ELL Observation

For my observation task, I observed an ESL teacher. I am placed in an ESL cluster class with 7 native Spanish speakers totaling a third of our classroom population. They receive ESL services for an hour a day, and the ESL teacher comes into the room, in lieu of having pull out services. What really astounded me during this observation may seem trivial, but I was absolutely amazed that the teacher spoke to the students in English almost the whole time! When I imagine ESL or ELL services, I picture a teacher speaking in a student’s native language, and using this language to teach them English.

Though this is my own personal assumption, I can’t help but imagine a teacher having a lesson on, say, birds. I imagine this teacher teaching the entire lesson in the student’s native language, and then translating what they have learned into English. Now that I think about and articulate this though, it seems ridiculous. That creates so much extra work for a specialist. Preparing a lesson and then translating information after a student has learned it seems illogical and redundant.

I was excited and pleased to see the ELL specialist working with the students on basic vocabulary words. They were performing exercises with flash cards and pictures. Each card had a picture on the front, and when flipped over, had the word in English. Underneath the English vocabulary word, very small, was the word in Spanish. It was interesting to see how many different words and explanations the students could come up with about one small picture on a card.

I can’t critique the tasks that I observed, but I can definitely praise them. I feel that I gained valuable information and practices for use as a future teacher. Who would have thought that flashcards on a pipe cleaner (twisted into a circle. WAY cheaper than buying metal rings)would have had such a great response from and impact on students.