On Monday of this week, I walked into my little reading pull out class right after the bell rang and saw this--
All of the kids were gathered around our table, had pulled out the book basket without me asking (or even being in the room), partnered themselves up and were reading books together. Now, seeing kids reading pretty much melts my heart anyway, but seeing these kids reading--and doing it on their own without my prompting--really melted my heart. And totally just made my day.
While I would have to say that in many ways they are my favorite class, it's been a year. Partially because I have never had to teach anyone to read and partly because they've been in America for 4-5 years and still don't know how to read and have learned ways to cope with that--so there were a lot of barriers to be broken down in order for them to let me in and begin to help them see that they are capable of learning.
And, it's been a lot of what feels at times like guess and check. I read a lot and talk to my elementary school teacher friends and try things out and look at their work and discover 52 more different things they need to learn and talk to their other teachers and tweak what we're doing and try new things and see if they're working and then find new ways to help them learn and pray that it works. And now, finally, we're starting to see some payoff. About 2 weeks ago both the kids and I realized, I think on the same day, as they were reading aloud to one another, that they're getting it. They're only reading on a K-1 reading level mind you, but they're starting to get it. They now know that that letters have sounds and those sounds are how you read a word and how you sound out a word to spell it. And when you string a whole bunch of words together it makes a sentence and you can read a sentence when you know the letter sounds and when you memorize the words you keep seeing over and over again. And, while it's not perfect yet, they're able to do it--to read and to write. And, they're starting to feel confident and excited. And they come everyday and ask questions and want to learn, whereas until about 3 weeks ago it was a fight to teach them anything, because their coping mechanism, rather than let on just how much they didn't know and just how hard English was, was to be silly.
We've still got a long way to go (I'm hoping I get to work with them for the next 2 years and then see them graduate middle school and go to high school!) because they're still not anywhere near 6th grade level, but they're getting there. We're working on learning names for common, everyday objects, we're learning how to spell, we're learning how to read, we're trying to remember what sounds letters make in English as opposed to other languages, we're memorizing sight words and letter sounds and how to tell the vowel sounds apart because, dang it, that's hard stuff. And we're trying to put it all together to become English-literate people. And, despite their silliness, they've been working hard and I'm so proud of them.
Today as we were cleaning up the room at the end of the period I asked them if reading and writing was getting easier. They all said yes. And then one of my little girls said, in her cute little African accent, "when I first came here I didn't know nothing about English and now I know alot--I can read books."
I could have quit my job today and been happy. We'll deal with the double negatives later :).
(Ok, well, I couldn't really quit happy, but I definitely went home happy today and on pumped about working with them tomorrow! :))
All of the kids were gathered around our table, had pulled out the book basket without me asking (or even being in the room), partnered themselves up and were reading books together. Now, seeing kids reading pretty much melts my heart anyway, but seeing these kids reading--and doing it on their own without my prompting--really melted my heart. And totally just made my day.
While I would have to say that in many ways they are my favorite class, it's been a year. Partially because I have never had to teach anyone to read and partly because they've been in America for 4-5 years and still don't know how to read and have learned ways to cope with that--so there were a lot of barriers to be broken down in order for them to let me in and begin to help them see that they are capable of learning.
And, it's been a lot of what feels at times like guess and check. I read a lot and talk to my elementary school teacher friends and try things out and look at their work and discover 52 more different things they need to learn and talk to their other teachers and tweak what we're doing and try new things and see if they're working and then find new ways to help them learn and pray that it works. And now, finally, we're starting to see some payoff. About 2 weeks ago both the kids and I realized, I think on the same day, as they were reading aloud to one another, that they're getting it. They're only reading on a K-1 reading level mind you, but they're starting to get it. They now know that that letters have sounds and those sounds are how you read a word and how you sound out a word to spell it. And when you string a whole bunch of words together it makes a sentence and you can read a sentence when you know the letter sounds and when you memorize the words you keep seeing over and over again. And, while it's not perfect yet, they're able to do it--to read and to write. And, they're starting to feel confident and excited. And they come everyday and ask questions and want to learn, whereas until about 3 weeks ago it was a fight to teach them anything, because their coping mechanism, rather than let on just how much they didn't know and just how hard English was, was to be silly.
We've still got a long way to go (I'm hoping I get to work with them for the next 2 years and then see them graduate middle school and go to high school!) because they're still not anywhere near 6th grade level, but they're getting there. We're working on learning names for common, everyday objects, we're learning how to spell, we're learning how to read, we're trying to remember what sounds letters make in English as opposed to other languages, we're memorizing sight words and letter sounds and how to tell the vowel sounds apart because, dang it, that's hard stuff. And we're trying to put it all together to become English-literate people. And, despite their silliness, they've been working hard and I'm so proud of them.
Today as we were cleaning up the room at the end of the period I asked them if reading and writing was getting easier. They all said yes. And then one of my little girls said, in her cute little African accent, "when I first came here I didn't know nothing about English and now I know alot--I can read books."
I could have quit my job today and been happy. We'll deal with the double negatives later :).
(Ok, well, I couldn't really quit happy, but I definitely went home happy today and on pumped about working with them tomorrow! :))
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