Journal 6

Journal 6
July 19, 2007
Barbara Formoso

The class had an important guest to give a speech about teaching students in ESL Classroom. She is Barbara Formoso. She teaches in Gunston Middle School in Arlington , Virginia, and has great experiences of teaching immigrant children. Today she demonstrated how to teach reading through a mini Literature Circle.
We watched the real teaching scenario in her classroom from the video she brought to the class. There were four students in the small group and they were expressing their opinions about the storybook they read. One student could speak English fluently and expressed what he thought. On the contrary, a young boy seemed to have problem expressing his opinions. However, all of them bravely talked with each other with Barbara’s encouragement. Yet, I was wondering where the other students were. If the teacher takes part in one of the groups, it means she can’t observe the work of the other groups. Take my class for example. I divided the 39 students of my class into several small groups for group discussion. However, when I focused on one group, the other groups would sometimes lose control and made big noises. I had to stop several times and yelled to them to be quiet. It’s a headache problem. In a big classroom, there are a lot of difficulties for a successful class discussion.
In Barbara’s presentation, she asked us to read the short story in silent way. After the reading, she gave us a worksheet for discussion. The silent reading is a good way to encourage students to read the storybooks by themselves. Once, I took my students to the library and asked them to find some interesting books they liked to read after the mid exam. Nobody made big noises, and they just paid attention to the books they chose. It’s a good strategy to motivate the students to read by giving them a regular time in class for reading. The teacher’s job is to help them find the interesting books to read.