Julianna Mendez

Teaching English Language Learners

Jennifer Lucko
October 10, 2016

Integrated ELD Lesson Observation

The class that I observed was a third grade class of 23 students. The lesson taught was on
reading comprehension. Spanish was the only Language 1 in the class. I observed two classes
with the same teacher where the lesson was the same for each class. According to the teacher, the
CELDT levels range from early intermediate reading and writing skills and mostly intermediate
reading skills. The reason for this being that it is an immersion school therefore, the students
havent had much experience with reading and writing in English because in Kinder-2nd grade
the program emphasizes reading and writing in Spanish. The teacher informed me that there are
some students with lower writing and reading scores because third grade is when the students
begin receiving more English. The majority of the students speaking skills range from early
intermediate, intermediate and English Only.
This lesson covered the content standard 3.2 recount stories, including fables, folktales,
and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain
how it is conveyed through key details in the text ( corestandards.org). Along with this standard
the ELD standard that could work well with the English standard is 3.6. Reading/viewing
closely: Describe ideas, phenomena , and text elements (e.g., main idea, characters, events) in
greater detail based on understanding of a variety of grade-level texts.

Throughout the lesson, I observed SIOP strategies that included, building background
knowledge, providing comprehensible input, and providing strategies for breaking down a text.
First, the teacher told the students that they were going to be learning about how characters
decisions and actions can influence the outcome of the story. The teacher then began building the
students background knowledge by asking them how the actions of a character of a story they
had read prior to this lesson impacted the story. Once the students discussed that in their table
groups, the teacher asked the students what they had done that day that had impacted their day.
Some responses from students were that they had eaten breakfast therefore, had energy to learn.
In addition to building background knowledge the teacher provided some comprehensible
input. The teacher clearly explained academic tasks and asked many why questions to get the
students thinking. Students were asked to discuss in their table groups questions like what does
he saw the tree with new eyes mean? The second time she taught the lesson she had one of the
students come up and be her partner for a demonstration so that the students could see what she
wanted them to know visually. The entire lesson had to do with fables and the students using a
reading comprehension reading strategy. The teacher read the fable to them, then had the
students read the fable as a class, and together with the teacher they annotated the text using the
close reading strategy. For example, for the main idea they would underline it twice and for a
supporting detail they would underline it once.
As far as differentiation goes I noticed very little differentiation. The teacher did whole
group instruction the entire class period for both classes. Her class was sitting for a very long
time however, most of the students were engaged but many students also zoned out. This was the
first lesson with the new curriculum and perhaps that is why they were working on the same task
together as a whole group. I did notice that the teacher would sometimes code switch to Spanish

when she thought the students didnt know what the word meant in English. Some of the students
were making connections between the words and had aww moments.
When the teacher asked a question she wanted her students to discuss in their groups she
would walk around and monitor their discussions, asking more questions and providing
feedback. This is when she would also assess and have an idea of what the ELL students were
understanding. The teacher could also have assessed the students workbooks to see what the
students interaction with the text looked like.
To conclude, I didnt observe as many SIOP strategies as I thought I would. I thought I
was going to see different grouping strategies as well, but only saw the lesson taught in whole
group. I liked that the teacher was teaching the students a strategy they could use to interact in
depth with the text however, I noticed that the students didnt really understand why they were
underlining or circling words. It seemed as though they were just copying what they saw their
teacher doing. The teacher did asked many open ended questions and then other times she would
ask them a question and end with yes or no. I didnt think that was very effective because she put
a lot of emphasis on the answer she wanted them to give her and as a result it was hard to assess
if they really understood what the she was asking of them. I am curious to see how the teacher
will follow up this lesson. Will they ever do independent work with these fables? And if so how
might she differentiate and create groups so that the students are working together supporting
one another? Another question I have is, could she use the jigsaw strategy in future lessons?