Journal #7
March 9th, 2011
8:30-10:30 (2 hours)
Math, math and more math. I absolutely hate math but understand the Oscar needs some help with it. For the first hour again today I worked with Oscar on some math problems. Unfortunately, it did not go quite as well as our other sessions. I understood what Oscar needed to do and he definitely asked me in English to check some of his answers for him but when he came to a few problems he didn’t understand we started to have some trouble. I was explaining in English – which seemed fine with Oscar, but when I asked him to speak in English while asking me questions about the problem he started to get really frustrated and flustered. He was very confused with the work he was doing and was frustrated that he needed to be doing it in English. It seemed that when he didn’t understand something he wanted it in Spanish. After two or three problems I made a hard decision. I decided to switch to Spanish to work with Oscar. Growing up, I always had trouble with math. It was a very challenging subject for me. I know how many times I was frustrated with a math concept I couldn’t understand – and it was being explained to me in my native language. Seeing Oscar so upset and frustrated reminded me of the confusion I had with math in previous years and so I decided that it was important for Oscar to come to understanding. If he can come to understanding in Spanish – then maybe he will have an easier time doing it in English. Maybe this isn’t true in any way, but I couldn’t let him be this frustrated with math, I know the feeling and it’s not pleasant. So, I did something that many ESL teachers seem to tell me not to do, I helped Oscar work through much of his math trouble in his native language rather than in English. However, as soon as the math sheet was complete I looked at Oscar and said “all English now.” He seemed okay with this now that he understood his math.
For the second hour of the lesson I implemented my ideal lesson plan (see lesson plan assignment). This lesson plan will last a few sessions but I believed Oscar might find it fun, especially after the math tension we had earlier. First Oscar read my favorite fairy tale – “The Fisherman and his Wife” aloud. Once he finished we discussed the moral of this story. Then, I told Oscar he would be writing his own fairy tale. We talked about what he thought would be a good moral of the story. At first he suggested “math should not be allowed in schools,” fortunately, I was able to turn him away from this topic. He finally decided that it would be good for people to know about other cultures and accept people from other cultures. I thought this was a great topic/moral. Next, I pulled out a cue card that said “character” on it. I told Oscar he first needed to come up with a character. I asked if he wanted a male or female. He decided on a male. Then, we talked about age, height, race, color and activities this character would enjoy. I had a great moment when he decided his character loved to play the Mad Libs card game. He decided his character was from Brazil and had moved to the United States fifteen years before. Next I pulled the card that said “setting.” Oscar had already chosen the US as a location but I asked him to get more specific. He decided his character was a man who worked for a large corporation in New York, in a skyscraper. The next card said “problem” and the final card said “solution.” Oscar came up with his own ideas for these relatively quickly. Once he had all of these notes written down I told Oscar that we wanted his story to be at least five sentences long. At first he looked nervous about this. I then pointed out the four piles of Mad Lib cards and told him he could chose to come up with a first sentence entirely on his own, or he can draw a verb to help him get started. He chose to draw a verb and got “ran.” This was a pretty basic word and from this Oscar came up with “Javier ran into elevator.” Definitely a great start to a fairy tale in my opinion. Then, I asked Oscar if he wanted to add adjectives, adverbs to his story. I told him he could draw from the cards and then decide whether or not he may want to add the card he draws. Oscar drew an adjective. He got “shiny.” So, I told Oscar he needed to decide. Was this a nice business building? Would they have shiny elevators? Or would they have a dingy, ugly, rusty elevator. Oscar decided it was shiny and added the word into his sentence. He then had an idea for his next sentence and came up with it entirely on his own. Once complete he drew an adverb but decided he did not want to add it to his sentence.
Oscar got about four sentences when our time ran out. We decided we would continue working on it the next time we met. I asked Oscar to be listening for he believed to be interesting verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs for the next week and write some of his favorites down. I told him that next week we will look at these words and see if we can use them to make the story even better. Oscar seemed excited and left looking much happier than when we were working on math. He is definitely getting a feel for how to write a grammatically correct sentence. He still has a little trouble using adverbs on his own, but with the encouragement of the Mad Lib cards he is definitely adding them into his sentences. I am looking forward to seeing how our next lesson pans out. I am excited to get the full rough draft of Oscar’s story together and then to work towards making it even more interesting over the next couple of sessions.
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