EAL Grade 3 In Class Support

My grade 3 students were busy readers all through this week. We read a book about the Force of Water and an article about why people build settlements close to rivers. The classes were divided in small groups to allow our students to have meaningful discussions and raise questions. Some questions were answered during the reading, while others will still have to be researched.

In Miss Michelle's class during one of our "I Wonder" sessions, Moon Ju and I  were researching how to become a police officer. We found some information online and used the scaffolding card with sentence starters. This video is the outcome of our wonderings.

In Miss Claire's class we discussed how to make shoes, and used some scaffolding cards with sentence starters.



EAL Grade 1 In Class Support

The week had an exciting beginning as we had to participate in a challenging activity outside of Miss Rachelle's classroom. The class was divided into four teams and the challenge was to communicate a certain message to another team.  There were certain rules and we were not allowed to use verbal communication. The students on my team were very enthusiastic and creatively used the materials that were prepared for us.  We wanted to communicate to another group that we were happy and this is what we did:

First we wrote our message on paper but the other team was too far away to read it.

After that we created a happy face out of a hoop and paper balls, which were made into dangling eyes.

The grade 1 students enthusiastically participated in our reading rotation activities. My students read books about saying "thank you" and asking people if they need help. First they made predictions before reading the books, and subsequently made their personal connections after reading them.

EFLGrade 3 Class

After a week long holiday I felt that my students needed some revision of unit vocabulary. On Monday my ELLs began a cooperative activity of creating a poster about the journey of the river. My students had to work in a group of three other students. It was interesting to observe the team dynamics, with some students being highly supportive of each other, while others found it more challenging due to arising arguments.

Moon Ju, Sorriaj and Bie Bie sorting out images and vocabulary cards.

While the girls were writing the title, Jiun and Kim Veng began the sorting out job.

Maly's group is almost done and will be ready to present on Monday.

Our Trip to the Mekong River
In Class EAL Support in Grade 3

On Tuesday this week our big Grade 3 Team of 60 students, several teachers and teaching assistants went on a field trip to see three different parts of the Mekong River. During the previous week new vocabulary was introduced and this week on Tuesday the children could see a confluence and a meander with their own eyes. The students had to observe the river with various lenses (tourist, fisherman, environmental  worker, etc.) and create simple sketches about what they saw. After observing a part of the river the students also had to write down questions that came to their minds.

The children had a great time, learned a lot about the river, and were tired in the end.  I am sure they will reflect a lot on this learning experience as the unit goes on and we start talking about settlements.

We saw various boats on the river front.

We also had a chance to discuss what we saw with each other.

We saw fishermen and water plants.

The vocabulary activity that we did last week gave our students an opportunity to practice the academic language of the unit when they were talking about the river. During our "Stir the Class" activity the children had to share their own definitions/understanding of the new words with various groups of peers. We also practiced sequencing images of the river parts.

Students matching words and their definitions and constructing their own meaning.

All the way from the source to the mouth of the river!

Grade 3 EFL Class

In our EFL class we revised the Simple Past tense, irregular verbs and created  a daily routine for practicing their spelling. We also began reflecting on our River field trip and creating posters about the various parts of the river. I hope we will have great presentations when we are ready.

Grade 1 in Class EAL Support

It was great to work with enthusiastic Grade 1 readers this week.  We had  a chance to learn about mind maps and practiced creating one. 

We learned about mind maps!

In Miss Kelly's room the students were busy with math assessment.

Vincent wrote about 2D and 3D shapes.

Miss Carina's readers were very engaged in our "Hot Seat" session and shared their perspectives pretending to be a character in the story that we read.

Issac told us about how he would build a snowman.

The Friday rotation activities went well. My group welcomed a new student from Miss Kelly's class. His name is Samnang. My students retold Samnang the story we read last time using their mind maps. After that we read the story again to check if we missed any important events during retelling.

I also used a scaffold with three questions (Who?When? What?) to support my students through our discussion of the story. On the worksheet that I prepared my students had a choice of creating a sketch, writing a word or a phrase or doing sketching and writing in order to use it when retelling or sharing their thinking about the story.

All my students chose writing and drawing.