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 Hi! 你好！My name is Julie Johnson and I'm the author of all of this content! I'm a kindergarten teacher in China! This blog is a a collection of ESL adapted strategies, information, and lesson plans for Kindergarten and Elementary School aged children created during my Master's Degree Program in Teaching Elementary Education. I hope that you find the information on this blog as useful as I have! 谢谢！




Popular posts from this blog

Developing Comprehension Skills

   Author: Julie Johnson Comprehension is arguably the most important part of reading; it is the point after all. If you don’t understand what you’ve read, what was the point of reading it in the first place? As such, learning comprehension skills are critical to beginning readers. There are many strategies that have research-based evidence supporting them, but I have chosen to focus on story mapping for the purpose of this paper. I hypothesize that the use of story mapping in the classroom will significantly benefit ESL and other special needs learners in their ability to comprehend narrative texts.     To support my research into this hypothesis I propose the following questions to drive inquiry;  (1) How does story mapping help improve comprehension? (2) How has story mapping been used effectively with ESL students? (3) What were the results of using story mapping with students who have learning disabilities? (4) What other skills does story mapping help...
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A Case Study of Norah, An Emergent Reader

   Author: Julie Johnson I had the opportunity to conduct a case study of Norah, an emergent reader who attends my kindergarten. The following text details Norah’s background information, factors influencing her acquisition of reading skills, an assessment of her current reading level, and target areas and strategies for her improvement. I will also reflect on my assessment methods and how to motivate and engage Norah in her pursuit of literacy and education in the future. Norah is a six-year-old kindergarten student at a bilingual kindergarten in Guangzhou, China. In terms of development, Norah is a fairly typical six-year-old. She has no apparent manifestations of physiological or neurological factors that would negatively affect her ability to learn to read. She has normal vision and hearing and shows no signs of speech disorders, ADD, or ADHD. Norah is from an upper class family with two loving parents and grandparents who are committed to her education. Her parents and gr...
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Growing and Changing

 Author: Julie Johnson Topic: Science and Art Age: Kindergarten Overview: In this lesson we will discuss how the students have grown and changed since birth. Parents will be asked in advance to bring in 5 photos of each child from different stages of development; birth, age 1, age 2, age 3, current. The students will be shown the age 1 photos and as a group, be asked to guess which classmate is in each photo. We will then discuss how we have changed since the age 1 photo; eg. I am taller, my hair is longer, I am bigger, etc. The children will then be given all of their own photos and arrange them using ordinal numbers. Finally each student will create an art project using the photos highlighting how they have changed over time.  Introduction of the Lesson: 1.       At least one week in advance, ask the parents to prepare 5 photos of their child to be used in a piece of artwork. The photos need to clearly show their face and be taken at different develo...
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