Web-Based Assignment: Grade 3 ESL
LEARNER DESCRIPTION:
This assignment was designed for a group of 14 students in a third grade “sheltered” English as a Second Language classroom in a public elementary school in Providence, Rhode Island. The students’ families originate from a variety of countries including: the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Syria, Liberia, and El Salvador. Eight students have indigenous roots in Guatemala, El Salvador, or the Dominican Republic. One of those students was raised in the indigenous Quiche community in Guatemala until last year. Two students did not have any previous schooling before this year. 11 students were born in their home countries and immigrated to the U.S. with their parents between 2009 and 2019. Five students immigrated to the U.S. within the last year.
Linguistic Needs: Every student has been in ESL programming in the U.S. since they started school. Students’ first languages vary: 17 speak Spanish, 2 speak Quiche (indigenous language of Guatemala), 1 speaks Kurdish, and 1 speaks Liberian Pidgin English. Their WIDA levels vary by student and by domain, and there are a wide range of abilities in this class. The 14 students engaging in this assignment have WIDA levels of 3 and above.
Academic Needs: On the BOY STAR Reading Assessment, one student scored in the green range (at benchmark) with a scaled score of 475, four students scored in the blue range (on watch) with scaled scores ranging from 358 to 415, five students scored in the yellow range (intervention) with scaled scores ranging from 269 to 325, and 11 students scored in the red range (urgent intervention) with scaled scores ranging from 65 to 207.
In order to properly assess students’ reading abilities and to identify gaps in their phonics skills, the STAR Early Literacy Assessment was also administered. Students’ scaled scores ranged from 377 to 869. The 10 students who scored above 775 will be progress monitored using the STAR Reading Assessment, while the other 11 will continue to take the Early Literacy test in order to strengthen abilities in phonics and other basic skills.
ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION:
This activity is an ESL playlist designed for students to complete during independent reading time. All students in my room have 1:1 access to Chromebooks, and I often use Google Classroom to disseminate assignments similar to this one. Students can work in small groups or independently through the tasks. They have a week to complete everything and work at their own pace. The articles on ReadWorks are differentiated by reading level, which I can control and assign to students individually. On Epic!, students will read a story and fill out a main idea and details graphic organizer on Google Slides. I like to use Epic! because many of the stories are leveled and/or have a read-aloud feature. In any case, students can click on words they do not know and the program will read the word aloud and provide a definition, synonyms, and examples. No Red Ink is a program that I use for grammar practice for grade level phonics/grammar and intervention. For this assignment, students need to complete three sections: identifying complete subjects, identifying pronouns as subjects, and identifying action verbs. I included videos for students to watch if they are having trouble with the grammar point. I also provide guided notes (on paper) from a mini-lesson that students fill out and utilize as a support for the grammar practice. Students are working on completing a personal narrative, so that is another task on the playlist. I included the second page with extra assignments for early finishers. One is a series of short journal prompts from pictures and the other is a Google Docs Scavenger Hunt that I designed to support students’ proficiency with this platform, since we use it for many assignments.
Link to assignment: ESL Playlist
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ReplyDeleteReflection:
ReplyDeleteThe title of my blog is Pedagogy in Motion. This is a blog that I started last year for a social justice education course as part of my graduate studies. I decided to add to this resource because I enjoy using Blogger and because the themes already included are helpful to understanding my pedagogy generally as I dive into my thoughts about technology integration in instruction. The very first blog post includes my bio and information on my current and previous teaching experiences.
I have used Blogger in the past for both personal and professional blogs. I appreciate its easy formatting options and the ability to interface with Google platforms. I am pretty Google-centric in both my personal and professional life, and I use Google platforms for my lesson planning, graduate school work, and community organizing work. Blogger is an excellent platform because it allows for easy content integration, linking, and formatting options for the posts themselves. The themes are customizable and the stock themes available are aesthetically pleasing and varied so the user can select from a variety of options. I like the way that the posts are displayed both in a table of contents/list format and when a user clicks on an individual post. I also like the commenting feature on Blogger. Because the platform is integrated with Google, it is easy to set up an account and any updates are emailed. It is easy to interact with others and to keep a thread of conversation going. I appreciate the flexibility of this feature, and the ease with which contributors can interact with those who are commenting. The privacy features of the blog are also exceptional, and the user can select how much of the blog will be outward facing and what will be only viewed internally.
Some challenges to using Blogger is the heavy editing required before publishing. Often, there are spacing issues with the posts, which require multiple editing sessions and a few periods of trial and error before getting a post in the preferred format. Also, although it is easy to add images, sometimes it is difficult to format the pictures and to make sure that they are well-integrated with the text. Also, if you include multiple images in a post, Blogger only selects the first image as the thumbnail for the post, so this is sometimes limiting.