2/21/13

This week, I switched my day at North Central to Wednesday. The school district had the day off on Monday due to Presidents’ Day.  Arriving a little late because I was caught behind the school buses, I made my way to the library and downstairs to find Ms. McCarthy.  I noticed many Butler students already at tables with students as Ms. McCarthy informed me that they had people already assisting the available students and we would have to split up a group so I could work one-on-one with a student.

We walked over to a table where two students were working with a Butler student on a study guide for a health class, and I asked if they would mind if I took one North Central student. The two young men looked a each other, one of them gave a nod, and the other rose from his chair to go with me to another table. I introduced myself and learned his name was Htee. Htee spoke very little at first, he seemed a little nervous being separated from his friend. When I had initially walked over to the group, I had noticed the other boy was speaking to Htee in their native language. Nonetheless, Htee and I got to work on the study guide.

He was not very far along in the series of questions, so we continued on number 5 where they had left off when he was working in the previous group. The question was about depression, so I asked Htee if he understood what depression was, he responded with a very succinct (and very understandable) “I don’t know.” So I explained was depression was by using both words and pantomiming sadness. Then, I asked him if he thought he could explain it orally back to me, again he responded “I don’t know.” Moving to another avenue, I asked if he thought he could write the definition down or draw a picture because I remembered sometimes if a student is having trouble expressing ideas (especially words) orally or in writing, they might be more comfortable connecting it with a picture (Levine and McCloskey 247). We drew a picture together and made the explicit connection between a happy face and a sad face-the sad face being tantamount to depression. We worked through a few more questions very slowly in the same fashion with Htee following his notes, reading the questions, and answers out loud, and me helping him with words he stumbled over or were confused by, then another student joined our group.

Gabby walked over confidently and plopped her things right down on the table. Htee and I looked up as she told us very frankly that we were working on the same thing as her, and she needed help with some questions. I asked Htee if he would be comfortable working together and he said ok. So I introduced myself and Htee to Gabby and she replied by saying her name and that she was working on number 15. Htee said, “Oh she is very smart.”  And he was right, Gabby was very confident unlike more quiet and timid Htee. But after a few minutes together, I began to notice that Gabby’s presence was not helping Htee the way I thought it would.

I had thought the two of them could make a convenient little heterogenous group, where Gabby could help Htee with some of his vocabulary connections (Levine and McCloskey 20, 232). I soon realized, however, that Gabby was too far a long for this. Furthermore, she was not any assistance because she did not speak Htee’s native language. At this point, I had realized Htee was in early production to preproduction phase whereas Gabby was in the late speech emergence to early intermediate fluency stage (Hill and Flynn 15). So I decided to see if Htee wanted to go back with his friend, it made sense to me that his friend had been helping him to make explicit vocabulary connections in their native language with the terms for their health class. He seemed very happy about this, so he moved back over to his friend while I continued to work with Gabby.

Gabby told me she was from Egypt. She had moved to the United States last year, and since has been learning English and working on her high school material. She was a junior and she told me she was interested in going to Butler. Gabby moved more quickly through the material than Htee, and she was concerned with understanding and being able to relate to the material. I would try to give the material context (Levine and McCloskey 6) which was fairly easy because the study guide was over health topics and she essentially put the ideas in context for herself when I helped her through some of the vocabulary connections. She worked diligently for the rest of our hour together.

In reflecting on the study guide that both Gabby and Htee had been provided, I was left wondering how to better structure a study guide. This particular study guide was a series of 17 questions about topics from the three chapters that were going to be covered on the test. Htee had significant trouble reading the study guide and connecting the words he was reading to the notes he had taken as well as the information in the book. To me, it seemed like he was struggling to comprehend the vocabulary words on a very basic level (this would be typical if he was in the early production stage). Gabby, on the other hand, struggled more to find the information in the book or her notes, this process was very slow for her. I am wondering if the teacher could have provided the class with the opportunity to look over the study guide ask a few questions about where some material might have been in the book. I think this would have given students in Htee’s position the chance to clarify some of the difficult vocabulary, and student’s in Gabby’s position, to make connections to where they can find the material and contextualize it.

I hope to be able to work with either of these student again in my time at North Central, I think they are excellent examples of two students who are in very different stages of second language acquisition but are both in a classroom setting together. The students I may have in my classroom in the future may be in levels just as far apart as these two young people and I will have to design lessons to meet both of these students needs.

References

Flynn, Kathleen M., and Jane D. Hill. “The Stages of Second Language Acquisition.” Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners. Alexandria: ASCD, 2006. 14-21. Print.

Levine, Linda N., and Mary L. McCloskey. “Language Acquisition and Language Learning in the Classroom.” Teaching Learners of English in Mainstream Classrooms (K-8): One Class, Many Paths. New York: Pearson, 2008. 1-25 & 230-261. Print.

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