Rationale for this lesson...
The lesson designed for this task is on prepositions. The rationale for this lesson topic stems from an informal error analysis. At the start of each school year, I give my students a topic to write on with no formal instruction other than reminders to organize their ideas with a web and remember the parts of a good paragraph. I then assess the writing according to the Province of British Columbia’s English Language Learning Standards (BC ELL Standards) by highlighting on the rubric the characteristics demonstrated in the current piece of writing. This year I noticed that for 10/22 of my grade fours and 5/11 of my grade five students who are beyond the beginning levels of English language proficiency, I highlighted “use[s] nouns, present, past, & continuous tense verbs, pronouns, prepositions, & articles with error” (BC Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 26). For many students, the reason that I highlighted this indicator was because of errors with the choice of preposition used. This indicator can be found in the Developing (2) level of proficiency, yet the same piece of writing often had indicators of an Expanding (3) or Consolidating (4) level. These prepositional errors were lowering the overall performance indicated by the BC ELL Standards.
Over the years of working with ELL Students in grades four to eight, I have noticed that prepositional errors are not uncommon. Prepositions for location are usually acquired without too much difficulty. However, prepositions relating to time (at, on, in, during, until) tend to present more of a challenge and I have found myself struggling to explain why we say our birthday is on a date but in a month with the party at a time. So not only is this concept complex and challenging to learn for ELLs, it is also appropriate that I find a better way to teach students this concept.
Over the years of working with ELL Students in grades four to eight, I have noticed that prepositional errors are not uncommon. Prepositions for location are usually acquired without too much difficulty. However, prepositions relating to time (at, on, in, during, until) tend to present more of a challenge and I have found myself struggling to explain why we say our birthday is on a date but in a month with the party at a time. So not only is this concept complex and challenging to learn for ELLs, it is also appropriate that I find a better way to teach students this concept.