4th visit to Letourneau Scool on April 14th, 2015

In todays visit to this school I went to watch 2nd grade classes that all pass through the same teachers classroom. I found by following the multiple classes all learning the same class material was a big help to seeing how these children were learning the different class information.

I found that the teacher was very helpful with the students, she would have the kids broken into different groups so they could work with each other. I saw that this worked very well because it allow the kids to ask each other questions to figure out how to learn the material without endlessly going to the teacher for help.

The other thing that I saw was the teacher had some basic understanding of the languages they were learning so they could spot help the students they were working with. I saw that the students reacted well to this and the class flowed along very nicely for her extra effort.

During the afternoon session I watched the kids all taking a full class math test. During the taking of the test I was able to see what kids were struggling and what one were having a easier time of it with the test.  was hard to sit back and watch some of these students getting so close to figuring the math questions and not getting the final step to get the questions wrong.



All in all it was a good day to watch the class activities and here are some picture below of some of the things I saw during the day.

Third visit to Letourneau School on April 9th, 2015

Hi, On this visit the school. I sat through the day to day activities of the 5th grade class. The class worked on read, writing, math and science most of the day. The students also went to gym class as well.
In reviewing some of the activities that happened from all these class processes that happened, the events that had a big impact about how these students learned from the different stages that the students were in of learning, like ELL classes, to mixed classes to the general student body classes were all learning the same basic topics with different styles of the way they are taught. I found that in the reading class some of the students were being taught step by step basic ways of understanding the class work, the teacher would take their time teaching the students the right way of understanding the materials so they can have a fighting chance to understand and comprehend their materials from the native languages to English and seemed to reaching the kids.

This was a good series of classes to watch and learn how they work with the students. I was able to take some good Ideas away from the day to learn how to work with students that might have the same issues with learning the English language.

Below are some pictures of some of the things I saw in class today.

Second visit to Letourneau School on April 2nd, 2015

In this visit to the school I worked with students  primarily composed of 5th graders. The things we worked on in class were reading, writing , math, general history, science and social studies projects, and the students age group was around 10 or 11 years old.

The kids were working in groups and on their own as they worked on different assignments. I think that the students worked well together for the most part and the school had a very strong structured presence throughout the building. The students would walk in single file from class to class and they were very well behaved.

I think the two teachers that I helped for the day, had done a great job with the students. The school seems to run very well from the other schools I worked at over in RI and to me the it was night and day to what I witnessed at those schools. This is to say that the kids were very well behaved and followed the rules of the school from one activity to the next.

Here are some pictures below that I saw this week:

First day at Letourneau School on 3/27/15 working with ELL students

Today is my first day at the Letourneau School in Fall River and I was asked to spend the day with elementary ELL students.

I found as I went around the different classrooms, the teacher worked really hard to express all of her words so the students would understand her.

As the day progressed, we went to the computer lab and the ELL students were doing math games on the computers. I then noticed that one student was crying at his station ( I was told he is a new student who only spoke Portuguese and missed his parents) that's why he was crying. 

I asked the teacher what the math project was, and was told it was asking (what had less or more in each box). I asked how do you say these words in Portuguese, and then had the student take off his headset that was speaking English to him and when the computer asked which is less and more.

 I would say the word in Portuguese to him and he stopped crying and got all the rest of the math questions right after we figured out the problem with his crying at the computer.

Here are some pictures of some of the school and classroom instruction that I noticed during the day.