Prompt 3

Although Mrs. Caliri has been absent for the past three weeks, I still have learned a lot by the way she interacts with her students from what I've seen. As far as responding to the linguistic, ethnic and sociocultural characterisitcs of students, Mrs. Caliri does her job very well. For example, she uses word syllables and phonics in order to get the children to understand. It is an ESL class and a few students have difficulty learning the material. She uses pictures and breaks down each word in order to pronounce and understand what they mean (i.e. "butterfly" would be but/ter/fly followed by a picture of a butterfly). The picture-word association really helps with the children's comprehension of what they are reading. Because Mrs. Caliri does not allow Spanish-speaking in her classroom, she really encourages to speak English as best to their ability. So far, I've seen a great response from the student. Mrs. Caliri, being bilingual herself, realizes how much Spanish is spoken in their homes. However, being patient with her students is probably the biggest thing she could do. She does not take away from their culture - she obviously knows they are from Hispanic descent. If the children have questions, they ask one another or Mrs. Caliri but she encourages them to figure it out for themselves and nine times out of ten, it works.