Tag Archives: EAL

Math and English collide in cuteness

When I was in second grade, we sat at our desks and raced through pages of addition and subtraction problems. As a teacher of English learners, I’m sure my students often wish life could be so easy. However, today’s second graders learn math in an entirely different – and much better – way. They learn the concepts behind the place value work they do. It’s not enough to “carry the ten.” Kids need to understand they are conceptually regrouping ten ones for a single ten. I am not lying when I say I only just realized that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 40 years when I “carried the ten”!

Earlier this week, I was working with a second-grade math group, which included three English beginners: one Israeli, one Korean and one from Bahrain. We were practicing the strategy of “Read-Draw-Write” to solve a word problem. With help, they read the problem and I explained some of the tricky words. Next it was time to draw the problem before writing the equation and answer sentence. They had learned to draw a place value chart with symbols for the tens and ones. I turned to help the Bahraini boy, who had been absent the previous day and needed to catch up. By the time I got back to the Korean boy, he had finished his drawing to illustrate giving away 10 seashells. It looked like this:
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So cute! And so wrong. I had to remind him that by “draw,” we mean draw a place value chart.
He did it, reluctantly, but then he insisted on drawing an arrow back to his original sketch. Fair enough.
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Reminds me of another confused little Korean kid I knew in Laos. Check it out: Korean Math Warriors.

Patience and appreciation

Yesterday was Back to School Night at the American Embassy School, New Delhi. Here’s what BTSN tends to look like for English as an Additional Language teachers:

Me – Hello, everybody! Thank you for coming. (gesture at PowerPoint) I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself and our EAL program.

Hands go up. I call on a parent.
Parent – What does my child need to do to get out of the EAL program?

Me – (smiling) Well, I’ll get to that in a minute. First, I’d like to explain how I work with your child’s teacher to help meet English learning needs and ensure that all kids feel successful in third grade.

Same Parent – Yeah, but how long till they can go to Spanish or French instead?

Me – (still smiling) I promise I will explain our process for transitioning out of EAL, but I think it’s important for everyone to understand how the program works. I spend time in your child’s classroom every day …

Same Parent interrupting me – Yeah, but my son speaks English every day and he says he’s bored in EAL. So when can he get out?

Me – Maybe YOU should tell ME why in the world you would NOT want your child to have an additional TEACHER in the room providing EXTRA English language support and helping your kid to access the third-grade curriculum? Will you please explain WHY you wouldn’t want your child to learn strategies for building his vocabulary, strengthening his understanding of English grammar and developing his reading comprehension? Help me understand WHY you think learning French or Spanish is so important for a third grader who is still learning the language of instruction at our school???

No, of course I would NEVER say that. But … I admit I do think it. Instead, I usually just take a breath, remind myself that most parents don’t have a degree in language acquisition and suggest that we set up another meeting to chat about that specific child.

I’ve had THAT kind of BTSN many times over the years. Yesterday’s BTSN was NOT one of them! What a relief!

Parents asked important questions about learning English, choosing appropriate books, how to support English learning at home, expectations in the classroom and so on. With heart-warming sincerity, they openly discussed the challenges their children face daily as English learners in an English-medium school.

All teachers play therapist now and then. I hope I was able to reassure parents that their children are in good hands. Many of our teachers, including me, are Third-Culture Kids. We understand and empathize with students living outside their home culture, surrounded by peers of myriad ethnicities.

Our principal, Susan Young, started a tradition of giving teachers Power Rocks at the start of school. A local calligrapher writes inspirational words in English and Sanskrit on the rocks, and we choose the ones that resonate with us.

Last year, I chose “patience.” This year, I chose “appreciation.” Sitting on my classroom desk, the rocks remind me every morning to approach the school day with gentleness; assume children, parents and teachers have the best intentions; and to give even the most stubborn kids opportunities to shine and share what makes them special.

I hope the parents who visited school last night felt a spirit of patience and appreciation.

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Korean math warriors

As an EAL teacher, I spend a lot of time in the elementary classrooms helping kids who speak English as an Additional Language. Recently, I visited third grade, where students were writing narratives. The teacher had provided a framework, which students copied into their writing books: introduction, beginning event, resolution, conclusion. Next, children sketched an illustration next to each step in their stories in preparation for writing.

I sat down with a Korean boy (I’ll call him Ji-Hun here), who started at our school mid-year with no English. He had scribbled a bunch of Korean notes, which of course I couldn’t check, to clarify what each section of his story should include. My usual M.O. is to have the kid describe the pictures to me, and I dictate the story back to him in accurate English. Then he tries to recreate the story in his own words with some help from me, first verbally and then in writing.

Ji-Hun had drawn this picture first. After a lot of gestures and random nouns, I realized it was a Korean mountain range, and those two guys were having a sword fight. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out “mountain” because he kept insisting “berry cold, berry cold,” which made me think he was describing a glacier or Antarctica or something. So, OK, we had a setting.

His next drawings show the fight sequence. The first warrior asks, “What is 1 X 100?” The other clearly less intelligent warrior answers, “One?”

Hmmm… well. Not sure what to make of that.

The smart warrior simply wasn’t going to tolerate such poor math skills, so he plunges his sword into the dumb warrior’s belly.

Ji-Hun described it to me basically just as I have written it. Was the second fighter trying to solve a riddle to cross the mountain pass? I acted this out, but he denied that was the purpose of the math battle. I couldn’t think of any other reason for a sword fight to ensue over multiplication. He tried to explain in Korean, while tugging on his hair with exasperation.

I just couldn’t let it go. Finally, we went next door to a different third grade class, where I asked another Korean student (with stronger English skills) to discuss the story with Ji-Hun. After a couple minutes of chatting, the student erupted in laughter. “He understands that every narrative has to have a problem and a resolution,” he said. “But he thinks the ‘problem’ has to be a MATH problem.”

Mystery solved! We all had a good chuckle.

Then I sat down with Ji-Hun and made up short stories off the top of my head for him to identify the problem. “The little cat is so hungry. She looks everywhere for food, but she can’t find any. Then Miss Sharon gives it some milk. The end.” What’s the problem? Yes, the cat is hungry. What’s the resolution? Yes, Miss Sharon gives it some milk. And so on.

Eventually, the light bulb went off and Ji-Hun revamped his story. In the new version, he and his family are hiking in the aforementioned mountains. He gets distracted and falls behind. Soon he loses them completely and can’t find his way home. He walks and walks, crying out for help. Finally, a friend finds him and points out that his house is only a few meters away. It won’t win any prizes, but at least he gets the idea.

Today’s English lesson: When you write a narrative, math is optional.