Jennifer Rosa EDL-603

Throughout my observations of the ESL teachers in my school there have been a plethora of cognitive strategies used. I feel that the ESL teachers in my school have a great understanding of the needs of the children and do everything that they can to make the content relatable. For example, the teachers always try to make connections with the students. This is so important for the students to grasp the content they are learning. They also read aloud a lot of the material and they always preview it. When it comes to metacognitive, these are also used in the lessons that I have observed. Like I previously stated the teachers understand what the students need in order to grasp the content. One lesson in particular that I recall was a reading lesson with 3rd graders. The teachers were reading an article from the Finish Line workbook. It was about school in history. They were reading about a one room schoolhouse and what it was like to attend school like that. The teachers stopped after ...

Within my observations, I have noticed that there is a link to students previous experiences. This does not occur on every lesson but I have noticed that the ESL teachers do try to do this as much as possible. This is because they know the importance of students being able to relate to the content that they are learning. The way that they try to build background knowledge is by using a lot of pictures/ visuals and videos. This helps the students because they are able to visualize in a picture or video format what they are going to be learning about. The ESL teachers do allow the students to name things in visuals in their home language. This is because their philosophy is that they want the children to learn English but not forget their first language. They do not want to see a loss of culture within their students. They are always as open as possible to learning about the students culture and incorporating it into the lessons. Both teachers do make connections to past learning wh...