Building a Community of Learners in Grade 2 EAL Classes

A student shares his group's ideas for our Essential Agreements

Some of our Grade 2 students attend English as an Additional Language classes during the times that other students attend Foreign Language classes. In these classes, students will engage in language experiences that deepen their understandings of concepts related to their units of inquiry and literacy lessons. These classes are taught by myself and two of our very capable EAL teaching assistants, Ms. Mom Meach and Ms. Boramey Bun.

However, as in all types of classes, students spend a few lessons getting to know each other and collaborating on a variety of projects in order to build what we refer to as a community of learners. As part of this first week's classes students created informative "ID Cards" that they wear in class to help other students remember their names and find commonalities. As part of a lesson we introduced with the question, "How do we get to know each other?" students completed key sentence frames that they could refer to as they circulated around the class introducing themselves and listening to information about their peers. 

Students also worked in groups to think about, discuss, and scribe rules that they thought we should live by in order to make sure our classroom is a good place to learn. Altogether, students came up with the following Essential Agreements:

Clean up after ourselves!
Give friends a chance to speak.
Take care of books.
Listen to the teacher and others.
Help each other.We respect each other.
If we want to talk, we should raise our hands.
We are allowed to run outside with permission [but should walk in the class].
We should do good work.

A student demonstrates how to make eye contact while reading... 

Moments from class!