[Angela J]

I am team teaching in year 3 and 4 classrooms. We follow a program for grammar so a particular item is highlighted each week. The topic was simply modality. So, I can make it as broad or narrow as I want really.

The problem is there is such a huge range in these classes from English speaking, very bright articulate children, through to new arrivals with very little English. They are always really interested in what I teach them, I just don't want to pitch it to far over their heads. I tried doing a cline covering modal verbs such as could, should, etc. with lots of discussion. The more capable students got it, I think, but the others were a bit blank. Chances are I will be teaching similar things next year, so I need to build up my skills in this area.

Does this make it any clearer? I would really appreciate suggestions, advice whatever.

Yours Angela

[susan53]

Hi Angela,

I'm not clear who your kids are? Are you in a state school or a private school? In any case it seems crazy that the fluent kids and the new arrivals aren't separated. I don't see how you can possibly meet the needs of both with the same lesson. You say you team teach - is it possible for more than one teacher to be with the class at the same time, so that one could take the more advanced kids and the other the beginners? If not, then I think you'll need to break the lockstep and have the two groups working on different things at different times, ie - give the strong ones a task to work on while you present something to the beginners, then give them a task to do while you work with the strong ones etc.

In any case, at that age (in fact at any age) I still think trying to teach modality as a concept is crazy. I'd go back to what I said before - take one use of one verb and teach that. I've just put a suggestion about teaching can't/can't for ability on the Teaching ESL forum incidentally. It's a consolidation lesson though, not an initial presentation.