Think Piece #8

             I have five students in my class who are identified and have special needs in the areas of reading, writing, and math.  There are also many other students who are not identified, but struggle with academics, in particular, writing.  When I teach writing, I guided the students through each step of the writing process.  Generally, as the year progresses, I would give the students more responsibility, but many of my students struggle with writing.  Some of the students have difficulty organizing their ideas while others struggle with presenting clear ideas and task initiation.  My students that are more capable when it comes to writing struggle with adding details to their writing and writing to their full potential. 

            I have a special education teacher that pushes into my classroom during writing workshop.  This is a great help because of the diverse needs of the students.  Having the special education teacher in the room allows me to move at a pace that is not too fast or too slow.  She is there to assist those students who need additional support.  Several of my students with special needs have difficulty brainstorming and thinking of seed ideas.  They have a difficult time narrowing down their ideas to a moment in time. 

            The majority of my students need support when it is time to revise writing pieces.  The students tell me that their piece is fine the way it is.  I give the students examples of new ideas to add to their writing pieces.  If many of the students struggle with this task, I will have the students partner up and share ideas with each other.  The students enjoy helping each other and have great ideas to share. 

            The editing process is a little more difficult because my students are all on very different levels.  My more advanced students have few or no punctuation, capitalization, or spelling errors, whereas, my struggling students have many.  For some writing pieces I will conference one-on-one with the students, but most of the time the students are responsible for editing their own writing pieces.  I have the students read through their piece and check for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling errors.  The students then raise their have and tell me any words they think they have spelled wrong.  I write the words on the board.  The students then independently correct the spelling in their writing. 

            For many writing pieces such as personal narratives, friendly letters, and thank you letters, I gave my students a template to help guide them in their writing.  These templates allowed my students to focus more on the content of the writing and less on the format.

            My students started this year on many different writing levels.  Each individual student requires a different level of writing support.  The students continue, to be at different levels of writing, yet they have all made major gains in writing this year.  Some of my students simply needed practice with task initiation while others needed assistance writing clear ideas in a well-organized manner.  I continue to differentiate my instruction in order to provide each student with individualized instruction in their areas of need.   

Think Piece #7

As I was reading Gerald Campano’s book, Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing, and Remembering, I felt compassion for these students.  I wanted to help them as Campano did.  He gave every student the opportunity to express themselves and their ethnic backgrounds.  I cannot imagine teaching in a classroom full of fifth graders that spoke fourteen different languages.  I feel like that would be very overwhelming, rewarding, but overwhelming.     

            One of the students Campano mentioned stated, “I want to be part of both cultures.”  It is important to help keep a students culture alive in all aspects of their life.  Teachers are the ones that need to help keep children’s cultures alive in the school setting.  For this child to want to keep “both cultures” alive is refreshing.  I love when students share about their cultures because I not only learn from them, but the other students do as well.  It gets the students interested in learning about new cultures. 

I do not have much experience working with English Language Learners, but I do have some.  I have subbed for an ESL teacher many times.  Before I subbed for her I worked across the hall from her for three moths.  Seeing the passion that this ESL teacher has when working with her students sometimes makes me want to become an ESL teacher.  This particular teacher is so passionate about her students.  She goes above and beyond what most teachers do.  She gives up her lunch to work with students and often even works with students during her planning time as well.  She makes sure that each every one of her students is receiving the support that they need to be successful. 

I had a second grade student in my class last year that was an ESL learner, but she did not require much support from the ESL teacher.  She spoke Spanish at home and English in school.  It amazes me that these young students are able to do that.  This particular student did very well in the classroom.  I also had a student whose family was from Macedonia.  My student was born here, but the rest of her family was born in Macedonia so she had unique experiences to share with the class.  I enjoyed having diversity in my classroom because my students could all bring different experience to the classroom.  This was especially beneficial during the writing of our class book.  During my second grade teacher position last year, I was filling in for a maternity leave.  For a writing piece, I convinced the students that their teacher was not home taking care of her baby, but that she was really traveling the world.  We did this because we were working on the skill fantasy or reality.  Each student chose a different place to write about.  My students from different countries were able to write about those places and add their personal experiences to their writing.  This was interesting for me to read and the other students loved it as well.  These students were so proud to be able to tell us about their culture. 

The last time I subbed for her, I worked with two Spanish students that were new to the U.S.  We worked on basic tasks such as labeling body parts like arms, legs, and head.  The students were very polite and attentive.  They had difficulty spelling some words.  I was helping them and realized part of the reason they were having so much difficulty.  Both of the students confused the letters “e” and “a.”  I took Spanish for six years in high school, so I have some knowledge of the language and customs.  In the Spanish alphabet, the letter “e” is pronounced like “a.”  Once I made this realization, I could better help the students.  It was something small, but it makes all the difference.  It is important for ESL teachers to have background knowledge about a student’s culture and language in order to help them succeed. 

Teachers need to keep in mind the different backgrounds students come from when planning instruction.  We are always taking into account different learning abilities,  but I feel that we so easily forget about ethnic diversity.  Embracing this diversity can bring so much to a classroom.