Justine Bishop

Active Fieldwork

Brief Summary
Throughout the term, I have been volunteering once a week in a Kindergarten classroom
at Jefferson Elementary. I take a small group of ELLs to another room for reading practice using
their Reading curriculum. This past week, on Tuesday the 15th, I took my usual five kids to read
the book on feelings/emotions. Three of the five kids are ELLs and the other two are struggling
readers. The book that we read had just one word per page, and had a picture that corresponded
to the word.
First, we talked about the different emotions that they knew. They took turns telling me
an emotion, and then I wrote the word on the board. Next, I asked the kids to show me what that
looks like, and then, using their feedback, I drew a picture on the board. Then we read the book,
and as they read we all made the faces that corresponded with the words in the book. Finally, we
ended our lesson by reviewing all of our faces for the various emotions, talking about when we
might feel a certain emotion, and talking about what emotion we would feel following a certain
event. Before going back to class, the kids drew a picture of something, and how it made them
feel. They then explained their picture, and what emotion they felt and why. For example, one
student drew a picture of himself on an airplane. He explained to his peers This is me in an
airplane. I am happy, because I am going to visit my family in Pakistan. You can tell Im happy
because I am smiling.
Reflection

I really enjoyed doing this lesson with the kids. They were all excited, engaged, and had a
lot of things to share. I did find that it was really difficult to explain some of the different
emotions- for example, most of the kids were not familiar with the emotion Surprised. We tried
multiple strategies to help students such as; drawing a picture on the board, acting it out, and
talking about instances where we might feel surprised. Emotions in particular were hard to
explain because it is not easy to provide an example of realia that would solidify a students
understanding.
Connections
For this lesson, I used quite a few different strategies from our 50 Strategies book. For
example, we used TPR, Vocabulary Role Play, Small groups, and a form of realia. We also used
predictable routines and procedures because this lesson was similar to lessons that we had done
in previous weeks.
This made me think of last year when I had a practicum in a Kindergarten classroom. The
teacher would add pictures to the schedule on the board, because the majority of students
couldnt read it on their own. This is a strategy similar to what I used, and I think it can greatly
benefit both ELLs and non-ELLs. However, this teacher did not always include pictures in all
areas of the classroom. I think that all though she did some things that supported the language
acquisition of her ELL students, there were other things that she could have easily added to
support them.
This also made me make a personal connection to my own preferences when learning. I
am not an auditory learner. I prefer to learn visually or kinesthetically. Even though English is
my first language, some of the strategies that I used with my ELLs could also have been helpful

for me as a learner. For example, I always appreciate

teachers that incorporate movement and pictures into their
lessons, because this helps me learn and retain
information.

Ideas for Future Teaching

It was really interesting to see how much pictures
and movement helped students to understand what they were reading and discussing. When
teaching, I think that it would be easy for me to provide these types of supports for all students.
All though these are things that especially help ELL students, it could also support native English
speakers, and it can be done in a way that seems natural to everyone, and doesnt leave any
student questioning Why do we all have to do this? This was made clear to me because my
small group had both ELLs and native English speakers, yet all the kids enjoyed the lesson and
learned a lot.
Note- Due to the nature of this field work, I was unable to take pictures while I was teaching.,
and I was unable to take pictures of the students. Instead, I took a few pictures of myself outside
of the school.