Amy’s HS Block Blog

Today we had our last meeting with the ELLs. I brought an article on Africa that my ELL read in her geography class last week. We would not have had time to read the whole thing again together, so we just picked out the vocabulary words, reviewed them, and put them on our graphic organizer. It was a decent activity but didn’t take up enough time. We talked about her recent quinceañera, and eventually resorted to taking the graphic organizers we’d just made and folding them up into different shapes. After a little while of that, another ELL came over, presumably finished with his lesson with a different intern, and the two chatted in Spanish for the remaining ten or so minutes.

I felt bad about not filling our allotted time with educational content, but at the same time, I’d already overwhelmed her with vocabulary (about eight words, whose definitions we had to figure out from the context of the reading) and there wasn’t much else we could do with our article that we’d come anywhere near finishing.

If there were a next time, I’d bring a few different things that we could work on and let my ELL choose which one she wanted to work on.

Today my ELL and I worked with a review sheet over Southwest Asia provided by her geography teacher. We took the information provided by the questions and answers to create a graphic organizer. This was problematic in places, but overall went fairly well. There were many words I either explained for her or worked with her to jog her memory on meanings, including a couple that I broke down with her on paper. (These words, theocracy and desalinization, I chose because I was familiar with the root words, and for “desalinization” she was able to pick out “sal” for “salt” pretty quickly as well.) We made it through the entire review just a couple of minutes before it was time to go, so we chatted a little about her classes. Algebra is  hard for her, which surprised me a little — math relies less on English skills than other subjects, but that doesn’t mean she has any natural aptitude for math either.

This all seemed pretty boring for my ELL buddy. She kept picking at her nails, and at one point asked me if it was time to go. (We still had 15 minutes.) She mentioned she went over this same review sheet with her teacher last week, but the teacher was just giving them the answers on the board, not really giving any explanations (and apparently not really getting the information into her students’ memories too well either, sadly). In between the hard vocabulary work and the repetition of having to do this same review sheet again, I had a hard time maintaining her interest in the subject at hand. She was working well with the graphic organizer at first, but as time went on her only questions were “So where do I put this?” and she wouldn’t really put any effort into figuring out where the covered subjects would best be placed. The questions on the last page were very similar to the questions already covered on previous pages in the review, so she didn’t need to write much more on the graphic organizer for them, but I didn’t feel like she was retaining any of the information, or even trying to find it if I mentioned we already wrote it down.

I’m not sure what to think about all of this yet. I feel that maybe my body language was reflecting my personal lack of interest in geography, somehow, and she was picking up on that and feeling bored accordingly. I tried to be enthusiastic about the questions at hand, but knowing what I’ve learned in class about the ways ELLs often pick up on nonverbal signals, it’s possible I was giving her hints, without my realization of it, that I personally don’t enjoy geography and feel it is a very weak subject for me.

Next time we meet with our ELLs, I’ll attempt to watch my body language more closely. (Or try to find a more interesting subject, haha.)

I’ve been asked to write more about my experiences with my ELL(s), but I haven’t spent any more time with her/them since the last time I wrote. (I’ve been assigned another ELL, but I did not get to meet her last Monday as planned nor spend any time with the one I already have, as I was out sick.) I was going to tutor them in world geography, using a study guide provided by one of the teachers and a couple of other tricks. But I missed out.

On Monday, I finally met with my ELL buddy for the first time. She was very shy at first; I tried talking to her about general topics before we started the assigned assessment, but was really lacking in conversation ideas and she seemed reluctant to say much. Once we started the activity and got to talking about our families, she opened up pretty quickly. We drew diagrams of our families, which went well, though I can’t say either of us learned anything language-wise from the other — we had the same words (Mom, Dad) on the labels of our diagrams so there weren’t any linguistic ideas to exchange. We continued with the activity; I read aloud to her, then asked a few questions to check her comprehension, which was minimal. She had a vague idea of what the story was about, but that was it. After that she read a passage to herself. I asked her some comprehension questions on that — it was a little better, and with guidance she seemed to understand more. Then, I read passages aloud that she then read after me. Comprehension was pretty minimal on those too. For the final part of the activity, we drew a diagram of the family in the story we read. I had to really guide her through this activity. She didn’t understand the relationships we’d talked about in the story, and she didn’t really seem to grasp the way the diagram worked, even after I tried a few different ways to show her.

And then we were done with the assignment… except we had 40 minutes left. Yikes.

So I got her to talk to me some more about her classes, her family, and her background. I learned that she moved here from Cuba 3 years ago, at the end of her 6th grade year, and she said she prefers the Cuban education system because the students have more choice in what they learn. She helped translate for her aunt, who only speaks Spanish, and her aunt’s doctor, who only spoke English, when her aunt was giving birth to her cousin this past October. She has an older stepbrother in jail in Cuba, and she’s never met him. (He actually wasn’t on her diagram of her family; I think she only remembered his existence in our later conversation.) She says she’s doing well in most of her classes, except IPC: the “academic language” gives her trouble.

Textbook case, right? I’m pretty sure her affective filter was up until she could identify with me as a human (who goes to school, who has a family, who worries about rainy weather, and the like). BICS is easy for her, CALP is problematic. Everyday conversation flowed smoothly with her but when we tried to talk about what we’d read, her language skills fell apart. It stunned me to hear the word “academic” come out of her mouth, as (as Prof N noted in our debriefing this afternoon) that’s an academic word!

Next time I’ll work on building more rapport before we start any activities so her affective filter won’t be affecting our progress so much. It was very hard to do it this first time; our first meeting actually should have been weeks ago but she was absent, so we had to make do this week, without any of the props that eased introductions for buddy pairs who were present the first day. (I couldn’t find conversation so I just fell into the activity that was sitting in front of us.) I’ll be sure to ask her how her baby cousin is doing, and talk about my niece — I think we really connected over the talk about babies.

And maybe one day, I’ll even find time to write about my first teach.

My first experience with “my” ELL was a little different than that of my colleagues. My ELL was absent! So I had a nice conversation with the teacher’s aide, whose English was quite good, especially since it wasn’t his first. (He moved here from another country as an elementary student and is a senior now, so he’s had a good deal of time to develop his English.) We had the occasional awkward quiet time but that seemed to be more typical “I don’t know you” silence than a language barrier, at least from my perspective.

As far as analysis: we did talk a good deal about his family (especially his sisters), in line with the mention by the ESOL teacher that people from Hispanic cultures consider family to be very important, and a good topic of conversation. It’s hard to say much else simply because he didn’t seem to be in the *learning* process of “ELL” any more — he already learned the language, likely as well as he’s ever going to learn it, and it’s difficult to apply the knowledge I’ m gaining about people who are learning English to someone who already completed the process.

Next time… well, next time I hope my ELL is in class so I can work with her!