I have to warn you that this is definitely out of my comfort zone I've
never done this before
hello and welcome to a new episode of the language lady I'm your host dr. hem
Phil and as you can tell I am NOT in my office I am getting ready for the day
the reason why this video looks a lot different is because a couple of weeks
ago on my Instagram page I asked you the viewer what you would like to see would
you like to see a regular video or a teacher vlog day in the life of an ESL
teacher and I was really pleasantly surprised that the majority of you did
request a day in the life of an ESL teacher blog I have to warn you that
this is definitely out of my comfort zone I've never done this before but I
really wanted to engage with you and find out what you really want to watch I
also want to let you know if for those of you who are new to my channel I post
a new video every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time strategies and
resources to help you and your colleagues on how to meet the needs of
your ESL students so before I hop in my car I just have to say this I cannot get
over just how light it is outside for those of you who do not live in the
States we just experienced our daylight savings over the weekend so we fell back
one hour and it feels odd to wake up it's nice you know to wake up and see
the Sun however I know that it's gonna be a different feeling that different
feeling when it's time to go home and it's dark outside I don't like the dark
that much but as you can see it is nice and sunny outside so anyway without
further ado I'm gonna hop into my car and take you with me so I'm in my car
right now and my commute without traffic should take only 20 minutes but on the
typical day it takes me about an hour or so or 40 40 minutes to an
hour um so I usually try to leave my house by 6:45 so that I can get a head
start on the traffic because I do like to get to work at least 30 minutes prior
to when I'm supposed to be there I just realized that I did not change the time
on life in my car so I'm gonna do that before I had to work
for those of you who watch my Instagram stories you know my routine every
morning I have to ask for coffee at my favorite coffee place the maple doughnut
I don't know what it is about their coffee but I am absolutely obsessed with
it it's just I don't know I just love it it's convenient cuz it's on my way to
work so I made it to work didn't get here as early as I would have liked to I
would have liked to have gone and gotten here around 7:30 but got here 7:40 not
too bad I can't believe how cold it is I can just feel the change in the
temperature but I happy that I did get to fill up with gas and I got my coffee
and I'll see you in a couple of minutes in my classroom so I'm all settled in my
classroom the first thing that I do is I check my email just to make sure there's
any changes for the day or just to be prepared of what's gonna happen then
what I go ahead do is I print out all my lesson plans that I've done over the
weekend so they have them at my disposal and then I just start listing on my
board the objectives the new objectives for the day and what they're going to be
doing and just to give you kind of an idea I do two things
I am the ESL intervention person for eighth grade and I also co-teach with
another ela teacher the intervention program that we use is called eyelid
it's through Pearson Education and it is a intervention program that allows
students who are still in their language journey to proficiency it helps to
accelerate their reading growth also what I do is I have two different types
of groups I have a newcomer and then I have students who are either
at a level 2 and up in order to help them with their language proficiency
Monday Wednesday Fridays I pull those students but I pulled them during
different times of the day so that they are not missing the same class more than
once it's makes schedule hectic for me and for them because they're catching on
to the routine into the pattern but it does lose classroom time because I am
also going to their classrooms they're not coming to me so I'm going up and
down stairs and I'm pulling them from their rooms and I'm pulling them from
various classrooms because they're not all just gathering in one room which is
a good thing they should be spread out but it does cause a challenge because as
soon as we go up those flight of stairs and get them into the classroom I have
to be go will go so that they can get as much work accomplished on the other two
days of the week on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm with an ela teacher and I
work with her to support the English language learners in the classroom so
that's kind of what my schedule looks like today's Monday so I am going to
have the newcomer group first and I'm gonna try to show you just a little bit
of the work that they do I don't have anyone else filming me so that you could
see me teaching the class and but I will show you a little bit of the independent
work just so you can get a feel of what islet looks like a little bit however I
am going to not show you their faces for protection of the students obviously and
that's about it so I will catch you in here next time when I have the students
with me
so the question is saying blank children across the street are jumping rope
so is it singular or plural plural excellent okay so it's far right so
which one am I am I gonna say it's plural more than one and it's far so
which one's plural and far you can say it don't be shy
those those good so over here you're gonna say those children across the
street are jumping rope one of the really cool features about Isla is that
if they're reading a story at their independent level they can click on a
word so unless shout he's gonna show you she's gonna click on a word you click on
the word and she can translate a whole paragraph or she can just translate one
word at a time and if she plays it back it will actually read it for her and she
can also play it back in English which is a really neat feature of this program
well I want to show you one of the anchor it's not really an anchor chart
and because we do move quickly through eyelet and we do so many different
topics one of the things that we I do for them and I know this is gonna look
backwards for you but I do give them supports in the classroom so one of the
topics that's really hard for them to understand is this and that and B's and
those so in many of my videos I talked about graphic supports so this is an
example of what I did so that I could explain to them the concept of this that
these in those sir I wrote this or that and I explained that I talked about
closeness and something that is far so and it really helped them to
conceptualize what this tree with how to use this versus v's and those versus
that and what was really neat is that after I taught them using this skill
they I saw them repeatedly turning around to look at this example because
this is the back of the room to apply it to what they were currently doing what
was really exciting that some of the students were trying to do this without
