Period 3 Wednesday 2nd December
Scenario: Resource - 1st year -English as a second language - Ms. Noonan, 40 minutes
The Resource section of the school is quite big; there is one big classroom that is separated into different class groups which go on all at the same time. This class is An Chrannóg and there are 3 students - Valentina and Aria are spanish, whereas Ryan is polish. Ryan is from my own class and each student has impressive english but this class is to strengthen their vocab
Teacher is very soft spoken and seems quite wise and friendly - once they are seated, she gives out a comprehension about 3 pages long and she discusses the learning content a little before diving in. the comprehension is a story told in first person about anecdotes that happened on the protagonists family farm, focusing on their grandmother
Each student is given highlighter and are instructed by the teacher to highlight any word that comes up that they find challenging to understand
The students take it in turn to read a paragraph each. Their reading is surprisingly weak - some students are much better at verbal english rather than written
After the student has finished reading their allocated paragraph, Ms. Noonan repeats the paragraph and asks them to recite the highlighted words - the students get stuck on reasonable words such as ‘provoked’, ‘laborious’ and ‘suckle’ - Ms. Noonan encourages the other two students to try and tell their peers their assumptions about the meaning of the word first before she tells them the definition - some are very difficult
The students take turns to read the paragraphs and the process repeats itself - the students seem so enthusiastic when they get their assumptions of the definitions right. It's really lovely to see them so happy about learning and feeling so rewarded. It's also so heartwarming that all 3 of them are in the same boat and can help one another and have this in common.
Once this is done they are asked to answer the questions below- there are 5 questions and they all have answers that directly correlate to the text - they are given 15 minutes
They work in silence, asking a few questions here and there - for every question asked, Ms. Noonan rises from her seat to help them one on one and she is extremely warm and helpful to them so they feel it is okay to ask these questions no matter how ‘silly’ it may seem.
They answer the questions chronologically and do this until the bell goes
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