Yesterday involved a couple of “firsts” in my new position as an ELL Consultant. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly:

First Model Lesson – I taught my first model lesson for a new ELL teacher to observe. Now, I shouldn’t have been nervous given I’ve been teaching for 11 years, but I’ve got to admit that every new school year I’ve gotten butterflies at the beginning of the year, and I got them yesterday!

I was fortunate enough to teach a third grade class – my favorite grade! I did a shared reading lesson using a science big book on how ice cream is made. (If I’d had more time, I’d have brought stuff in to actually make ice cream – I suggested that to the teacher.) Anyway, while reading the text I did some vocabulary building activities and student interaction activities (Kagan strategies) to guide comprehension, and at the end we reviewed the sequence of steps using actions. (A bunch of third graders acting like they’re milking cows = hilarity!)

The kids were very responsive, although I feel like I could have managed the class a little better as there were a few sidebar conversations. Their follow-up activity was to make a Flow Map (like a flow chart) of the steps in making ice cream. Each pair of students gets a set of pictures to help remind them of the steps. They have to order the pictures in a sequence and write a sentence describing that step.

The teacher seemed to like the lesson a lot and get some ideas for EL students. So even though I could pinpoint some ways to improve my lesson, I think it was valuable to her.

First ELL Rep Meeting – Every month I have to lead a meeting for my clusters’ ELL Reps. Every school has one ELL teacher that is designated the “Representative” and attends the meetings. Other than having to move our meeting from the library to the cramped conference room at the last minute, it went well. All the Reps I work with are so positive and are great teachers! My only complaint: They ate like 4 cookies from the two boxes of Kroger bakery cookies I brought. Which means the rest of the cookies have been sitting in my car since yesterday. And I keep eating them. 🙂