Wawo! Today I had no meetings but it was a really busy day because
I had the following thing going on:
1- Helping the teacher with assessing children.
2- Presenting a lesson on numeracy (to help children make a yes/no
chart).
3-Reading a book to complete the reading log #4 (in my break
time).
4-help the teacher plan for next week (Desert in the theme).
In my busiest times I try always to think about children's
numerical knowledge by taking notes and involving deeply in observing the
smallest details when my MAT is teaching or reinforcing an outcome of numeracy.
I noticed a very important about second
language that it can be a barrier between learning and teaching. This is
because I had an experience today and yesterday with one of the children (Lula)
whom I had in the small group making a (favorite fruit chart). Clearly, I have
to explain the activity in English because all numeracy lessons have to be
presented in this language.
However, some students did not comprehend some
terms or some parts of the task and my solution was to vary between Arabic and
English and this strategy worked very well. ON the other hand, this girl (Lula),
did completely a different thing of what I explained and when it was the time
to clean up I told her that I will sit with her tomorrow to do it again. I also
wrote a comment on the back of the chart sheet saying that it was her first attempt.
Today, I
sat one on one with her and I explained again the task gradually by breaking it
down and using both languages Arabic and English. Surprisingly, (Lula) did the
task and responded in both languages when she counted the numbers of fruits in
the chart and I also wrote a comment of what happened behind the sheet which
will help the teacher to assess her later.
This experience helped look at teaching using
a second language from a new angle of being patient to help, support, asses and
guide children if they face any difficulty.