2/14/06 Jamey came to observe tonight. We waited til 7:20 or so and only Guadalupe showed up. So I "borrowed" 2 students from Betty's class -- Esperanza and George. Esperanza is more of a beginner than George but they are probably both in Betty's class because George helps her. He translated some for her. If they were "my" students, I would politely say -- English only please. But I didn't feel comfortable saying that to George tonight since I had just met him. Jamey, the class wasn't as lively tonight as it usually is when more of the guys are there.
I've come up with a general plan for my time with this class during the semester. I'm going to focus on numbers -- money, time, appointments, reading calendars -- all skills that are tested on the next level of the CASAS test that they will be given probably sometime in May. I began tonight with numbers over 10. Right off the bat I found out that they were pretty familiar with those numbers. I had planned one teaching section followed by an activity aimed at listening skills where I pointed out that 13-30, 14-40, etc sound similar. I could tell from their work in the introductory session that they were indeed having trouble discriminating those sounds. The interesting thing was that when they were calling out the numbers to each other, they seemed to understand each other but I had trouble discriminating the sounds they were making! They were getting the answers right and I don't think it was by chance. After the class was over, it occurred to me that I should have told them about accents. I think we tend to accent the last syllable of the teen numbers and the first syllable of the multiples of 10. So I'm going to point this out to Guadalupe next class.
In the second half of the class (after Jamey had gone), I moved the numbers lesson into money. My plan for tonight was to focus only on bills and do coins next class. But I found out that they were quite familiar with handling money. So we worked with both bills and coins. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since they've told me that they don't use checks, only cash when shopping. Well, next class I'll know to go right into writing money with decimals, shopping, reading prices, etc. Will be good opportunities for using authentic materials.
For the end of class we played bingo. Guadalupe called out the numbers and George, Esperanza and I played. I won!!! I think I will be using bingo as a filler activity in the future. It does give good practice reading, speaking and listening to numbers.
I've come up with a general plan for my time with this class during the semester. I'm going to focus on numbers -- money, time, appointments, reading calendars -- all skills that are tested on the next level of the CASAS test that they will be given probably sometime in May. I began tonight with numbers over 10. Right off the bat I found out that they were pretty familiar with those numbers. I had planned one teaching section followed by an activity aimed at listening skills where I pointed out that 13-30, 14-40, etc sound similar. I could tell from their work in the introductory session that they were indeed having trouble discriminating those sounds. The interesting thing was that when they were calling out the numbers to each other, they seemed to understand each other but I had trouble discriminating the sounds they were making! They were getting the answers right and I don't think it was by chance. After the class was over, it occurred to me that I should have told them about accents. I think we tend to accent the last syllable of the teen numbers and the first syllable of the multiples of 10. So I'm going to point this out to Guadalupe next class.
In the second half of the class (after Jamey had gone), I moved the numbers lesson into money. My plan for tonight was to focus only on bills and do coins next class. But I found out that they were quite familiar with handling money. So we worked with both bills and coins. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since they've told me that they don't use checks, only cash when shopping. Well, next class I'll know to go right into writing money with decimals, shopping, reading prices, etc. Will be good opportunities for using authentic materials.
For the end of class we played bingo. Guadalupe called out the numbers and George, Esperanza and I played. I won!!! I think I will be using bingo as a filler activity in the future. It does give good practice reading, speaking and listening to numbers.
posted by Connie | 6:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home