Jessica DuPerre
TLS 416
09/29/15
SEI/ESL/ELD Observation Paper
School Name: Blenman Elementary
School District: TUSD
Grade(s): Kindergarten
Program type (SEI or ELD?): ELD
Subject being taught: Language Arts
Teacher: Mrs. Beltran
Years teaching: 15
Trained in SEI/SIOP/Sheltered strategies:
__x__YES
______NO
Where trained: 60 hour online program
Number of students in the class: 16
Number of ELLs in the class: 16
Their home countries: Mexico, Iraq, Iran,
India, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
and the Marshall Islands.
Language background(s): English, Spanish,
Arabic, Farsi, Persian, Hindi, Punjabi,
Kinyarwanda, and Marshallese.
Date of observation: 9/14/15
Day of the week: Monday
Time: from 10 a.m. to 10:40 a.m.
The classroom is pretty large. There is child work on the walls, as well as alphabet, number,
and sight word charts. There are bookshelves with fiction and non-fiction books, labeled as such.
Many of the objects in the room are labeled with the English word and also a picture. There are
bins of books and papers. There are lots of cupboards and bookshelves to store supplies. There
are cubbies for the children with their names on them. There is a sink and water fountain in the
classroom. The windows are always half covered with the blinds and half uncovered. There is a
teacher’s desk in the corner of the room facing out. There are six child-sized round tables with
four chairs each. Since there are only sixteen students, only four of the six tables are used. The
content/learning objectives are not posted for the children to read. There is a schedule for
adults/teachers that says which weeks the students are working on which standards. There is a rug
in the center front of the room, and it has all of the letters of the alphabet accompanied by a
picture of something that begins with that letter.
There are sixteen students sitting on the rug, eight boys and eight girls. There is a diverse
group of students in the classroom: Hispanic, African American, White, Pacific Islander, and
Asian. Most of students are sitting on the rug, crisscross, hands in their laps, looking at the
teacher. Occasionally the teacher redirects students as they momentarily forget the rules of the
rug and being to play with their shoelaces or look around the room. The teacher is sitting in front
of the rug in her rocking chair. She is a female teacher, Hispanic, and about fifty-years-old. She
instructs the children in English, but with SEI strategies, which I will further explain.
The teacher asks the students “Who can tell me what our letter of the week is?” Many hands
were raised, some immediately and some after some time. One thing I came to notice quickly in
this class is most of the students are very enthusiastic about answering questions. All of the
students are learning English and many have accents, however children with accents do not
hesitate to speak up. The teacher calls on children after sufficient wait time to give children a
chance to figure out the question and answer. She picks a child who says “S!” The teacher kindly
reminds her to use a complete sentence, to that the child responds, “We’re working on the letter
S.” The teacher smiles and responds with positive reinforcement, “That’s right!”
The teacher picks up a large book and begins the lesson, “ok class, we are going to share our
S book. Sky writing fingers!” To that, all of the children put their pointer finger in the air and
trace the letter S in the air, while Mrs. Beltran traces the letter S on the book. Mrs. Beltran and the
children say “capital S, lowercase S. The sound for S is /s/ /s/ /s/” in unison. The teacher asks,
“Who is the author of all of our alphachant stories?” A few children raise their hands. The teacher
encourages more students to raise their hands saying, “I want to see more thinkers.” She clarifies,
“remember, the author writes the story and the illustrator draws the pictures.” More children
begin raising their hands. Mrs. Beltran calls on a student she hadn’t called on before. The child
says “Lada Kratky”. Mrs. Beltran smiles and responds, “Very good memory! Now everyone say
the authors name together.” She puts her hand up to her ear, signaling them to practice saying the
name together.
The teacher opens the books and says, “These are words that begin with the letter S. I say
you say. Give me a thumbs up when you’re ready.” The children signal they are focused with
thumbs up. The teacher says the words “socks, sand, soap, sun” one at a time and then the
children repeat every word. Mrs. Beltran asks, “Who would like to come up with a complete
sentence with the word sock?” She waits while children think and then raise their hands. She
picks a child and the child says, “I have socks”. Mrs. Beltran says “great job! Ok lets say that
sentence together.” The students and teacher say the sentence in unison. Mrs. Beltran says “Ok
and now for the word sand?” She picks a child who says the sentence “I see sand at the beach”.
“Good! Let’s say that.” They say the sentence together. “Next is soap. Who has a sentence about
soap?” She calls on a child, and the child says, “I see the big soap.” Mrs. Beltran says, “you used
an adjective, a describing word, in your sentence! That’s the word big. Ok, let’s repeat.” They
repeat the sentence together. The teacher says, “Ok, last one! The word is sun.” She calls on
another child who says, “I see the big yellow sun.” Mrs. Beltran says, “You used the adjectives
big and yellow in your sentence. Ok let’s repeat the sentence.” They repeat the sentence.
