 As a teacher, what was your biggest challenge while planning the

lesson?
o I think for our group the biggest challenge was trying to think of
an idea in which the students would understand what we wanted
them to do. Since we weren’t allowed to use English we needed a
way to make sure that the students could understand the
message so we didn’t want to think of something that was to
complicate. I also think finding a way to get the students
involved and interacting was hard for us.
 As a teacher, what challenges did you face when trying to teach your
lesson/content to the class?
o I think the biggest challenge was figuring out time management.
It is hard enough in English but in a foreign language and not
that much experience in teaching in that language it is even more
difficult.
 What did you do to “overcome” these challenges?
o Our key to overcoming this challenge was repetition. It is never a
bad idea to repeat and go over what you discussed in a lesson
because every student is going to learn at a different pace. When
teachers repeat, they are giving their students multiple chances to
understand what is happening while also reinforcing the 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?
o This activity simulated trying to instruct Ell students because we
had to be clear with the objective and make sure that the
students understand what we wanted them to do. Our group had
choose to use Spanish and often times we mimicked what we
wanted them to with the materials and by drawing out the
shapes.
o
 As a student, what did you rely on most to comprehend what was being
taught?
o As a student, I mostly relied on the teacher to explain what they
wanted us to do. Whether it be by examples or by PowerPoint or
them asking us to repeat after them.
 As part of the "class", how can you relate this activity to the experience
of ELL students in an English speaking classroom?
 o I think that this mini lesson really puts in perspective to what ELL
students have to go through everyday. They need to have clear
directions and help from their teachers because they are not
fluent in the language.
 Overall, what do you think was the purpose of this activity?
o I think the purpose of this assignment was to simulate how
difficult it is for a ELL student to come in an environment where
most if not all of the other people in the classroom speak English
only. Trying to a teach a lesson in anything but English is
representative of those students who may not have much
experience in learning in a language that is foreign to them. I
think it is also there to make us aware that there are more than
just English speaking students so we need to be sure that our
focus in not just on them.