Description

After five years of teaching elementary students in my home country, I obtained the fantastic opportunity to come to the United States to teach at Selma elementary school. I have developed myself professionally as a second-grade teacher for four years. This new change brought many challenges; the first year, they asked me to work with students in small groups, where teachers are expected to work developing engaging lessons using authentic texts to work on literacy skills, reading comprehension, and vocabulary, which I was not prepared to do. Small group instruction allows English language learners to learn in an environment where they feel comfortable and receive feedback, and teachers can offer additional support and teaching modeling (Kendal, 2006). This time in the classroom facilitates teachers to address students' difficulties to provide personalized learning directly.

The experience I had teaching in Honduras limited my performance as an instructor and made me spend considerable time searching for appropriate content, methods, and strategies to help students progress to be moved to a higher literacy level. Soon, I realized that the school did not have a suitable set of lesson plans and resources for new teachers like me to help them adapt and understand the outcome students are expected to achieve to complete a successful school year. 

Considering the experience I had in my beginning years as a second-grade teacher at Selma Elementary School, I would like to create a set of reading lesson plans 

focused on small groups for second-grade educators to facilitate their instruction during the guided reading center when working with English language learners. Each lesson plan will consist of 30 minutes of instruction time appropriate to the students' level, activating prior knowledge with games, mind maps, charts, and any other strategy to help students remember what they previously learned.  Engaging activities, reading suggestions, well-established purposes, expectations, standards addressed in the lesson and instructional resources, pre-reading activities, and post-reading activities will benefit teachers who do not experience working in small groups in the second grade. Researchers have demonstrated that ¨Lesson planning reflects prior experiences as learners and teachers¨ (Ho, 1995; John, 1991, 1994; Warren, 2000), and I expect to transmit my experience as a teacher and as a learner to facilitate teachers in second grade to implement effective lesson plans.

By implementing these lesson plans, teachers will feel confident when working with new students regardless of the language differences involved, which could lower the anxiety levels that help create unsuccessful classroom communication.  The educator will have more time to prepare resources and spend teaching than searching and adapting to a new learning environment. There will be necessary tools to develop each lesson, allowing students to have a more effective learning process. This project will help me become a better teacher since it will allow me to share  and connect strategies and experiences that have helped me in my previous years. It will also be very beneficial for English as a second language teacher in Selma elementary school, seeking effective strategies and methods to help students succeed in reading. The project can allow students to feel confident and engage with the new learning environment without feeling secluded from their peers or activities that do not necessarily benefit them in learning the same content. It could also help develop crucial connections with their new English teacher regardless of the differences in communication. 

Finally, this project will benefit second graders at Selma Elementary School who struggle with reading in English as a second language since it will be designed to facilitate the learning of a second language and address those common problems in students' academic performance.