Mr. Jones' ESL Class

Welcome to my blog!
For my first post on my new classroom blog I want to give some information about my job and how I go about teaching English as a Second Language.

I teach over 80 students from Kindergarten to 5th grade. My student's English language capabilities vary from true beginner to advanced English language skills. I structure my class around the needs of my EL (English Learner) students and have different lesson plans for each grade level.

I teach using the SIOP method which you can learn more about here. I have been teaching since November 2017 and have learned many important strategies since I started which I will discuss in future posts.

In my class there are a set of rules. Each student is expected to remain seated for the duration of the class unless there is an activity which the class is encouraged to move around the room such as a role playing activity or a flash card scramble. Talking is permitted in my classroom as long as it is relevant to the topic at hand. I also encourage students to ask questions about English in Spanish, their first language, and find myself explaining the more complex aspects of English grammar in Spanish so that the students fully understand. Many ESL teachers have an «English Only» policy and while I see the benefits of the policy I disagree with having such a rule. I believe that using the students first language to help solidify their understanding of English is important. Often times students will get fatigued during an assignment or not like the way certain information is presented. For these instances I always have a back up assignment which presents the information we are learning on a given day in a different manner. If a student does not want to participate in any given assignment I will give them the option to work on one of these back up assignments.

On a typical day I arrive at the school at 7:00 AM. At 7:30 I go to car duty and help the students out of their cars and into the school. My first class starts at 8:30 AM and I teach for the rest of the day with two breaks for planning and paperwork at 11:00 and 1:40. At 2:00 I have walker and car duty. For walker duty I walk with the students who live in the neighborhood next to the school and make sure they are safe crossing the road. Afternoon car duty is similar to morning car duty. I help the students into their cars and tell them to have a good afternoon.

I believe professional development is extremely important so I make an effort to attend all of the ESL team meetings. These meetings are held monthly and ESL teachers from all over the county attend them, During these meetings we discuss important information and exchange ideas on how to improve our classrooms.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! There will be more posts about technology in the classroom and examples of some of my lesson plans in the near future.