Teaching+Inquiry

I have been placed at a middle school in Cobb called Garrett Middle School. My school’s population is a prime example of diversity. Within my classroom, there are current and former ESOL students. As part of my ISLA, I did a “practice run” for myself of how to create and present the two assessments. When I gave the pre-assessment to students, after they had been introduced briefly to the subject of possessive pronouns by my CT the previous week, I allowed students to “self-correct” and then return them to me. At lunch, a student come to me and express that he really didn’t know what possessive pronouns are. After a brief chat with my CT, I learned that he was a former ESOL student. I hadn’t noticed before that he could have been, because his accent is thin and his articulation in English is very clear. With my slight, and I stress “slight,” understanding of Spanish as a language, I suggested that he may not be able to recognize possessive pronouns since they are not displayed the same in each language. She challenged me to develop a way to help him understand. I willingly accepted, being that it would be one of my first hands-on experiences with my students.

When I looked at his pretest, I noticed that he truly did not understand the concept. That day, I gave him the opportunity to take a copy of the pretest home, so he could practice at home and suggested that he use his workbook to locate the possessive pronouns. That night, I went home to create the same pretest as a Spanish translation. I researched possessive pronouns in Spanish and familiarized myself. I noticed something, most likely the key, to why he didn’t see them. When I met the class in the commons, he greeted me and eagerly shared his excitement of understanding. I asked if he still wanted to meet during the “free-time” in the media center to ask questions, he said yes and we did. We went over a few of his answers on the sheet he took home, and then I presented the translated sentences. I asked him to identify in each sentence how he knew that the noun expressed possession. It clicked. He now has a firm understanding of possessive pronouns, and the experience to know that translating sentences in English to Spanish, then back to English is a great way for him to identify parts of speech using his first language as a tool.

Questions:
 * 1) Could this have been handled differently?
 * 2) I found the approach to be effective, but are there other approaches that I can utilize for ESOL understanding?
 * 3) How could we prevent the barrier of understanding between languages?