looking at it and then they would turn around and look to verify they were
correct or not correct so this could be used as an anchor chart or just
something that you write on the board this is a new unit that I'm teaching so
I haven't had a chance to create anchor Trucks for everything that we do but
that's my goal for next year is to this summer is to start looking through what
are some anchor trucks that I can use so that they can use it as a support to
help them win completing assignments many many minutes later so right now I
have a planning period five days a week during the planning period out of those
five days three of those I am part of the professional learning community as
an ESL teacher because my role overlaps with so many different classrooms I have
to meet with other teachers so that I can show how I can support them in their
planning process their English language learners the plus
is that it gives them that opportunity ask me any questions that they have I
can look at their planning the the downside is that I have less time for
paperwork and all of the Marriott's of things that I have on my plate as an ESL
teacher so that's something that is really tricky but today I do have a
planning period at it as it is Monday so what I'm going to do is work on some
grading of islet because I am behind there are so many assignments that they
have submitted so I'm going to go through and correct those I also have a
new student that arrived today so I am going to be in communication with the
central office to see if they have received any notifications about this
student before I test him or not because it could be that he's already been
tested so I don't have to test them and also grades are due soon so we have an
alert of report which I will show you what it looks like but first let me show
you what grading looks like in eyelid so what I'll do is I will go into the class
that I taught I'll hit select and then what I do is I
go into assignments and here is where I find all the work that I have assigned
to my students and every time I see a red score that means that's an
assignment that I have to score that I have to grade sent is something that
they have not yet opened and if it says progress it means that there's something
they're currently working on so for example we were working recently on
demonstrative pronouns and this was the assignment that I was talking about
about these that those and this is a great formative assessment because it
can tell me what students have understood the concept and which have
not so as you can see here this student understood and was able to complete this
correctly so I'm going to go through each one and I'm going to click on the
score and then I have the choice whether I click on incorrect partially correct
or correct
once I'm done I'll hit submit and then it goes into that students folder and
they have a list of all the assignments so they need to refer back to it for any
other us assignment they can so here's an example of the learner report that we
use it's used for kindergarten through 12th grade and the first thing I have to
indicate is I grade them for the language level that they're at so
they're an entering then I'm only going to focus on in grading them at their
level and it tests it looks at how they are
accomplishing goals for listening the speaking reading and then writing and if
they've mastered the skill then they get a plus if they get a slash mark it's not
mastered we also have a multitude of languages in our building so for example
on my caseload the majority of my students are spanish-speaking so I I
have the option of grading them also on the Spanish side and during
parent-teacher conferences it gives me an opportunity to really talk to the
parents in detail regarding their progress in attaining a second language
another task that I'm working on is that I progress monitor my students and
between around September and December I have to have eight points of data for my
goal and one of the goals that I'm looking at this year is speaking so I'm
having the students practice speaking a lot in different contexts within their
the intervention class that they have with me and also in their mainstream
classes that they have in their content classes I should say so what I'm my goal
is that they will move up at least one level before the school year is over so
if they're a level one hopefully they can move on to a level two level and
this is a lot of work because I am doing that for every single one of my kiddos
and I'm right now I've been receiving so many kids currently I have about 53
students online Sloat and it seems like within the past
couple of weeks I've been getting a new student for every week so some of you
have asked like what is the process for testing a student sometimes I'm alerted
by the ESL office the central office of this new student is arriving sometimes
or not sometimes we receive the student and a teacher will say you know I've
received a student that doesn't speak English and so I'll verify with the ESL
central office and they will alert me whether or not this student has already
taken access tests in a previous school district therefore I don't have to test
them so I always give it time but I always introduce myself regardless get
to know the student and provide any supports as needed however not until I
am notified by the central office I'm not allowed to screen them yet so that's
how in a nutshell that's how that works so basically for the rest of my planning
period as I mentioned before I'm going to finish up grading I'm going to start
working on finishing up a couple of two or three learner reports that I have not
yet to complete and then start looking at some of the formative assessments
that I've done on speaking and make sure to get those entered in so that's pretty
much my day I have more classes that I'll be teaching for the rest of the day
and then my plan is to go home I usually go to the gym but I have so much work
that I don't think I'm gonna be able to get to the gym today and I'm gonna go
home cook spend time with my family and then I get things prepped for the
following day and do the whole thing all over again the next thing thank you so
much for tuning in as I mentioned before I post a new video every week and on
Wednesdays at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time please don't forget that I also
have an Instagram page under the same name and also a Facebook page please
feel free to comment below as to what type of program that you're using
curriculum wise if you also are charged with an
intervention program and what that looks like and if you're using Pearson eyelid
I'm curious to know what your experience has been with it as an impulsive
experiences parent experience has what has been the challenging aspect of it
thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next week for another video this
it will not be a vlog but if you enjoyed this style please make sure to comment
below and let me know if you enjoyed this or not thanks so much and I'll see
you next week