ESL G3-6 Update

The focus of this week shifted a bit as we undertook some tasks involving listening skills, spelling skills, and understanding of pronunciation.

We started the week by examining another set of vocabulary words while practicing reading and finding them in their appropriate context. Each class seemed to have a better understanding of parts of speech as the students were able to classify words more quickly and define the part of speech. 

Our next area of focus was on listening to sight words in context and spelling the words as they were heard. This was meant to pose a challenge to students to listen attentively and do their best to spell words they commonly say, hear, and read. It also offered an opportunity to see which words are not immediately in their grasp. With this understood, we can be aware of what sight words pose the most difficulty and work on spelling techniques with them in the following weeks. Some students found the task easy while other students were pressed to be more attentive to what they were hearing and reading than usual.

Another activity we broached was the use of "Tongue Twisters" for reading and pronunciation practice. The students had a lot of enjoyment with trying to read these while increasing the pace. It is clear we will have to maintain focus on appropriate articulation when using these, but it is nice to see that the students took so well to them. A few of them will allow for a more focused understanding of pronunciation distinction and finding the point of articulation for challenging sounds when speaking or reading.

We finished the week by working through a new journal question about helping others and hot it makes us feel. Some students are beginning to develop a better transition between speaking about a topic and writing about it, but we are bridging that gap. 

Lastly, we continued with our sentence building activity and worked through different components of subject-verb agreement by competing in multiple rounds. The students worked through matching pronouns with appropriate nouns. They were able to begin gathering the notion that singular nouns consistently align with verbs that take (-s) at the end while plural nouns consistently make no use of verbs with (-s) at the end. 

I look forward to seeing how much they can grasp as they continue to freely challenge themselves in competitive situations without concern for just the first mistake.