1st Observation with my ELL student

On Tuesday March 2,2010 I had the opportunity to observe my ELL student as part of my case study. The student ( Cesi Martinez) is the same ELL child I observed last semester in EDLI-635. It was difficult to get started with the observations this semester for some reason due to the recent snowfall and school closures as well as the President's week recess thrown in as well.
When I arrived at Franklin School, I began by observing Cesi in the resource room with several other ELL students. Mr. Munoz ( the resource room teacher) was preparing the students for the upcoming NYSESLAT and working on strategies for proper speaking as well as storytelling using picture clues. The students had to look at three vignettes and develop a their own short story based upon what they saw in the pictures. I was pleased that Cesi was able to use the contextual clues provided to come up with a nice story! Following the resource room activities, I followed Cesi to her next class which was a special period (media room) which was taught by Mrs. Reilly. The students were introduced to the topic of encyclopedias, specifically the World Book Student Discovery encyclopedia. Mrs. Reilly informed the students that all the information found in the series of books was in alphabetical order based on subjects. The students worked in pairs and they were given an assignment to research a topic based on the letter of the alphabet they received. Cesi and her partner had the letter "C" and they chose to research about cheese ( including how it is made and the various types). At the conclusion of the media class, Mrs. Reilly told the groups to find a woman from their encyclopedias to research on and they would write a paragraph on it for women's history month.