My first week of student teaching in the ESOL classroom was challenging. This experience is very eye opening because I typically work with younger students in the Kindergarten through first grade levels; however, in this lab I am paired with third through fifth graders. With the younger students’ lessons require more interaction among the students, yet with the older students they are more self-sufficient. As I was observing this week I noticed that there is less interaction on a daily basis than I would have originally thought. Most of the students in the classroom understood English well enough to learn basic concepts in other subject areas. The biggest difference that I had to adjust to was the use of worksheets instead of a traditional teacher based lesson.
Another major difference that was interesting to me in the ESOL classroom was the push-in and pull-out method. The push-in method is where the ESOL teacher goes into the regular education classes and provides assistance to the EL students. The pull-out method is where the EL students are taken out of their regular classes and come to the ESOL classroom for further instruction. I really enjoyed seeing this method especially in the push in classes where I was able to see how the EL children interacted with other students and see how the teacher makes accommodations.
As the weeks progress, I am very eager to be able to interact with the students as I teach my lessons. I want to understand more completely the method of teaching ESOL to students in the varying circumstances that are found in schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment