Back with My Kindergarteners!

I was so excited to have the opportunity to go back to Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy today and work with my class again. I am splitting my time between TJ and Esperanza, and today I was at TJ. This is the third time this year that I have worked with Ms. Caraballo's kindergarten class, the first time during an internship in the refugee intensive, and the second time as a volunteer over  my spring break. I loved getting to see all my kids again and how much their English has improved since I started working with them. We also got two new girls in the class since I last worked with them, both from Puerto Rico. It's a very gratifying feeling that the kids never have to ask who I am even though I'm not there with them on a regular basis; they all remember me.

Today was a pretty typical school day with one notable exception; all the kids know that summer is almost here and are getting very chatty and antsy waiting for school to end. That being said, we still got a lot of work done today. End of the year testing is still going on in the school, so while Ms. Caraballo was testing the student's reading individually this morning, I walked around and helped everyone with their morning reading work. Since it is the end of the year, we're really focusing on reinforcing the basic skills the students have learned all year, their letters, numbers, days of the week, seasons, sentence writing, shapes, sizes, colors, and other basic kindergarten skills. Today in reading, we reviewed the letter M, so they made a book in reading of things that started with the letter M and what a mouse liked to do with them, they colored a cup of hot chocolate and put in marshmallows that had pictures of M words on it, and they did a few other worksheets about the letter M. In the afternoon, we reviewed measuring during math, and had the students count blocks to measure the size of different pictures and then decide what picture was bigger.

My essential question focuses on making connections with others despite language differences, and so far in my work with Ms. Caraballo's class, I've learned how important patience is working with students that speak different languages, and students in general. You have to be willing to explain concepts over and over and for the students and show them how to do different activities. Repetition and modeling are very important in ESL learning. You also have to be very encouraging of students and and remind them of their own abilities so that, while you may be helping them complete the different activities, they are the ones who are really doing the work and learning by doing it. I love having the chance to watch the students learn and grow and I am very excited to spend the next three weeks with them. I'm also very excited to see what working with Esperanza tomorrow will bring for me.