Teacher interview....sorry it's late...

Interview questions with classroom teacher

• Please describe your ELL teaching experience.

-          It’s rewarding to work with ELL students, to see them come in to the classroom and see how much they learn and develop.

• What is your perception on ELLs in terms of their learning motivation and performance?

(Especially in reading and writing)? What learning difficulties do ELLs usually encounter?

In schools? What is the role of family and community in helping ELLs’ learning?

-          Most of my students learning motivation and performance mainly come from home. Their parents want to see them succeed in learning and perfecting their English language and writing. Some of them get discouraged easily if they know they got something wrong with their work, they always want to do their best and like being acknowledged for their good work or participation.

• In your opinion, how do classroom teachers resolve ELLs’ learning difficulties? What

strategies do you adopt? Are they effective or not? Do you participate in on-going

professional training for teaching ELLs? What is your experience in terms of working

students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds? How do you make sure that

your teaching is culturally responsive? How do you go about reaching out to the family

and the community?

-          In this school, they have us ELA teachers’ to take students out of the classroom or work with them while they are in the classroom. Yes, I am a ELA teacher, so I help out when I can. I love all the different cultures that come into my classroom. I like to learn about each of their backgrounds as much as I can.

Week 12

1.) Which ideas from the video struck you as most relevant to your teaching of comprehension?

Letting them discuss what they read, helps them see the reading from all different prespective. One might not have overlooked one item that another student could have caught and them discussing let them see this.

2.) What new instructional practices will you implement in your classroom?

In my classroom I would want my students to use their prior knowledge of the text and dicuss what they know about the text before they read it. Then I would want them to discuss what they learned from the text. I want my class to always be able to discuss a topic with each otherto help them comprehend what was read in the text.

3.) How will you use the ideas presented in this video to improve the comprehension of your struggling readers (students you are observing)? 

Week 7

The student observed doing this QRI 5 analysis video was a thrid grade, ESL student. She was started off on the first grade level reading word lists. The student becomes discouraged easily because she felt she was doing it wrong but with some encouragment she was able to read the words and move on. The assessment was moved on to the second grade evaluation level and she seemed to struggle more on this level and was unable to remember specific information from the reading passage. You could she her comprehension skills is not great throughout this. With this you can see that this student is not on her grades reading level. She was able to get through the passages, but struggled over certain parts of it. This student needs to practice her reading at home with her parent(s) to help her feel more confident about her reading. The teacher or reading teacher should work with this student one-on-one.

Week 8

• Discuss the components of an effective writing program and why they are important.

The three components of effective writing is 1.) personal connections- it's important for children to be able to personally connect with their writing. ex; personal narratives 2.) writing conventions- we have to make sure what conventions each students need to be working on; they would do editing and revisions on works.  3.) inventions-  give students invent or producing their own writing pieces. These are important because it gives you a better view of how the students understanding is. You will know what they get and what they don't get.

• How might you rearrange your schedule to create more time for students to write in general and, in particular, for students to write about their personal experiences?

I would have them write in there journal before the end of each day to one, practice their writing, and two, find out how much they know.

• How can you create ways for students to make personal connections in different subject areas through writing?

You can have them do responsive or reflective writing to something they have read or you have read. It can be about a book, a article, a political issue (if at that level), etc.

• How can student work help you decide which conventions to teach?

You would see what is the most common convention that needs to be addressed by looking at all the students first work and base your teaching off that.

• When can you promote student inventions and experimentation with different formats in writing?

COCA

Concepts of Comprehension Assessment (COCA) is intended for first and second graders and helps provide information about how they coprehend informational texts. There are two forms of COCA that can be used, Dragoflies and Salmon. The COCA gives you opprotunites to ask their students question during the reading of the text, that with the students answers can give you an insight on the students comprehension and knowledge and informational text. The prompts for these questions assess these four dimesions: comprehension strategy use, knowledge of informational text features, comprehension of graphics in the context of text, and vocabulary. I like the design of the Dragonflies book because it has the student fill in the blanks of the book, it lets you see if the students can figure out what words fit in.

Week 5:

I really liked this video, it was cute. I like how it got children together that all had similar problems; they hated reading. They were embarrassed by how much they could not read, it frustrated them so much. During the beginning they had these children make a video, using clay figures, about their experience with reading in the classroom. This gave them time to discuss themselves with others and see that they are not alone with their struggling in reading and they get to collaborate with each other to show this. I liked that they got to do this, your never alone with your reading and there is always someone there that can help you.

Discussion question: How would you help an English Language Learner in your classroom(aside from the ESL teacher if they had one)?

Week 4:

R4 Reading
Read-Relax-Reflect-Respond
This is called the R4 approach, which gets the students' reading at home with the parents involvement. During the Read & Relax period they find a comfortable spot at their home and read. They want their 4th graders to at least do 80 minutes of reading a week, have them record it in a log and have their parents initial each time they do. Then during the Reflect & Respond period they are given prompts to to think about their reading and maybe learn why the author might have written that. I think this is a pretty effective way of getting your students and their parents invovled in their reading. Then having them respond helps you to see how much they understand what they read and if they comprehend it.