Grade 3 EAL in Class Support

The highlight of the week was the "Ready, Set, Design" collaborative activity in Miss Lisa's classroom. The students worked in small groups and every team had a different challenge and a set of fastener items, surface items and structure items. The children were not allowed to use scissors and glue and had to design a prototype in 15 minutes. Next, they had to present their solution to the rest of the class and explain how it addresses the challenge.

Nao Nao, Sovanrich and Benjamin's challenge was to create a book holder out of several cardboard pieces, a couple of bottle brushes and a piece of metal foil.
The boys were lost at first. Later on, they tried several ideas and one of them worked. They were the first group ready with their model.
All three of them communicated effectively and exchanged various ideas, sharing their thinking and finally started to make the model, adding several changes on the way. It was exciting to observe our students being effective communicators, thinkers and supportive collaborators.

EAL Grade 3 Research

One of our learning intentions during Sharing the Planet Unit of Inquiry was to develop our students' research skills. Our Grade 3 English learners had various opportunities to practice looking for information, extracting the important bits from the text, paraphrasing and taking notes.

In Miss Lisa's classroom, the children were learning about various climate zones. They were offered to read the text about different climates, focus on keywords, paraphrase the important facts and use them in their own posters.

Miss Lisa gives instructions.

In Miss Anita's and Miss Lisa's rooms, several students chose to focus on the problem of food waste. They decided to interview our cafeteria chef to find out what happens to the food leftovers in ISPP. I supported these students while they were thinking of the interview questions. It was exciting to observe our third graders (several of them EAL students) confidently asking questions and taking notes when they heard the answers. Everyone in our group enjoyed this authentic learning experience. The children discovered some cool facts about our school and were eager to share their findings with the rest of their class.

Revising the questions before the interview.

EFL Grade 3 Class

In our EFL class, the children learned about the pollution of the ocean. We listened to several podcasts and watched a couple of videos ( video 1; video 2). I chose to practice note taking in the form of mindmaps. After a meaningful discussion, the children were ready to create persuasive posters. The students choose to persuade various audiences to help sea turtles to survive. As usually persuasive sentence frames were offered to our English language learners to support them.
The students enjoyed creating the posters in pairs or groups of three and presented the outcomes at the end of the class. The audience was very supportive and lots of positive feedback was provided.

Bravo Sean and Hyon Ung!

Chou chay and Riku did a good job!

Soyal, Oscar and Peter's presentation was a big success as well!

GRADE 3 EAL SUPPORT IN CLASS

Reader's Theatre was the highlight of this week in Miss Lisa's class. Several plays about recycling and environmental issues were offered to our students. The children worked in 5 groups of four and enthusiastically practiced reading with expression. It was exciting to observe the spontaneous discussions in the groups that happened during the reading practice. Our Grade 3 learners asked each other questions, made comments and practiced giving reasons for their opinions.

Our students worked in small groups.

Miss Lisa's students also enjoyed "I WONDER" session this week. "I WONDER" time gives our students a chance to pursue their own interests and enrich their knowledge about the matter of their choice. Most of Grade 3 students are interested in various fields of knowledge: some like to learn more about space and our Solar System, others are interested in animals and insects or various machines and robots that help people. The students are guided in the process of inquiry and research and are aware of the success criteria for the project. The outcome of the research can be presented as a slide show, a poster or a fact sharing session. The children may choose to present to the whole class or small group or not to present at all. The scaffolding in a form of sentence frames is offered to our students to support and structure their presentations or sharings.

Nao Nao collects information about our Solar System.

In Miss Anita's class, we continued to support our students in a quality opinion writing. The focus of this week was on "hooking" the audience. Various strategies for building connections with your audience were revised and discussed. The students shared their knowledge and discussed the language features remembered from the books they read. The importance of strong and thoughtful reasons with facts was highlighted by some children. 
After the discussion, the students were engaged in a collaborative thinking activity. They had to make a claim and support it with three strong reasons. The students worked in pairs and had to share and comment on the quality of reasons. I have prepared some card with claims, however, the children were allowed to come up with their own ideas.

Pair-sharing the claims and discussing the reasons.