Mrs. Beltran turns the page and points to the words “Let’s chant” as she says them. “My turn
your turn”, she reminds them. Then she begins saying the phrases. She says, “Look at my socks”
and the children repeat. She says, “my socks are in the sand” and the children repeat. Two
children raise their hands. The teacher calls on them. The first says, “I go-ed to the beach with my
brother, and we went in the sand and the water and we build-ed sand castles!” Mrs. Beltran says,
“It sounds like you had fun.” She calls on the next child, and the child says, “Maybe it’s a
sandbox.” Mrs. Beltran says, “maybe. Ok let’s keep going! The next one is, “my socks are in the
soap”, and the children repeat. Next she says, “My socks are in the sun” and the children repeat.
Mrs. Beltran questions, “Why are the socks in the sun?” She calls on a child who says, “They
would be hot.” The teacher says, “Yes, they would be hot.” She calls on another child who says,
“and dry!” The teacher says, “They would dry off in the sun! Ok, last one! My socks are lots of
fun!” The children repeat the last phrase. Mrs. Beltran points at the exclamation point at the end
of the last phrase and says, “and this is called an ex-cla-ma-tion point, what does it mean?” She
draws out the word exclamation point so the children hear how it sounds. A child is called on to
answer and he says, “It means we say with feeling”. The teacher says, “that’s right!”
Mrs. Beltran then integrates math into her language arts lesson. “Let’s count the socks”, she
says. They count to twelve together while Mrs. Beltran points to each sock. She asks, “How could
we show twelve with our fingers?” She calls on a child who puts up ten fingers, puts them all
down, and puts up two more. Mrs. Beltran says, “that’s right, ten and then two more! Let’s count
the words on the page.” They count to twenty-seven together while Mrs. Beltran points at each
word. Mrs. Beltran says, “Stop and think. Are there more words or socks?” The children start to
call out, and Mrs. Beltran rephrases the question “ah, stop and think. There are twelve socks and
twenty-seven words. Are there more words or socks?” She then holds a hand up to her ear,
gesturing that she wants everyone to call out the answer. Several children call out “words!” The
teacher says, “Yes, there are more words than socks.”
The teacher begins introducing the activity they will be doing. “The first thing you will do is
write your name on the top of the paper”, she says as she gestures to where they will write their
names. She speaks slowly and clearly as she reads the directions, “You will color all of the
boxes that have a capital M. So I would color here, here, here, but not here.” She models for them
how to complete the activity. She then asks, “Are we going to color capital letters or lowercase
letters?” She puts a hand to her ear, and the children call out “capital!” Mrs. Beltran says, “Yes,
you will color the capital letters. Ok, team captains come up to get papers for your table group. If
you are not a team captain, go to your tables.”
The team captains go up to the teacher, and the teacher asks each child “how many do
you need?” The first child says, “four please.” The teacher says, “I am glad that you used your
polite words! Now ask in a complete sentence.” The child says, “I need four please.” The teacher
gives her four papers. As the children are completing their work, Mrs. Beltran walks around
checking in. She gives one-on-one help as needed. She reminds them to put their name on the top
of the paper. She helps them look harder for any capital letters they missed. The students are
doing individual work, but they are at a table with other students so they collaborate some. They
talk to each other about the assignment and about other topics as well. Most of the children are
speaking English to support their peers and communicate with each other. There are two boys
from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and they are speaking to each other in Kinyarwanda.
The teacher allows them to use their home language in the classroom, but she will only speak
English to instruct. I would say at least ninety percent of the students have been on task and
participating in the lesson. During the activity some are talking about things that would seem to
be off topic, however they are still completing their work and are working on social English skills
at the same time.
Overall, I felt calm and engaged in this classroom, which seems to be what the students felt as
well. I believe this teacher is very skilled. She obviously can’t speak the nine different languages
that are spoken in the classroom. She is able to speak Spanish, but I could see where it would
seem unfair for the teacher to support the students whose home language is Spanish when she is
unable to provide that same home language support for the other students in the classroom. So
although she does not support the students in their home languages, she offers immense support
for her English language learners through sheltered strategies. She spoke clearly and slowly, and
so her words were easy to understand. She used gestures to enforce what she was saying. She
used positive reinforcement to encourage her students to participate and be engaged in the lesson.
She waited a sufficient amount of time for her students to respond to her questions. She gave
clear instructions and modeled what was expected on the activity. More importantly, she taught
the content of her lesson, but in a way that was accessible to her students. At first I was worried
that I would not be able to teach English language learners effectively because I don’t know
another language, despite my efforts to learn one. However, now I feel that with enough training,
I could definitely teach these students. It’s more about the support the teacher offers, and not
necessarily knowing the home language of the student.