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.