Luie and her partner had opposite opinions on the same matter and had a great discussion.

GRADE 3 EFL CLASS

 To support the development of our students writing skills I thought of a small project for my G3 English language learners. I carefully chose stories for my students to read with reach language and patterns for them to explore. We read three stories in a week.

The next step for my students was to use the patterns in their own writing. Some scaffolding table cards were made to remind the children of the patterns we focused on.

Scaffolding table card

Another form of scaffolding was the picture story starters that were given to the students. That way they did not have to think about what to write and could start planning straight away. It was important as we had only 45 minutes for planning, writing and editing our written piece. My plan is to share the written pieces and explore how we can improve them as well as celebrate a successful story writing.

GRADE 3 EAL IN CLASS SUPPORT

In Miss Erika's classroom this week we practiced three digit numbers addition and subtraction.
The children moved through various stations with maths activities. It was exciting to observe the choice of strategies that our students made as well as their well-developed collaborative skills.

All the children enjoyed their maths lesson.

Miss Lisa's Grade 3 students had a session with Miss Alison - our counselor. The children were offered to make a decision in a real-life situation, discuss consequences and share reasons for their opinions and choices. I supported our English learners and they all managed to understand the subject of the discussion and share their ideas. The moral values were discussed and the children made the connections between their values and the decisions they make.

All the student had to share their values with the rest of the class.

As Miss Anita continued working on her assessment of reading, our Grade 3 students and I explored the six various ways to start a story in an unusual way. First, the children shared their ideas of sizzling story starters. After the discussion, I taught our students how to start a story in six different ways. The children practiced starting the story with a dialogue, sound effects (onomatopoeia), a question, action lead, snapshot of a small moment and a flashback.
The next day Miss Anita's class had a session with our librarian Miss Rachel about sizzling story starters they were able to make connections to what they already knew.

All the children enjoyed listening to the book Miss Rachel read.

Grade 3 EFL Class

Summary Writing

In English as a Foreign language class, we read a story "The  Clever Monkey" and practiced writing a summary. First, we thought about the definition of summary and the purpose of summarising stories. The students shared their opinion on what was important in the story and what details they could skip. All the children were engaged in the word choice process. Our goal was to find the right words and construct 3 or 4 clear sentences about the story. 
During the discussion, all my students were successful in creating 3 - 4 essential sentences about the story. However, when I offered them to write the sentences down, several students produced a really detailed description of events.
I will start our next class with a sharing session and will guide my students towards the correct conclusions. We will have one more practice lesson, giving a chance to all my students to experience success.

G3 EAL In Class Support

This week our Grade 3 students began to create their stories.
In Miss Erika's and Miss Anita'sclassrooms, the children learned how to generate lists of characters and draw mindmaps of places for the stories. Our students enjoyed exploring their memories of long and not so long ago and discovering the special moments that triggered natural story flow. 

Colorful mindmaps helped our students to draft their stories.

Rich discussions in Miss Erika's classrooms.

Listening and reading various stories in Miss Anita's room.

All our students listened to various wonderful stories and had rich discussions about the features and elements that they can use in their own writing.

Several strategies were modeled for the students to upgrade their editing skills. A lesson about paragraphs took place in Miss Lisa's classroom. The children listened to the story The Boy Who Cried "Wolf!". After the students had a discussion about paragraphs, they had to assemble the story that was cut into paragraph strips and shared the results with a partner. When all the children completed the activity the reflection session took place. Our students had to share what they noticed and what they wondered about the story and while assembling the text. We also had a chance to remind our students about the story structure.

Vincent and his partner assembling the story.

All the mention above learning engagements had a common goal of unpacking the writing process for our students. Next week we will continue developing the writing skills of our Grade 3 English learners.

EAL FL CLASSES THIS WEEK

Hello everyone! We are glad to welcome back to school our students and their parents! We have a great year ahead!

ISPP if growing and we have a new Building E with several EAL classrooms! How exciting!

My Grade 3 students came to our brand new classrooms for their English as Foreign Language classes this week. We had a good start talking about our summer holidays, watching a video about summer fun and finally writing a short narrative or recount about our summer experiences. The colorful illustrations ranged from blue and yellow beaches to silver jets and tall hotel buildings!

