Engineering

My last visit to Brigham was probably the most rewarding. I felt that my group and the students were more engaged with each other than normal and engaged in the lesson. The students seemed to be very comfortable with us at this point and seemed to finally be really opening up to us. This is one of the more successful lessons I have taught at Brigham. Building model houses with the students was really fun. I felt that the students were talking more and having more fun than I have previously seen.

After teaching this lesson I felt that I really met my goal of gaining more experience with ELL students and a culturally diverse classroom. Brigham taught me a lot about ELL students and I hadn’t realized it until the last day we were there. I realized that pictures, books, and gestures went a long way with these students. They helped us when we couldn’t understand them and we helped them when they couldn’t understand us. As I said previously, building the houses with the students truly showed me that we got more out of this experience than I had thought. The students seemed to be genuinely having fun with building these models and then it was really rewarding when they found success when their house did not blow over.

When planning this lesson my group was unsure how it was going to go because we were unsure if the students were going to be able to understand that we wanted them to build houses with the materials were provided and to make it strong. It turned out better than we had hoped and the students did a great job. This was the most rewarding when we all high fived at the end of the lesson because all the students were able to succeed in their house building on their own. Even though we had to help the students it made me feel like they finally were able to open up to us and be comfortable.

When working towards my goal I knew that I of course was going to get more experience with these students but what I didn’t realize was how much I learned from them. They showed me that a language barrier doesn’t prevent them from learning; it just might take a different type of explanation. These students were very intimidating to work with at first because I had never worked with ELL students before, and 20 of them all at once was a lot. After getting to know the students and working with them multiple times they were not intimidating, they were very welcoming and helpful.

In my future classroom, I feel that if here is an ELL student I will be much more prepared than I would have been without this experience. It has helped me gain more experience with culturally diverse students and ELL students all at once. This has made me hope for an English Language Learning student in my future classroom because then I will be able to work with them using all the information that I have learned through the semester.

Here is an article on teaching ELL students: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-literacy-english-k-5-english-learners

exceeds: went over word count and included an article