I have been using #newsela for about 3 weeks now to introduce my low beginning students to "real reading". We have been focusing on Global Warming. This was a topic I picked out. I noticed a few things. The first article Climate Change in Alaska read was very hard for them. They struggled and struggled. We went very slow. I made a Quizlet for them to review. No one has yet to review that Quizlet. The second article was a bit easier. It was about the Polar Bears.Again I made a Quizlet for vocabulary review. Again no one studied it. (At least that is what the data shows) The data does not account for students who just go on their phone without logging on.
On Tuesday I did the third article. This one was on "The Great Barrier Reef" This article was much easier to get through with the students. Although they had not reviewed the vocabulary, we were naturally reviewing by revisiting the same topic. At this moment, it looks like one person actually reviewed those words. That is progress. Because of the closing of classes, I expect to receive a lot of new students on Thursday. Therefore, I was planning on changing topics. This time was am taking a student vote on what topics they want to study. I felt like if I continue with Global Warming, the new students will be at a disadvantage. However then yesterday the Iceberg (Larsen C) broke off in Antartica. History like this on the correct topic of study does not happen every day. So I feel like we must discuss it on Thursday. The plan is to discuss it with a short description of what happened. Next to ask the students to read more about it at home in their native language and to post on Facebook, what they learn. (I hope they will post on Facebook in English). More to come after I teach this week.
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My new writing classnewsela.com/ is very very low. In some cases, perhaps lower than my pre level class. I want to develop reading skills as a way to help them with writing. To do this, I have decided for the 5 week summer session to just focus on one topic, Global Warming. My hope is that by reading different articles with different point of views, students will see vocabulary recycled over and over and increase their reading and critical thinking abilities. This I hope will transfer over to their writing as well. We shall see if this works and if I can keep their interest on one topic for 5 weeks. I want to add that I am planning on doing this by finding texts on NEWSELA (https://newsela.com/) lowest reading level.
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Susan Gaer
A veteran teacher tackling the lowest levels of ESL instruction. Archives
August 2017
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