Hello everyone! Continuing the re-launch and I’m grateful to
be a part of such a dedicated group of individuals working under the umbrella
of bilingual education. This is a new beginning for me as well, since it has
been about a year since I last blogged! Lots of changes happened since last year,
including the birth of my second daughter, so in between the nausea, preschool
for my first daughter, moving apartments, giving birth in April, being out of
the classroom since March, and losing internet connection, blogging went
downhill. But I just couldn’t give up this opportunity, so here I am again,
determined to be more faithful. I don’t boast a TPT store, but I do plan on
bringing you teaching strategies every 7th of the month that
hopefully you will be able to use in your classrooms.
Just a little recap about myself. My name is Pamela and this
will be my 7th year teaching kindergarten in a 90/10 dual immersion
charter school in California. I spend 90% of my day teaching Spanish Language
Arts (SLA) and Social Studies and 10% teaching English Language Development
(ELD). In my school we teach only 1-2 core subjects and then switch students
with our partner teacher who teaches the other subjects. It has its advantages
and disadvantages, but I am grateful to still have a job after the tumultuous
time that teaching has had in the last few years in California.
Since I’ve been out of the classroom for a while I don’t
have the best pictures but I would like to share one of the last strategies I
used with my kinder students before I left. Our school uses GLAD strategies a
lot! Although it might not be new to you, one of the most intimidating for me
to teach was the co-op strip paragraph. This year I finally tackled it and was
ecstatic with the results. My students were able to write an entire expository paragraph!
Yes, it was in groups and together as a class, but considering at least half of
my students came in speaking and understanding little to no Spanish, it was an
awesome sight to see.
I spent a number of weeks giving students input in a variety
of ways on famous Americans who have contributed to our society. We then
concluded our unit of study with a co-op strip paragraph. In general, here is
what we did:
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| Students writing |
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| Using their finger space! |
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| Sharing the pencil |
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| Tracing with a marker |
Day 1: We chose, at
random, one of our American heroes and reviewed what we had learned about him.
As a class we referenced our pictorial input charts, books, videos, and process
grid (other GLAD strategies). I put students into groups of 3-4 students and
told students that they had to write a sentence based on one specific area of
our American hero; in this case it was César Chávez. Each group got one
sentence strip (more if they needed it). The process grid is like a table
specifying the different areas, so students just had to reference this grid in
order to write their sentence. Students had to share the pencil so that
everyone got to write at least one word. After they read me their sentence I
gave them a marker (anything but black) to trace over their words. Place the
sentences in a pocket chart. That’s it.
Day 2: We read the
sentences that were in the pocket chart and as a whole group we revised them.
Our GLAD trainer really helped me understand the difference between revising
and editing. On this day we cupped out hands around our ears because revising
means making our sentences “sound good”. Together we switched sentence strips
around, but words apart, and changed words so that they made sense. Any corrections were made by myself using a
black marker. That’s why none of the students could use a black marker. Black
is so much less intrusive than red,
don’t you think? We stopped once the entire paragraph “sounded good”.
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| Our final Cesar Chavez paragraph |
Day 3: We read our
paragraph again and this time put on our glasses because it was time to edit.
Editing means making the sentences “look good”. We took one sentence at a time
and edited it for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. We then read our
final paragraph and congratulated each other for having written an awesome
paragraph.
I then typed up the final version and sent it home so
students could share with their parents. The best part of this is that it
becomes something that practically all students can read even if their decoding
skills or fluency is not the best because we read it SOOOOO MANY TIMES and they
knew the content very well.
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| My other class wrote about Martin Luther King Jr. |
Do you use GLAD in the classroom? Have you used the co-op
strip paragraph? I would love to know! Drop me a note J.
Rayos de Kinder
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