I had a great opportunity to interview , Ms.Macadajes , a University of Houston alumni . Ms.Macadejes graduated from U of H 2014 with her bachelor degree in teaching and learning . She is currently working at Pilgrim Academy as a fourth grade ESL reading teacher . She expressed to me ,that she has been teaching for nearly almost three years now at Pilgrim Academy. Pilgrim Academy a school that has a high percentage of bilingual students enroll . She stated that over 90 percent of the students that attend the school is bilingual . She had no choice but to alter her teaching method to suit her learners .Ms.Macadajes share a similar trait as her students. She is also a bilingual individual her own. She grew up and spent majority of her life in the Phillipian. She arrived to the U.S during her late adolescent year right before college.
During the interview , I had chance to understand more about Ms.Macadajes teaching philosophy about working with children that are bilingual . She provided me strategies that she use to attack her learners . She try to motivate her students by using music to capture their attention . She said, using music to teach has been a success so far . She stated, she spent most of the time doing whole group instruction rather than independent work. Her main focus is making sure her students understand the meaning behind each word . She strongly suggested using a lot of model and pictures to build students knowledge .She also described to me , she uses a lot of hand motions and gesture when she teach. According to the video by Stephen Krashen on second language , he discussed the effective way of teaching students to acquire a new language is using hand gesture and models.He also described the importance of comprehension input (Ortega 2013 pg 60).Both things in which my interviewer agreed to be accurate. Ms.Macadajes stated, that some words are easy for her students to make connection because of their L1. One of the pattern she see a lot is grammar issues. L2 learners tend to transfer language as they would to use in their L1 . According to Ortega , “L1 fact may accrue both a disadvantage and an advantage for learning the corresponding area in the L2 ( Ortega 2013 pg 43).
