Lost in Translation

Yesterday I subbed in an ESL classroom. I always love working with ESL students. Last year I worked with a small kindergarten group. They were awesome. Most of them had better language than most of their native speaking peers! I just love how excited they are about language, and I honestly like the dependency a little bit. They look to their teacher a lot, to understand what is being said.

Anyway, I led three groups of ESL students yesterday. The first group was 5 fourth graders. This was probably the toughest of the groups, because it was only their second day of ESL. We did a paragraph about what they did this summer. They had pretty high language skills, so the instruction was pretty easy.

The second group was 6 First graders. I actually met them in their classroom. They were a very sweet group. I read them a story about colors, and how yellow and blue makes green. The children seemed to love it. Then we did an "All About Me" worksheet, where they answered questions like: What is your favorite food? I had to help them quite a bit with this. We had a good time though!

My biggest challenge instruction wise came in the final group. I met with seven Fifth graders. They were all newcomers, meaning most of them have only been in the US for a very little time. Some of them have little to know language skills.

After speaking to several blank faces for the first few minutes, I started using gestures. I asked them all to take a pencil from the jar and all but one just stared at me. I modeled by taking a pencil out of the jar and putting it in front of myself, then I pointed at the jar and at each of them...nothing...so finally I asked the one girl that understood me to please pass out the pencils, it was the easiest way.

I read a book about clouds to them and they really liked the drawn pictures of clouds in different shapes. We used sound effects to make the noise that the shape would make, it was very funny. We all made sheep noises, rocket noises and plane noises, it got a little silly.

Finally, I had them do the same "All About Me" sheet that the First graders had done. This became a challenge. After attempting to get people to work individually, I decided this was a group project. I would read the question and then draw five options for them to answer with. For those of you that don't know me, my drawing is very interesting. The Fifth graders even giggled a little as I drew pictures. My favorite question was: What is your favorite musical instrument? I drew a guitar, drums, a microphone, a violin and a piano...The guitar looked awesome. That got the most laughs!

I am proud to say that all but one person finished the assignment. I had a very nice day and I am about to head off to a second grade class for the afternoon! I will try and blog tonight about my exploits.