Celine Hermann

ELL- Reflection 1
8/28/17

As a teacher, what challenges did you face when trying to teach your lesson/content to the class?
It was challenging to teach the lesson in another language because I knew no one really

understood what I was saying, so it made it hard to try and get my message across. I also

was worried that people wouldnt pick up on my lesson, which would make it impossible

to assess them.

What did you do to overcome these challenges?

I just made sure that everyone in my group and I kept saying the words we were hoping

to teach to the class, and made sure to point to the class if they need to repeat after us. I

also kept in mind that even though they wouldnt really know what we were saying in the

lesson at all, if they learned the numbers, it was a successful lesson.

As a teacher, how did this activity simulate trying to instruct one or more ELL students in your
classroom? How did you use "language" in your instruction?
This activity is similar to teaching an ELL student with no English background because it

showed how hard it is to get a message or lesson across when people have no idea what

you are saying. We used language in our lesson by teaching numbers through repetition

and modeling, by having them hear us say them fist and them having them repeat allowed

the students to pick up on what we were teaching.

As part of the "class", how can you relate this activity to the experience of ELL students in an
English speaking classroom?
As part of the class, it really simulated how challenging it is to be a student who does not

know the language they are being instructed in. It was extremely difficult to follow the

lesson, and it was confusing in the begging to even know what the lesson was going to be

about.
 Overall, what do you think was the purpose of this activity?
The activity was meant to give us a fist hand experience of being a teacher, and teaching

to students who do not know what we are saying, because they came from a different

language background. It also allowed us to act like ELL students, in the sense that we

were instructed in a language we had little to no knowledge of. All in all, it showed how

challenging both roles can be.