Ana Martinez Philosophy paper

What strategy should I approach when teaching this lesson? Is a question teachers and I soon will ask my self when conducting a lesson plan. Lesson plans include the methods and the objective you intend to reach by the end of the day. Objectives as a whole are goals you want your students to achieve, goals that could be short term or long term. Long-term goals will focus on what I hope my future students will get when leaving my classroom. As well as James Cummins I hope for my students to develop basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS refers to the everyday here-andnow language commonly used on playgrounds or even in nonacademic content courses such as art and physical education. It can also be called social language or conversational language. In contrast, CALP, which I have been referring to as academic language, (Becoming a Language Teacher, 55) is the more abstract variety of language used in academic (content) classes. Hoping my future students can develop skills that will help them succeed and achieve fluency, by communicating properly and appropriately, such as if they are in a meeting, to speak formally, in the target language will always be a long and short-term goal embedded into my lesson plans. In order to achieve my goals, I will center my lesson plans and classrooms around my students and their abilities. I will include task-based language instruction, which entails, language classes goals more realistic, give students access to authentic target language sources, and better integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing in culturally appropriate ways. (Becoming a Language Teacher, 77) By including task-based instruction I will be able to address the four major skills to develop fluency in the target language. An example of this would be

giving students access to authentic target language sources and require them to read and write out a summary of a source and present it to the class. By addressing the four major skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening I will be able to heighten students BICS and CALP. It also gives me the opportunity to detect where students are coming across issues that deal with pronunciation, word recognition, and public speaking skills. Detecting the problem will allow me to focus on errors and address them in an appropriate manner. Elaine Kolker Horwitz states, Some speculate that the use of grammatical rules can actually impede language learning, (19) therefore would reassure students that making mistakes would not impair their learning skills and that mistakes are common when learning another language. I strongly believe correcting the students on every single mistake they make is not adequate and could discourage the students. With the practice and opportunities I will provide my students, they will be able to process the language from an automatic, internalized system. Allowing grammar rules to be learned in an implicit manner I will be able to achieve my goal to strengthen my students BICS and CALP. Giving my students the opportunity to create cultural sensitivity is also addresses my short and long term goals. Being born in the United States but being raised by Mexican parents it has allowed me to build a culture awareness therefore give me an advantage and opportunity to connect on a more personal level with my students. Within the classroom students will be given the chance to form connections with other students that may not share the same culture. Giving my students the chance to build cultural sensitivity will allow them to build their character by being more well rounded and more outgoing to attempt to immerse themselves into different activities and opportunities that may present before them. Building character and having the will to communicate with students that behave or look different, compared to their norms, will allow students to develop social skills that will later on help them in the real worlds work force. In the

work force they maybe presented with the opportunity to work abroad or work with people from a different culture, and will be eager instead of discouraged to work with other individuals. My lesson plans will target students BICS and CALP which will be achieved through the implementation of task-based language instruction that will also assist in improving reading, writing, speaking and listening skills and create cultural sensitivity. To continue building my professional development I will continue to work at YWCA Princeton Day Care. This place has given me many opportunities to experience the types of children I may encounter, students with disabilities, student with behavioral problems, or students that lack social skills. Continuing at this job has and continues to help me gain classroom management skills that will assist me later on in my classroom. It has given me the opportunity to create and carry out lesson plans that promote critical thinking skills. I will also continue to sit in second, third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms. By observing and taking notes on these classrooms I will be able to gain a better understanding of what these grades entail.