SPSE 6712 Personal Reflection

I really enjoyed the Foundations of Education class that I took my first semester. As simple as this may sound, it was an incredibly interesting and informative class. I also enjoyed reading about immigrant students' experiences in Cultural Issues, and learning how to do an action research. I thoroughly enjoyed this class, though. This class has actually provided me with opportunities to go into the classroom, interact and find out information that I would otherwise not be exposed to before I entered the classroom. I have never been in an ESL classroom before, and this experience let me observe the actual class, the teacher, the students and aspects about the students that is helpful to be aware of.

I recently took the ESL Praxis and I am anxiously waiting the scores. I think the process of obtaining the license is good. I think if a person is already licensed to teach then they should really be trained in the needs of ESL students. For me, I am most uncertain explaining grammar and different language skills.

I now use my Wiki as a reference when I am looking back at an activity or for ideas. I really like that we used through several classes to post our work and explanations of things.

I would recommend any teacher to become an ESL teacher. I am speaking without any firsthand experience, but I think every teacher would benefit from a lot of the training that I only got while going through this program.

SPSE 6712 Literature Circles

Overall, I enjoyed doing literature circles. It was time to work with a small group of students on their reading and comprehension. The students were more vocal and outgoing to discuss the book than they normally are in class.

The students were very receptive to the literature. I selected The Circuit, by Francisco Jimenez. One student was familiar with the book, but had not read much of it. One student said he was going to read it for AR points next.

The students were, at first, shy to anwer, but once one student began talking the others also talked. The students were very compassionate about the character's experiences.

I really like the idea of using Literature Circles for 2nd language learners. I think students will be more comfortable reading a longer or slightly more difficult selection if they have a few partners to help if they have problems. The students got stuck on a word that was unfamiliar and had a hard time moving on. This is less likely to pose as big a problem if they're working together.

I would put students of varying levels together to see how it works. The students I had were, mostly, medium-intermediate English speaking students. I would like to see how the students work together when they are at different levels and help each other more.

I really like the book that I selected. I would advise getting literature that will be of interest to the students. The students, of course, are much more interactive when they are engaged in what they are reading. Also, if only one of the students is really interested in the literature, but the others are not then the one student may be able to make it more enjoyable for the others. That student can explain why he/she finds it interesting and potentially influence the others.