All my students enjoyed the task and the support provided by several teaching assistants. Mr Puy, Miss Theary, Miss Boramey and Miss Mom are the four TAs that help me to meet the individual language needs of each child during this class.

Miss Boramey and her happy team.

Mr. Puy supported Nao Nao and Quintas.

Miss Mom always knows how to keep the boys focused!

I WONDER

In Miss Lisa's classroom, our students have just completed their I Wonder projects and the presentations began. For several weeks every Thursday, the children could follow their passions and learn about their area or subject of interest. 
After choosing the topic our students carried out their research and had weekly sessions with a teacher to discuss the findings and next steps.
The interests varied, and our young learners became more knowledgeable about butterflies and elephants, lotus plants and Sakura trees.
The research took a while but when the presentations started everyone was excited to see wonderful colorful posters, slideshows and informative booklets. Our young researchers collected the information and images from reliable sources online and in the library, citing the sources accurately. Finally, our students focused on editing and proofreading their materials.
This Thursday many children successfully presented their project and received valuable feedback from their teachers and peers.

Miss Mom and the students practise presenting.

Reading Group

After completing WIDA test with all my 27 students I analyzed and thought over the data. It became obvious that a group of my EAL beginners have similar needs in reading. Their comprehension was low due to the insufficient vocabulary.

Having in mind that we still had five weeks before the end of the school year, I came up with a proposal for my team of classroom teachers. I offered to change our timetable to meet the language needs of our students in a most effective way.

My idea was to group the students with similar reading needs and provide intensive reading instruction with the focus on comprehension. The first morning period suited all the three classroom teachers and the last Monday we started.

I have five students in my reading group. We use leveled multi-copied books from our library. Daily we read a fiction or factual book. My students are engaged in rich discussions of the story plot or facts. With five students in a group, it is easy to make sure that every child participates making comments, asking and answering questions, etc.

In the 45 minutes of the lesson, we do pre-reading activities including predicting, discussing fiction or non-fiction features, reading illustrations and vocabulary check. Next, we read the text, discussing vocabulary, unpacking concepts, highlighting main ideas and drawing conclusions. At the end of the session, we retell stories and make connections.

Shintaro is always the first one to choose the most amazing fact.

Running Dictation

The girls presented a limerick about a man with a flute.

The highlight of this week was the running dictation collaborative activity in Miss Lisa's classroom.
Five limericks were chosen for this activity. Our students had to work in pairs (a writer + a reader).
The children could choose their role. The limericks were placed in the corridor out of the classroom and the readers had to run to the text, read it and then run back and dictate it to the writer.
When this job was done, the students had to learn the limerick by heart and then perform it in front of the class. Our students enjoyed this activity and enthusiastically participated in all tasks.
The performances were entertaining and the children in the audience practiced giving feedback to their peers. 

Limericks outside Miss Lisa's classroom.

Constanza had a role of a reader and a runner.

The girls are practicing their performance.

WIDA TESTING

Raingsey is doing her speaking and listening test.

The time came for us to do the end of the year WIDA EAL assessment.  We all celebrate the amazing progress our grade 3 students made.  My students tried their best to reach their learning goals and to develop their language skills. I am always fascinated with the magic that happens right before my eyes every time a new beginner starts learning English. The initial anxiety, the first words and phrases, the first easy books and then the first story and the first dialogue or discussion! It takes a lot of resilience and patience, determination and practice! However, the result is so impressive for the students themselves and for their families, friends and teachers - they begin to speak, read and write in English!

Julia is thinking and planning her story.

We will have one more week of testing and I really appreciate this time with my students when we can reflect on the academic year and make new plans.

G3 EFL CLASS - Paraphrasing 

I was moving around and supporting my students in their thinking.

Every unit our students have to do a lot of research for their projects. Today we practiced paraphrasing during our EFL class. 

Often the students are asked to paraphrase a paragraph. I noticed that it is almost always challenging for the EAL students.

To scaffold the task in the most effective way, I decided to focus on a sentence at a time.
I discussed our learning intention and success criteria for the class. We also discussed plagiarism and the consequences of it.

