[etni] Re: integrating Native speakers into large 6th grade class
- From: michele ben <benfam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: momara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 16:03:17 +0200
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Hi!
I can't tell if your "Native Speakers" are really native speakers or mostly
just kids who are very advanced in English. I can tell you what we do in our
school. In the ninth grade we have two aleph level groups -- a regular aleph
level and a fast-track aleph level. Both groups use the same book - "Flying
Colours" - which is aimed at heterogeneous classes. By using an easier book, we
can pull up high level bet kids into the regular aleph class. The fast track
class, which is composed mainly of very advanced kids in addition to a few real
native speakers, gets many more writing tasks and more enrichment. An example
of enrichment was doing a webquest on the gold rush called "Poscard from the
Gold Rush" from the Thinkquest web site when we were working on the Yellow
unit. The fast track kids are required to read unabridged or level 6 books for
the three book tasks they do during the year. We keep up the pressure on the
kids -- they do tons of work and we do tons of preparation and correction. As a
result, we don't have the behavioral problems from the bored kids that we had in
the past when all the aleph kids were together. And, we get the extra bonus of
being able to pull up some otherwise bet kids.
I hope this helps.
Michele Ben
Mara and Yosef Moshe wrote:
> **** ETNI on the web http://www.etni.org.il http://www.etni.org ****
>
> I'm hoping someone has an idea to help us work out a complicated situation
> in our school this year.
>
> A group of 9 Native Speakers have studied together during regular English
> class time since 3rd grade with a teacher paid for by the parents. The
> parents have decided not to continue to pay their own teacher ( combination
> of dissatisfaction with what the teacher did last year and financial
> considerations and also a desire to make the school fulfill their obligation
> to educate their children.) and now these children are in a very large
> "higher level" class that has serious discipline problems and a history of
> rocky English studies. The lower level students are being taught in a
> smaller class to help them catch up.
>
> The class is using Highlights. The questions are:
> Should we choose a different book/book for these Native Speakers? They have
> a wide range of abilities in reading and writing.
> Is it reasonable to assume the teacher will be able to teach this class
> successful with two different books?
> I think we could we have the Native Speakers work on writing skills using
> Highlights as their focal point but taking it to a higher level. But I am
> not comfortable telling them to buy the book since the reading level is too
> easy for some of them.
> How can one teacher manage to help anybody when she has to spread herself so
> thin and deal with discipline at the same time.
>
> Am I right in assuming that our main goal should be to teach the main class
> body? It's great that these kids have vocal and active parents who know how
> to make their concerns known but what about all the other children whose
> parents are quietly trusting us to educate their children.
>
> We have a meeting Sunday night with the parents of the Native speakers to
> discuss how to handle this situation.
>
> Thanks for helping us solve this problem.
>
> Mara
> momara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
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