Student Profile: Tufuku Zuberi
Tufuku is a second grader at Woodburn Elementary. He has one older brother and one younger brother. They all live with their mother who has a full time job and supports the whole family. Tufuku’s family recently became citizens of the United States. Their home land used to be in Africa.
Tufuku’s family moved to America about two years ago, and he has made great strides in his English language learning. He is at grade level in his reading and writing skills, but he sometimes still struggles with his speaking. There are moments when he is hard to understand because he speaks very quietly and retains an accent. He has been working with a speech language pathologist to help him learn how to form the different sounds that are in the English language.
Tufuku’s and his family worked very hard to study for the citizenship test. They were very honored to receive citizenship and sent the class pictures from the ceremony. Tufuku is very excited to be an American citizen and shows great pride in his family and his new country. He watches the other boys in class carefully and tries to copy their language and mannerisms.
In regards to the support this student may need if present during my discussion-based literacy lesson, I believe the most prevalent support is in regards to linguistic. As mentioned in the student profile, Tufuku's speech is sometimes hard to understand and he has been working with a speech pathologist to help learn how to form the sounds present within the language. In general, as a teacher, I should be very careful to enunciate and clearly pronounce my own speech as to make it easier for Tufuku to improve in his own speech. In regards to supporting Tufuku's speech development during the discussion, I believe it is important to provide the student with opportunities to speak. If the student is uncomfortable speaking in front of the class, a culture of acceptance must be established prior to the lesson. In order to alleviate embarrassment or fear of failure, as a teacher, I will not "overly-correct" but rather simply use a form of "recast" in which his comments are repeated, thus allowing the student to hear the speech with the correct sounds without making it seem as if he is being corrected.
As for social support, because it was mentioned in the student profile that Tufuku watches other students in the class closely as to mimic their behavior and language, I feel this is a great base to build from. Small group work with other students is crucial to help Tufuku's language development, thus, perhaps I should thus adjust my literature discussion to break off into small groups at times before coming back together as a full group, as to grant Tufuku with opportunities to interact with his peers in a less threatening environment as well as allow him to help develop his comfort with the culture of his peers.
I think you have some great ideas here. You really played on his strengths as well as thinking of things that he may struggle with as well. I like that you thought of him possibly being embarrassed to talk in front of the class and that a way to encourage him to talk is to set up a comfortable classroom for all students and to not over correct him but instead recast. I think this will be very beneficial for him to improve his English even more.
ReplyDeleteI also thing small groupwork activities and assignments will help him greatly. Since he mimics other students, group work type activities will help him even more and allow a safer and more comfortable setting. I defintiely think it would be a good idea to break off into small groups for your lesson so that he has time to talk with his group and gain some additional ideas and may be able to clarify what he wants to say to them first.
I definitely think that Tufuku would be given the support he needs to successfully participate in your lesson. As you mentioned, reading clearly and strongly enunciating during read-alouds would probably be a huge help to him for comprehension of the book. I also love the idea of groupwork at some point during the discussion. This could be really beneficial if done before the entire class discussion because it would give Tufuku time to brainstorm with his group members and put his own thoughts into words before being called on to participate.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I think the use of some type of images during the lesson would also help his language development. This could include anything from careful examination of illustrations from the book to print-outs of images that would help clarify unknown and/or difficult vocabulary, for Tufuku and for the rest of the class.