Writing and Reading Goals

After that great teacher moment with writing that I blogged about awhile ago, I decided to make some goal posters.  I found an amazing one from Zeek's Zoo that I needed to tweak for my ELL kiddos.  Here are my end results.

 

As you can see, I only changed a few things from the Zeek's Zoo posters.  They call periods full stops over here, so I had to change that one.  Then I wanted to add a writes left to right goal since in Arabic their writing is right to left and we have been working hard all year to learn that one.  Last, I added the sound it out goal.  This will help me track who needs help with stretching out their sounds to write words.

 

Next I added little post-it flags to the poster with the student names and placed them on the goal I decided they were ready to work on.  You can see two colors (I teach two sets of classes).

 



Grab your copy of my changes here.

Creating the writing goals made me think about reading goals.  The culture here is very competitive so I thought, "Why not use that?"  I created a small reading goal poster for sight words and abc letters/sounds (the most important ones I want mastered before second grade) and stuck that baby up on the wall. When kids pass the goal, we have a mini celebration and their name is written on the poster.  Sadly, I have almost no one on the poster (insert crickets chirping here).  *sigh*



Excuse the poor quality of the pics but you get the idea.

Proud Teacher Moment

I have been teaching grade one girls in the Middle East since September and the first week of February (this post is a bit delayed) I finally had a proud teacher moment.  Progress!  My girls were finally putting together letters make sounds and these can be used to write words.  Wow.  I had goosebumps.  I ran around the school at the end of the day to show off their work.

First I read an emergent reader called "I Like."  Next, I modeled my own story about what I liked.  (One of the pages in the book but I added a second sentence).  Here is what my model looked like:

In the interest of time, I did not color my example but asked the girls to make sure to color their pictures.

 

Here are my proud teacher papers - the students copied the title (well, some of them) and the words "I like to" then had to complete the rest on their own.  Remember these are ESL kiddos who only started speaking English (and in some cases) going to school this year.  They are Arabic speakers so even their directionity is backwards from English.

I like to color.

I like to jump.

I like flowers.  I love how she sounded out flowers!

I like to color.  So close to perfect!

I like to be kind.  She took this off a rule poster on the wall.  Using environmental print and I never even mentioned it.  Love, love, love!

 

 

What do you do for your little language learners during writing time? I'm frustrated we only have one 45-minute writing block ONCE A WEEK! Do you wonder why there was no real progress until February? I try to squeeze writing in other ways throughout the week. And I thought there was never time in the States. But don't get me started on that topic or I won't stop.