Field Log 1

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Throughout my observations, I have observed pull out and push in sessions in grades 3-5. There is a lot of preparation that the ESL teachers have to do for all of the sessions that they do. I spoke with them regarding the current work that they are doing. They are currently working on test preparation with majority of the students. They explained to me that since some of the students do not have to take the New York State ELA exam, the preparation helps them for the NYSESLAT.

One lesson in particular that I observed was a pull out session with 3rd graders.  I assisted the ESL teacher in planning the lesson. I am very fortunate that the ESL teacher is my former co-teacher, so it is a benefit that we can work so closely together. She was planning a lesson for ELA using social studies content. The lesson was about the history of the fourth of July. She is currently using the Finish Line program which is a curriculum that is used to help practice the different aspects of the NYSESLAT. The lesson was addressing the Common Core State Standards which were RI.3.2 and RI.3.1. These standards are addressing finding the main idea and asking and answering questions about a text to find meaning. The lesson had language and content objectives. The content objective was that students would be able to describe the holiday the fourth of July and how it became a holiday. The language objective was that students would be able to discuss the holiday with content specific vocabulary such as declaration of indepence.

Language development is being addressed in the lesson because the students are going to be learning academic vocabulary that is specific to the lesson and the unit. In the ESL classroom, all four modalities are addressed. Within this particular lesson, the students were reading and speaking. The assessment for this lesson would be done formally because there were multiple choice questions that were linked with the passage regarding the Fourth of July. Therefore, the teacher would be able to see who understood the story or who still needs some more work. We also planned to do an additional activity with the children where they would draw a picture of the holiday and they would have to explain to the group what they drew in their picture. I felt that this was a good activity to have the kids express their learning through art and through using language.

The following images are the workbook that we used to plan the lesson.







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