Laura Thomas Reflection #1

Refine – How will I use the information in my classroom

   In reading these chapters, I found some ideas I would like to use in my classroom even this year; although I don’t have any ELL students. I feel by becoming familiar with these activities with the non-ELL students, it will make it much easier to incorporate when I do have ELLs in my classroom. One idea I really liked was the ideas of the dialogue journals. This would give the students a chance to write to me, or maybe even another student on a daily basis. By allowing them to do this it would help them with their writing and reading skills and it would allow me to make casual corrections in their grammar and spelling when I write them back. I would not point out their mistakes, but I would reword what was said wrong in my response to them. For example, if they said, “I am so happi to be in your class.” I could reply with, “I am also very happy that you are in my class.”  This would show them the correct spelling of the word happy without you having to say anything to them about it.

   Another part of the chapter that I felt I need to bring into my classroom more is incorporating the parents to work with the students. I would like to encourage the parents to make sure that their child had a literate environment to come home to. Although I feel that with some students, it might mean that I need to educate the parents on what they need to do to help the student with being more literate at home. This really should not be that hard to do if I work on my communication with the parents and explain to them about having books, magazines, paper, pencils, and other items in the house. I would also explain to them the importance of their child reading and writing to the parent (even if the parent can’t understand what is written or read to them).

   Lastly, I liked the idea of pulling technology into the classroom, such as books on tape. I always shy away from putting my voice on a recording, but I liked the idea of even having the student read the book and have their own voice recorded. Otherwise, it should not be too difficult to find other teachers or administrators to read a book onto a recording device. Then it can be a little game with the student to see if they can figure out who the person was that was reading the book to them.