Student A (Grade 9 Geography Student): (By Stefan Porfirio)
ESL (English as a Second Language) Program Student: The student that was in my class had proper age-appropriate education from where he came from and also had age-appropriate literacy skills. It was his oral skills that he still had issues with and was working on it outside of school as well.
STEP Profile: Student A had a student profile. It has been with him since he started at St. Elizabeth, however initial assessment had ended. Many documents he had were of higher level oral sheets that helped with pronunciation.
Classroom/Subject Teachers and Education Teams: As the student teacher of the class, I was given his student profile with worksheets and other resources. I also meet the other teachers to see what he was like in other classrooms and how we could improve on what the was learning. Most of us suggested that when given an assignment, he should report it orally to the teacher, alone, to practice his oral skills.
The Observable Language Behaviours Continuum: Other teachers and my mentor teacher let me look at this continuum to see where he was in terms of oral dialogue.
Acculturation Process: When I first met Student A, he was a big fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and was learning more about them. He wanted to know why everyone was happy about the Leafs making it to the Stanley Cup round. Many students would often laugh about him not knowing. I had explained to him what the Stanley Cup was and the event that would take place. This was just one of the moments that I saw within Student A of him experiencing a cultural difference and he wanting to get to learn more about. I had worked some of this history into my lessons for the class as well.
Newcomer to Ontario (arrived in 2021): I have learned from my mentor teacher along with the students saying that they had moved to Canada in early 2021. They had stated that they were to come earlier, however due to COVID they waited a bit longer. He has family that live in Canada and that he is still learning the language orally. However he is able to read and write English.
Migrant: Student A would be considered a Migrant since he has come here to live with family and did not escape an external cause (such as war or famine).
Integrated Classroom Support: Myself and the other teachers and the ELL teacher, had worked on developing a suitable unit for him when I took over the classroom. We had decided that everything I had originally planned was acceptable with the addition of instead of him writing the assignment he could present it to me as a speech. Student A was able to do this very well with little stumbles showing the teachers that he has greatly improved on the language.
Student A was active in all written discussion. He would always write responses to our stream questions with little error. However he would be very quiet during classroom discussions often not saying a word. I would ask him at times if he wanted to participate but he just nodded his end "no". When it came to assessment oral discussions, I allowed him to only talk to me his thoughts on the topics we were discussing.
Parental Involvement: When I first told students I would be taking over the class, Student A's parents asked me to set an appointment with them via ZOOM. I did so with my mentor teacher and we reached out to the parents. They wanted to check in with me and wanted to know if I was aware of the situation. The parents were able to speak English well, however they told me that Student A is so shy that he barely speaks, which is why he is having a hard time orally. I had ensured them that I would keep on track and do everything I could to ensure Student A had the best possible learning in my classroom. After this Student A would come up to talk to me more and more, saying "good morning" everyday and asking questions about the lessons.
At home the parents had told me that he speaks their native language along with some english at times. This was to learn that he could do both at given times. However the parents had told me that he struggled with larger and more complex words. My mentor teacher had said that orally he was around a Grade 7 level, which is not far off.
