Field Log 4

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Throughout my field work, I have seen many lessons that were taught within a pull out setting and in a push in setting. Almost every lesson has some form of assessment so that the ESL teachers and classroom teachers can get an idea about what the students learned and did not learn. The assessments that I have noticed are used a lot are exit slips or worksheets. When exit slips are used the teacher usually poses a question that is related to the content that was learned that day. The kids then write the answer to the question on a piece of loose leaf or on a post it note. After the students leave, I asked the teacher what she does with these exit slips. She said that she reviews them and then knows what still needs to be worked on the next day or if she can move on. The exit slips usually do reflect one of the objectives of the lesson. One day it would be a language objective and another day it would be a content objective.

One lesson in particular that I remember observing was a science lesson in a 5th grade class. The ESL teacher pushed into the science teachers classroom. The topic that they were discussing was the food plate and nutrition. In order to make this more engaging, the science teacher had students bring in different food labels. With these food labels, they analyzed the different aspects of the nutrition facts. As the science teacher was doing this, the ESL teacher was working with her students in a small group. She was constantly repeating the words that were on the food label and she also had flash cards with the words and definitions on them. She also had the words in Spanish and she would use google translate to translate the word into the other languages that the students spoke. I thought that this was a great strategy because students usually know what a food label looks like. Therefore, they were able to bring the content knowledge of a food label to the lesson.




Throughout this lesson, the ESL teacher was constantly assessing the students and telling them that they were doing a great job. I think if I were her, I would have tried to provide more feedback. I would constantly give verbal praise and I would also show them and write them post its on what they can do next time to improve. By writing the students feedback down, they can refer to it to know what they need to do next to improve themselves and get to the next level in their academics. Overall, I know it is difficult to always assess students every day and to keep up with it. I feel a good balance should be maintained with assessments and feedback and students should always know how they are doing. This is a great way to motivate the students to keep pushing them forward to reach their academic goals.

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