For each week in our class we were to read a chapter in our text book. Each one of us choose a chapter we would read in great depth and present to the class. This was a fun way to read our text because not only does it insure that we obtained important information, but it also gave each of us an opportunity to teach a chapter to the rest of the class. This increased our understanding of the text greatly and made reading an active learning experience instead of a passive one. Below is my notes on the chapter I presented to the class.

Chapter 20, Teaching ESOL Through Music, Drama and Art.

Integrate the arts into the classroom as a way to facilitate English learners.

The arts cover most of Gardner’s inelegances.

Interpersonal- students write a play. Kinesthetic- roll playing. Special/visual- art, drawing, painting. Match activity to strengths and needs.

Observing plays help children see the process and product of learning in hands on way.

SSL can show their comprehension through drama and art. Teachers can use these as tools to assess topic understanding.

The arts help students by:

·         Addressing fear of speaking

·         Student collaboration

·         Communicative awareness

·         Learning is contextualized

·         Pronunciation is improved

·         New vocabulary

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are tied together in drama.

Art is concrete and promotes language acquisition and can be integrated into any subject

Story telling can be used to encourage writing. Write in primary language first and then try to translate. It can work on changing from narrative to dialog form.

Respond to language in nontraditional ways, may be more comfortable for student because it is familiar.

Music promotes print-to-speech connection and vocabulary (example hokey pokey).

Students in silent stages are more likely to participate and show understanding. Changing nouns or a verb in a song to make it different, this is fun

Old McDonald is a good one for animal vocabulary. This may help decoding skills. What does a dog say? How many legs? Make sentence with paper strips and mix up the words to have student make a proper sentence again.

Drama gives purpose to reading aloud. Memorization helps vocabulary. Interpreting text promotes divergent thinking. Drama can be used in-lou of a book report to interact with text, learn and explore. Students can learn dialog form.  It can be used with any book and any age.

Use pictures class drew to ask one word answer questions to help get them out of the silent stage. “Are the people in this picture eating dinner or reading a book?”