June 7, 2013
Introduction
My Discourse Analysis will revolve around a 4th Grade Physical Education Class consisting of 19 students. There are 7 Boys and 12 Girls in the class. The majority of my students are of Hispanic background, but born and raised in the United States. There is one Caucasian boy and also one African-American girl in the class. The remainder of the class is of Hispanic origin. Two of my students, one boy and one girl, are English language learners. The English language levels of the entire class are about average, to slightly above average for their grade level. My two English language learners are slightly above average in their English language development thus far. Of the two English language learners in my classroom, the male student has been living in this country for the past 2 years. His English is slightly more advanced than my other ELL student. My female student is new to the school and new to this country. Her language is still developing, but for being new to this country, it is developing quite rapidly. She has a lot of family in the Chicago area that has been helping her with her English outside of school. She would also have her family from America come visit her in Mexico and has vacationed in the states many times. For these reasons, she is not completely new to the English language. She has been exposed to the language many times through her family. I see this class for PE twice a week for 45 minutes per period. There is no aide or ELL teacher or assistant in the class with me. As the Physical Education teacher at this school, I have the opportunity to work with the same group of students year after year. It is beneficial to me in a way where I can see and track their progress. I literally have seen my students grow up right before my eyes year after year. It is one of the benefits of teaching a “special” subject, such as Physical Education. For this specific lesson, I will be focusing on a Kickball Unit in my Physical Education classroom. My goals for this unit are to get my students to understand the fundamentals of baseball. Baseball is known as America’s pastime. Baseball is also difficult for young students to play. My students understand the rules and principals of baseball, in an easier version of the game known as, “Kickball”. The same rules apply to kickball as they do in baseball, but I use a more grade appropriate version of the game to help my students’ learn. Not only do they learn the proper fundamentals of the game and the rules of the game, some new vocabulary arises from this lesson as well. The new vocabulary is introduced to my students in this lesson for the first time. It is new vocabulary to all my students and not just my English language learners. I will focus my transcript on the new vocabulary learned in this unit, with a focus on all my students as well as my ELL students.
Transcript
My analysis for this assignment is a bit unique, because my classroom is the playing field. For this reason my speech and gestures are more commonly used in my teaching style than written text. Before beginning the game, I had gathered the students in two lines, a boys’ line and a girls’ line. This is how I usually will divide the class into two equal teams of boys and girls. Once the class was divided into two teams, the teaching began. This is when some of the new language and vocabulary was first being introduced to the class. I had explained to my students that we were going to be playing kickball and in order to play the game you need two teams. I had also