Teaching and Honoring

I want to talk about two things today, and I will keep it brief because I am a busy busy girl!

First I want to talk about using games in ESOL tutoring.  For my third week, I decided to try a couple of games with the students.  To shake it up a bit.  I created a bingo game using pictures and words for grocery store vocabulary.  I used a great website that has a bingo card generator on it:

 

Here is an example of one of the cards:

I gave them pennies and buttons to use as their markers.

Observation 1: Normally when you play bingo you only have to get a whole row across, down, or diagonal to win; but when the cards only use 16 pictures, the game ends too soon.  I suggest using the rule that you have to fill the entire card to win.  We played about 5 games of bingo, in about 10 minutes, too fast!

Then I played a response game with them, to try and teach them the words under, over, beside, etc.  I gave each student a piece of paper with these two pictures on it:

Then I told them to put an X on the table, put a check under the table, put a circle in the box, and put a plus sign beside the box.  Then I showed them my sheet of paper and told them it should look the same:

 Most of them understood, and those who didn't would ask their neighbor to help them, so they all got them right.  I wanted to do this game because my partner N and I noticed that they were getting confused with the words on, in, and at.  N told me that in the Spanish language they say "on top of" as in "Put the X on top of the table."  English speakers say this also, but most people say the shortened version "put the X on the table" and I want my students to understand what that means.

This brings up a good point.  There are many idiosyncrasies in the English language that can not really be translated well to other languages.  Whenever possible it is good to try to explain and teach these to ESOL students, the more they use the "real" American language, the more they will feel at home.  In my opinion anyway.

So we did those two games, which took me about 4 hours to prepare, and in class they took about 20 minutes to finish.  That left 40 minutes of open non prepared time.  I sort of panicked and looked helplessly at N when I realized I had nothing to do for the next 40 minutes.  She suggested we go over some emergency words, so we talked about the different times you would call 911 or go to the ER versus calling a doctor.  Like I have said before, the students are all so easygoing and they never missed a beat.  This is why I love teaching this class!

"Hey ESL Teacher"

 Photo by Vanessa Jones

Yes!

That was the subject in a recent email sent to me.  The ESL teacher at my daughters school started a wonderful evening program at the school.  Family Learning Nights, you can learn English, Spanish, get help with preparing for your GED, get tutoring help for your child's homework.  D, the ESL teacher is also a master trainer for LVNJ and just a really cool person, and this idea he had is so fantastic.  When he sent the word out looking for help with tutoring I immediately signed up.

I haven't had a student to tutor for about 6 months, it has been a busy time in my personal life so I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the tutoring.  It was so difficult for me to drive almost 30 minutes to get to the tutoring sessions before and it was so inconvenient, and then my student rarely showed up, or if she did she was always late.  It clouded my experience.

But the thought of being able to tutor a student at the school which is just around the corner from my house, in the evenings when my husband can take care of the children.  And to know I am working with parents of my kids friends.  People in my community.  This idea completely appealed to me.

The thing is I had only ever done basic literacy tutoring, and the training I had for ESL tutoring was a year ago.  I told D I would tutor a student, thinking I can handle one on one.  Then I got an email from D the day before the first FLN:

"Brenda,

Would you be interested in taking a small group of beginning ESL students?"

Umm, PANIC!  So the LVNJ training mainly focuses on one on one tutoring, but we did touch on the small group training.  But like I said that was a YEAR ago!  How could I possibly say no though?  The parents wanted to learn, and I repeated to myself that first empowering thought I learned in training "If you can speak English, you can teach someone to speak English."  So yeah!  Yes I will take that small group, and I will do the best I can, I am totally willing and able!

The day came, and I poured over my training manual, and a great manual my boss J suggested and I went online and came up with a very basic lesson plan.  I did not know the level these students were at in their English speaking skills so I had to go on the assumption that they were very beginner.

I decided to start with a grid, and use the Repetition Drills I had learned and practiced in training to have them practice saying: "Hi, my name is," "I have three children," "I have two girls and one boy."  And I would have them introduce themselves and then their neighbor using the grid to help them.

I also found pictures of different scenarios on google, Talking to your child's teacher, At the bank, At the grocery store, and At the doctor.  I would poll the students and say: "I need help speaking English when I am..." and then I would show them each picture while saying what it was and then ask them to each pick a scenario they wanted to work on.  Then we would work on things you might need to say in those scenarios, using the Repetition Drill and the Response Drill.

So I had a plan and I was scared but hopeful.

I got there and started drawing out my grid on the board and then waited.  Then the students started showing up.  And showing up.  And showing up.  I had a total of 11 students that night!  Yikes, I am sorry but that is a large group in my opinion!

 Photo by Vanessa Jones

But I never skipped a beat, and I went through my lesson plan and oh my gosh the students were so awesome!  They were eager, upbeat and totally accommodating.  LOVE teaching ESL!

As I was gathering my things at the end of the class, one of the ladies said, "Thank you teacher!"  Heart melting!