Reflection Paper

a. For this project I observed a class at Duke Ellington School (PS 4), an elementary school located in Washington Heights, Manhattan (500 West 160 Street). I observed a second grade class composed of 25 students, including 13 boys and 12 girls. The class is led by one teacher who does not receive any assistance from another teaching profession, although sometimes during the school year she receives help from students doing student teaching and fieldwork. Through discussions with the classroom teacher, I learned that all of the students in the class (25) are emergent bilinguals, all of which are from Spanish-speaking countries. The teacher also informed me that most of the students have been attending this school since kindergarten, and that only three kids in the class have been attending since pre-K. This school year, there are two students that just arrived from their homelands.

The central focus of this lesson was for students to demonstrate comprehension with informational texts.

2. Supporting Literacy Development Through Language

a. One language function that was essential for students in the lesson I observed (December 1, 2015) was describe. In this lesson, in order for the children to complete the task assigned to them, they had to write about what they learned in pages 8-9 in the book Planet Earth by including details and facts about the story.

b. The key learning task that provided students with opportunities to practice using this function was earlier in the day when all of the kids were together sitting on the carpet and the teacher had just finished a class discussion about the chapter. After the discussion, the teacher asked the students to turn to the person sitting next to them and tell them one thing they learned from the chapter.

3. Language demands

a. Vocabulary: life, air, swoop, burrow, breathe.

b. Structures: In the story I learned that . One example of life on planet Earth is . The text says