Blog #8

What did the teacher do to promote learning?

To begin the lesson, the teacher went over the objectives for the students.  She wanted students to begin to inferring; however, she did not remind the students what inferring was.  She reviewed with students what reading strategies they should try and how they can use those strategies.  Before beginning to read the book, the teacher frontloaded the students with vocabulary that she that she thought they might not know. The teacher provided students with pictures that showed them a visual representation of the vocabulary words; however, she had all of the pictures on a piece of paper and expected students to know what each of the images were.   To help the students, the teacher also made connections to the students’ native country.  To help the students, the teacher read aloud as the student were following in their books, and she read out loud with an overhead and she underline each word as she read them.  Periodically she would stop and talk to the students about the passage that they had just read to see if they understand what the passage was saying, and how it relates to the story.  While she was doing this she was questioning students and putting them on the spot, and it seemed that a lot of the students were uncomfortable.  As the teacher was reading, she would stop and connect it to her background knowledge or to the students’ background knowledge.  She would ask students to connect to their background knowledge as well.               

What do you see the teacher do?

The teacher began the lesson by stating the objective.  Next she reviewed reading strategies with them.  Throughout the lesson the teacher encouraged students to talk.  After each passage she revisited important information from the text.  One time, the teacher asked the students to connect to their background knowledge.

What do you see the students do?

The students were thinking about strategies that they should use while reading and then they used these strategies as they went through the book.  The students looked at pictures on their own.  One student started to sing the birthday song, and another student joined in to help that student.

Reflect on reading and Video

Both the reading and the video talked about important components for dealing with ELL students.  The book talks about having clear objectives for ELL students, and in the video the teacher went over the objectives with the students.  The books talk about non-linguistic representation such as providing pictures for the students; however the pictures in the lesson were not labeled and were thrown all together on a piece of paper.  The books talks about going slower for ELL students to allow time for them to process, and it seemed like the teacher went really fast though the lesson.  The teacher connected the students to their native language of Spanish with the birthday song; however, it seemed to make the students uncomfortable. 

List essential components of the sheltered lesson

Clear objectives

Non-linguistic representation

Scaffolding