Hello everyone!
My name is Andrea and I am an ESL teacher at an elementary school, where I work mostly with kindergarten through third graders. I really enjoy my students, who come from many different language and cultural backgrounds. The largest language group represented among my students is Spanish-speaking, with high numbers of students also speaking Somali, Russian, Vietnamese, Laotian, and several North African languages.
In my ESL classes, we focus on learning academic English language skills through science and social studies content. We have had a lot of fun exploring the five senses, life cycles, and global communities. I am looking forward to learning more about how to use technology to enhance and support student learning.
Thanks for visiting my blog! :-)
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Andrea-
ReplyDeleteYou have done a very nice job with this lesson. The Starfall website has a wide range of applications and you have selected an appropriate activity for both the age and language development of your students. The initial song was very intense and fast, but the visual and audio support for the actual lesson was excellent. Upon further investigation, the Starfall website has many similar activities, so once the students have learned the format of this lesson, you can continue to follow this pattern only using different chunks and vocabulary.
A few of my first thoughts about the lesson addressed how the 1st graders would be able to follow your multi-step directions, but you address this challenge through modeling the lesson first by projecting the computer images. If you had time, your idea of filming the students as they worked through each step would be additionally engaging. Having the students work with a partner will also support their navigation through the various steps of the lesson.
Overall, your lesson is very complete with instructional modeling, supported practice, reinforced vocabulary for the reading selection, and writing using the new vocabulary. At the primary level, writing on paper is developmentally important. Perhaps as the year goes on you could incorporate some typing or spelling on the computer also.
Nice work. Heidi