From Home Repair to School Improvement

Class: Beginning ESL (displaced workers)Place: Socorro, ISD, Texas – USA Teacher: Mike Saenz PD: Heide Spruck Wrigley and Jim Powrie

Francisco Villa elementary in El Faro D.B (distrito bravo), Chihuahua, Mexico

The basketball court needs work

The ceiling needs to be shored up

Home Improvement

Mike uses the recent rains in Texas to discuss home repair and “home improvement”

Using his own house as an example, he uses a method called “chalk talk” to show what is wrong with his patio (a beam is broken)

Mike engages the students in discussing what he needs to do to fix his patio.

He draws a story board of the steps and students work in pairs to retell the process, using the drawings as prompts.

Mike’s patio needs work

Mike uses simple drawings to help students retell his plans to fix the patio

From modelling to student talk

Mike now makes the connection between his problem with the patio to the students’ problems with their houses.

Students generate ideas as to what’s broken in their houses and what needs to be fixed.

Mike puts their answers into categories: problems and solutions and develops vocabulary (verbs for what needs to be done; nouns for the materials and tools needed)

Problems and What to do

Mini-project: Student story boards

Following Mike’s model, individual students draw storyboards depicting a problem in their house and how they plan to fix it.

Mike copies some of the story boards on overheads

Students present their home repair ideas to the rest of the class using the overhead projector

The class asks the speaker questions Story boards get posted as a “gallery” and

students vote on their favorites.

Students use picture dictionary as inspiration

School Improvement Project in El Faro

Students know that in the Socorro program, each class creates a project that will be shown at the student showcase. They discuss project ideas

One student tells the story of going to his home village right across the border and seeing how sad the school looks, compared to the brand new schools on the US side.

The students decide that fixing up the school in El Faro, Chihuahua Mexico will be their project.

School Improvement Project

They build on the home improvement theme and start mapping out what needs to be done, using a similar process as before.

Based on what the students who know the school tells them, the class breaks into groups who draw pictures of problems and make lists of the materials they will need.

A Larger Community Project

Students use the Oxford Picture Dictionary to find the language they need to describe their plan for the school improvement.

Students organize themselves into work teams. They finalize their story boards to help them plan and lay out the steps by area (play ground; basket ball area; classrooms).

To raise money for materials, they ask for donations – then go shopping at Home Depot.

The women decide they will feed everyone and start planning the BBQ.

The lunch is also story boarded and each step is explained in writing underneath the story board squares.

It’s time for presentations. Each student team explains their story board to the rest of the class. Questions are asked and answered– mostly in English. (Question asking by the audience is part of the expectation whenever there are presentations)

Vocabulary Counts

Planning lunch

Packing Up for the Trip

Crossing the Border

Connecting Drawings, Vocabulary & Projects

Mexico School Improvement Project

Connecting Drawings, Vocabulary & Projects

Mexico School Improvement Project

Retelling and Presenting

Back in class, students retell the story of their success (the mayor of the village and the priest came in the evening to thank them)

There’s more practice in English as students get ready to present video and pictures at the student showcase.

Pictures of tools and materials help to anchor key vocabulary and pictures of the event support the telling and retelling of the project

Connecting Drawings, Vocabulary & Projects

Mexico School Improvement Project