From Home Repair to School Improvement

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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

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

• The basketball court needs work

• The ceiling needs to be shored up

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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.

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Mikes patio needs work
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Mike uses simple drawings to help students retell
his plans to fix the patio
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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 whats 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)

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Problems and What to do
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Mini-project Student story boards

• Following Mikes 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.

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Students use picture dictionary as inspiration
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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.

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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.

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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.
  
• Its 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)

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Vocabulary Counts
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Planning lunch
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Packing Up for the Trip
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Crossing the Border
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Connecting Drawings, Vocabulary ProjectsMexico
School Improvement Project
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Connecting Drawings, Vocabulary ProjectsMexico
School Improvement Project
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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)
  
• Theres 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
  

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Connecting Drawings, Vocabulary ProjectsMexico
School Improvement Project