Setting Goals

I believe that students need something to make them feel excited and successful. what I learned from my past experiences is if I can make my ESL students excited about reading and writing english they work harder and harder. it is very simple. Let her or him to set his own goals and guide him about how to achieve his goals. Let him decide what to expect from himself and he is ready to go. As he achieves little by little this will make him feel comfortable and he will soon start to speak English with an appropriate grammar. I set goals with them and talked about what to do. I wanted them to feel excited about reading English and set goals for each week. As they read books and passess quizses they get points and as they achieve their personal goals they get a gift from me. It is all about compiting to achieve his goals, goals that were set by him according to his individual needs.

THE NEXT STEP

Now you now what to expect from your ESL student's family and you also know if he or she has an appropriate physical environment to do her or his homework and study. Some students will have a family that can provide better conditions and have extra time for their kids school. But problem arises when they can't afford this kind of support. During my visits I noticed that almost all of the families had computer with internet connection in their homes. I scheduled another meeting with my Ahiskan families. The goal was to show them how to use school's web site and log-on. They were amazed to learn that they could chcek their kid's grades, dicipline points, attendence. I showed them how to obtain a homework from this site as a pdf document, so they didn't have to come to school and talk to teacher to get an extra worksheet because the kid lost the worksheet. Sometimes parents need our help to use the technology that they already have. Many parents didn't know how easy it was to reach the database and download the works and homeworks moreover they were able to e-mail their concerns and questions to me about the school. I was glad that finally we found a way to communicate.

THE VERY FIRST STEP

The very first thing that I decided to do is meet the families and talk about the new educational environment of their kids and the ways that they would help their kids in this journal! After trying many times I could get an appointment with one of the kid's mom for a home visit. Home visits are a powerful way to determine your expectations from the family. You get to see the environment that the ESL student comes from. You get to see if the student has a supportive family and a quiet place to do his homework. After my second home visit, I did know that these kids weren't going to get much support from their parents. Most parents had to work for 7 days a week with long hours and bad work conditions. So they weren't going to be coming to school to talk to me about their kid, they weren't going to be able to volunteer or join the PTO, most of them weren't going to be able to read the letters that I send home, they weren't goint to buy school spirit t-shirts or participate field trips unless they are free. If I plan an outdoor activity, extra tutorial or a picnic, they weren't going to participate unless I pick them up from their home, and drop them off too. So it is important to meet the family, see the home environment that ESL kids come from before you set your expectations for the students and the families. after the first step - meeting with the family and see the home environment- I came up with an action plan that I will be telling in my next post.

If it worked with my Ahiskan students it will work with most ESL kids!

Many Ahiskan families had to immigrate to USA as refugees from Russia couple of years ago. Most of the kids didn't go to any school in Russia and didn't know how to read or write even though they were 7,8 or 9 years old. My students in 3rd and 4th grades didn't know how to read and write in their first languages when they enrolled our school. They started to forget Russian while struggling with English. Now they don't know either of the languages very well. Many research say that second language is learned best when a child is mastered in her native language first. So what to do with these new students was a big question in my mind when I first started to teach these kids. I will be sharing my experiences with my ESL students in this blog. I hope you will get some new ideas and see the benefits very soon. It might be helpful to review this blog before you plan a route to success for your ESL students - especially the ones that just arrived the USA- and set your goals for them.