Thankfully this is beginning ESL science and most of what we are doing is vocabulary acquisition (and The Magic School Bus is all available on DVD!). Since so much of the content is outside of my comfort zone I decided to stay well within my wheel-house of activities. I took my standard vocabulary activities and applied them to science. I have developed several units including weather, ecology and animal taxonomy. While each bundle is slightly different they all include sort cards, clip cards and match up cards but there are slight differences, such as the classification/taxonomy unit including puzzles. Click the pictures before to check out the details of each unit.
Science was my least favorite and least successful class when I was in school. I just didn't get it and despite the best efforts of several teachers there are some science things that I cannot do to this day (ie: balance a chemical equation). For these reasons I have avoided teaching science and the most nervous time of starting a new job was always the moment before the principal told me what I'd be teaching/supporting ("Please don't let him say science, please don't let him say science...."). I obviously did not fully think through the idea of self-containing our new arrivals and teaching all the core subjects because it turns out one of the four core subjects of school is science. So after years of praying and actively avoiding science class I have actually volunteered to teach one and to some degree I am terrified.
Thankfully this is beginning ESL science and most of what we are doing is vocabulary acquisition (and The Magic School Bus is all available on DVD!). Since so much of the content is outside of my comfort zone I decided to stay well within my wheel-house of activities. I took my standard vocabulary activities and applied them to science. I have developed several units including weather, ecology and animal taxonomy. While each bundle is slightly different they all include sort cards, clip cards and match up cards but there are slight differences, such as the classification/taxonomy unit including puzzles. Click the pictures before to check out the details of each unit.
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One of the things that I hated the most about teaching lower elementary (or "little people" as I like to call them) is the constant requests for help with basic tasks. "Miss, my shoe is untied Miss, I can't get the button on my jeans open and I have to go to the bathroom. Miss, I can't peel my orange." (side note to any parents who may be reading this: Please help your child's teacher: don't send your child to school wearing clothes he/she cannot deal with him/herself and, for the sake of teacher and lunch room monitor sanity everywhere, please either pre-peel their fruit or send fruit they can eat without extra steps.) Then of course there are the natural questions that come with the age and diminish as they learn: "Miss, what's this word? Miss, where is this place?" and my personal favorite, "Miss, what time is it?" These questions are natural, normal and excellent ones for little people to ask and by second or third grade students learn the skills necessary to answer them on their own. My first official act as program coordinator was to reassign myself from little people to middle school and then go out and hire a top-notch little people teacher. I was very excited to be back in the land of medium to big people and free of many of the care-taking duties. Of course I still get some of the same questions (no joke, I've had 7th and 8th graders ask me to tie their shoes for them) but the answers have changed; rather than helping the child to complete the task I usually remind them that they are not in kindergarten anymore and send them off to "figure it out" for themselves (I think this is the real reason so many teens walk around with untied shoelaces--they never learned how to tie them and no one will do it for them at this late stage of life.). One question that drives me absolutely batty though is "Miss, what time is it?" or the response of "I was just checking the time!" when I tell them to put the phone away. The fact that there is a huge clock on the wall is not a good reason to leave their phone in their pocket because they cannot read an analog clock and see no point in learning how. Some teachers deal with this by putting a digital clock in their classrooms. I am not so kind, I believe children should learn to read an analog clock and I plan to, under the guise of vocabulary instruction, teach mine how to do so this year (of course right after I decided this the district announced new clocks are going in every classroom and they are digital but it still doesn't change the fact that students need this skill). Since this year most of my students will be self-contained with me we are going back to my elementary roots as far as scheduling and classroom procedures go. I'm also trying to do as much cross-curricular work as possible so students work with the same vocabulary set in as many situations as possible (remember it takes meeting a word at least 10 times in meaningful context to really learn it). Our unit on time will be no exception. We'll have the normal clock vocabulary work, counting by 5's, 15's and 30's, and of course we'll get into elapsed time (because I need another reason to bang my head against the wall) but I've included a couple of cross-curricular activities as well.
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AuthorI've been teaching since 2000 and love what I do! Archives
May 2018
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