Reflection #2

Recently in class we have been discussing different methods that can be used when trying to teach students English as their second language. We have talked about weather we thought students that don’t speak English should be in a separate classroom or if we thought they should be integrated into classrooms with all of the other kids. Last school year I worked in a classroom that had a girl from another country in it. She spoke English well enough to have a conversation but had trouble when it came to academics. She had trouble with even simple tasks such as counting past 13 in English. Although she was in the regular classroom when I came I often pulled her out to work with her. We would complete the assignments that everyone else was doing we would just go at a slower pace. I would help her understand directions or we would play games to help her practice with her math skills. I’m not sure if her English or her reading skills were improving from working with me but at least she was getting work completed. I think she should have been pulled out by an ESL teacher everyday to work on more reading skills. In class when no one was there to help she was easily falling behind or the teacher would have to stop and repeat things often for her. I think another thing that helped her was that students sat in table groups. This allowed students to help each other if someone missed directions or needed extra help. After working with this student I believe that there is not only one method to teaching students who are learning english as a second language. I think many techniques have to be used. They should sometimes be pulled out for one on one attention but they should also get the experience of interacting with students who have english as their first language.