In Class Support

After analyzing my student's individual language needs I decided that now we need to focus on the reading and comprehension skills of our ELLs. I shared my ideas in our planning meetings with the Grade 2 and Grade 3 homeroom teachers. 

In Grade 2 this week I worked with various groups of students building up their reading skills. 

In Miss Courtney's room we read a book about simple machines, created mind maps and then shared them with the rest of the class.

Hailey, Mally, Mollymoon and Yi Lei shared with their peers what the book was about.

In Miss Anita's room we read a book about inclined planes in a small group and had a meaningful discussion about our previous knowledge and what we learned. We made connections and found out the meaning of some challenging vocabulary.

Rachael was our scribe and put our ideas down on a poster.

In Miss Karyn's room we also read a book about inclined planes with KimVeng and Sorriaj and focused on the concept of function. Both boys successfully practiced a discussion about  inclined planes using the academic language of the unit.

In Grade 3 we focused on pre-assessment activities and selecting the vocabulary that we will have to learn during the unit. In all three classrooms the students had to listen to songs about natural resources and create a list of vocabulary to focus on during the unit.
Our plan is to use the words selected by the students for the Stir-The-Class vocabulary activity next week.

Miss Lisa's class is getting ready to listen to the song and to watch the clip.

Another highlight of this week in Grade 3 was the sharing session with parents. I helped Mahin and Thomas to get ready for talking with their parents.

Mahin is thinking what things her family is reusing and recycling.

Developing Reading Skills with EAL Beginners

This week we had several guided reading sessions with my Grade 3 beginners. 
The mind map from last week proved to be a great tool and helped us tremendously to retell the story without reading it again.

We read a new story about a giant pumpkin and managed to learn more about story structure and how to write a summary. We also made predictions and connections and, as usual, practiced reading out loud.

Yubin is sharing her written summary with her peers.

EFL Classes

My Grade 2 ELLs were thinking and learning about simple machines this week. The concept in focus was function.

We had a great time practicing a matching activity on MIKIDS.com and learned a lot.

We also had a very successful lesson learning about an inclined plane. We watched a video, read a teaching text and had to answer questions and also draw how people use inclined planes.

Miss Kim supported Haily during this activity.

My Grade 3 ELLs were very enthusiastic this week and accomplished a lot. We practiced a sorting out activity where we had to write down a natural resource on a post-it note and then place it under the RENEWABLE or NON-RENEWABLE headings.

Non-renewable resourses were posted on the red poster.

Renewable resources were posted on the green.

My Grade 3 ELLs also practiced doing a comprehension activity and learned a lot about natural resources and how to answer the questions that follow a non-fiction text. My students had to re-read the text to find the right paragraph and use the information for their answers. It was not an easy task and I enjoyed observing a lot of cooperation between the students.

Jan is eagerly helping Minato and explaining to him were to find the correct answer.

We also discussed how things are made and learned about the fact that many things around us are made from natural resources. We watched a video about how scissors are made and found out that steel is a metal and it comes from rocks. Next my students had to continue learning in four groups. The objects that they had to explore were a pencil, a crayon, a metal paper clip and a book. My students had to match natural resource cards with their object, to explain what they were made of. 

All my Grade 3 children were very involved in this activity and made a lot of discoveries and shared a lot of hypotheses with each other. Finally the groups presented their findings and were very satisfied with the learning that took place during this class.

Jade's team learned about what natural resources are used to make crayons.

Yubin and Juliana learned about what natural resources we use to make pencils.

Mahin's team presented their findings about what what natural resources are used to make books.

Jan's group presented what natural resources are used to make paper clips.