Week 5-Assignment 2

Assignment#2 After watching the video, answer the following questions on your blog. (due Oct. 14, by midnight, on blog)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->a. <!--[endif]-->What surprised or interested you?

After watching the video what surprised me was the amount of English language learners there were in the classroom. It was extremely helpful to have a bilingual assistant who was able to relate to these students and their families.

 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->b. <!--[endif]-->What did you find that affirmed what you already knew or had been doing?

I always knew the importance of training students to become independent was important, and to see this in action was very gratifying. The students in the video knew exactly where to go during center time and they knew what was expected of them and behaved accordingly.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->c. <!--[endif]-->What new approaches or ideas will you try?

A new approach that I can try is to incorporate more of the secondary culture into the lesson to enrich each lesson's content. Not only will the English learners benefit, but the "English natives" will gain as well from learning about different cultures.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->d. <!--[endif]-->What questions do you have?

My main question is how to address a class with more than one second language learners. Meaning to say, Ms Wilson managed well with just a Chinese speaking assistant. However, what if she had Spanish speakers, Hebrew speakers, French speakers, etc, would you need a bilingual assistant in each of these different languages?

<!--[if !supportLists]-->e. <!--[endif]-->After watching the video, do you think differently about classroom practices you observed through field experience?

It is hard to draw a correlation between the video and my observations since the class that I watch is much smaller. Furthermore, although there is somewhat of a language barrier between the students and teacher, their culture is the same. Additionally, all of the students in my observations speak English at home and are encouraged to do so by their parents.