the hour.  They did not seem to care and kept talking.  So, I asked them to sit at their desk for the rest of the hour quietly (there was only five minutes left).  When they were sitting at their desk I told them I was extremely disappointed that they were not able to complete this activity.  They were apologizing and felt bad about being disrespectful.  I told them that the next day I wanted their behavior to change so we could get everything done that we needed to.  They understood that they disappointed me and were very apologetic.

It was a good experience for me to learn to be firm with my students.  I have never had to worry about that too much in my classrooms in the states.  So much time is lost here in this school asking students to be quiet and listen.  It is important that they learn to respect the teachers and do what they are asked.  My teacher is intrigued by my classroom management strategies and has begun to use them while she teaches!  I really feel like I am making a difference here.

Below are pictures of the question and answer cards the students created.