Classroom Observations- Skyview High

This semester for my clinical experience I was assigned to work in the Psych 1010 course. As part of our required assignments for the clinical experience we were also supposed to observe an ESL course. I decided to spend an hour a day for four days in this class since it took place during 1st hour and my cooperating teacher had his prep during that time period. In this class there were 6 students, five of which were at the intermediate level of English and one who had only been in the US for 4 months. The teacher had no aides in her class, so she decided to have the Peruvian student work individually on book work while she spent the majority of her time working with the intermediate level students. Observing this approach to teaching ESL students helped me realize the importance of having aides in classrooms such as this so as to allow beginner students a chance to practice their oral language skills. The teacher decided to focus on the students she could work with as a group and who would have to take the national standardized tests. 

The intermediate students received group instruction on grammar and listening skills. The ESL teacher taught these skills very well and very thoroughly. She guided the students through their exercises and managed behavior issues well. 

I worked one-on-one with the Peruvian student whenever I was able to help in the ESL class. I helped him with his book work and with his vocabulary instruction. He explained to me that he was focusing most of his time on learning vocabulary. He was given a set of words to work with each week which were words common to each other. He was to learn between 12 and 15 words each week, which may have been overloading him somewhat. He was given flashcards of the words and allowed time during the week to review the words. The ESL teacher would draw pictures and give examples of how the words would be used in a sentence but he expressed the desire to have more examples from the teacher of how each word could be used. 

This ESL class was functioning reasonably well considering the resources given them and the time allowed for instruction. There could be improvements made to the amount of time which the students are allowed to receive ESL instruction. But the instruction was delivered well and the students were getting a grasp on the language through oral and vocabulary skills.