My students worked in four small groups.To differentiate the task I made sure that multiple copies of the non-fiction books were available in different reading levels appropriate for my students.

First, I modeled the activity for my students. I drew a T-chart and copied a sentence from the book with a fact that we were interested in. Next, we discussed the options for the words we decided to paraphrase. I crossed out the word in focus and wrote the synonym above. After we changed about 3 words in a sentence, my students read it and copied the new paraphrased sentence in the second column of the T-chart. 

Shintaro successfully completed the task without teacher's support.

After doing it together, I thought my students were ready to paraphrase independently. When somebody had a problem with finding a synonym, students discussed the options with various members of our EAL team. That is how the activity became collaborative in nature and the students enjoyed sharing their thinking and knowledge with each other.

Grade 3 EFL Class - Retelling

The skill of retelling is essential for our students, yet we do not often provide enough opportunities for the children to practice it. 

While planning for my classes I remembered that I have old tapes with great stories, that also come with the stories in book form. Today online read alouds are available and popular both with teachers and students but since I had the tapes I decided to use one of them. 

We began with listening to the story. The artistic narration with sound effects helped my students to imagine the events and the setting of the story, and as a result, understand the story better. It also made it easier for the students to remember the story.

After the first listening, I asked my students to fill in the Five W's Chart and retell the story to a partner, using the Five W's Chart as a planner and a scaffold.

Constanza successfully filled in her Five W's Chart.

Then we listened to the story once again and the books were also available for the students to read through. After the second listening, the children were able to add more details.

Constanza is rereading to pick up the details.

Finally, I asked a volunteer to retell the whole story in front of the class. The rest of the group listened carefully and was asked to give feedback. The first risk-taker did a really good job retelling but omitted several important details and that were picked up by the audience.

Yannis was a real risk-taker and did a good job retelling!

The second volunteer retold the story once again taking the feedback into consideration. The second retelling was more accurate.

Julia was the second reteller and she learned from Yannis's mistakes and her retelling was more accurate.

This way the students had several opportunities to practice retelling during one class, as well as give, receive and use feedback.

ASSESSMENT

Co-constructing Success Criteria for Explanation Writing in Grade 3

March 19, 2018

Today in Mr.James’s classroom our Grade 3 students had an opportunity to collaboratively create criteria for writing a successful explanation.

Mr. James chose a “Gallery Walk” activity framework to carry out the task.

To begin with, various explanation samples written by elementary students were pasted onto big sheets of paper and placed in the middle of each table. Our students had to walk around, read the explanations and try to write about the features of the explanation that they noticed.

Next, Mr. James asked each group to discuss the poster at their table and share the three most important features that they noticed. Mr. James wrote these down in a list, while the children were adding their findings.

After that, our students had an opportunity to check this Bitesize BBC site in order to learn more about writing an explanation and see what they missed. As a results of this brief explicit teaching, several important features were added to the criteria list.

The fact that the students, while learning about written explanation structure, were actively involved in creating success criteria for writing their own explanation changed their attitude in a significant way.

Suddenly it became much easier as the children were guided in their thinking: first, during the discussion they had with peers, and then by the teacher who highlighted and confirmed the important components and dismissed the wrong inferences made by the students.

The benefits of criteria co-construction became obvious during the next session when our students had to to write an explanation using their own success criteria and a template provided by Mr. James.

"Research confirms the benefits of involving students in defining the success criteria for a goal or task. By collaborating with the teacher to define the criteria, students begin to develop an understanding of what quality means in the context of their own work. Wiliam (2007) emphasizes that simply sharing criteria with students is not enough because “the words do not have the meaning for the student that they have for the teacher”.

Out of 8 students, only two asked for additional support and modeling. The rest of the students were able to follow the template independently, reminded each other of success criteria and completed the task on time.

It seems the key to success was that students not only learned how to produce a quality explanation in theory but also had a chance to examine and annotate explanation samples. In other words, the children did not only listen to the teacher but also shared their thinking, discussed it with peers, distilled the important findings and finally presented a better product to the class.

Lucas is adding his ideas.

A group discussion took place before sharing findings with the class.