Summary: Nurturing Environment

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In order to create a nurturing environment, Kaleigh and I took the student outside of the classroom and conducted the interview sitting in the hallway. The student had mentioned how she wanted to sit in the hall, so we chose an environment where she felt comfortable. The Spinnelli article highlighted how many times, standardized assessments are invalid because, “ELLs frequently have little experience taking tests and become anxious, confused, or have difficulty controlling their attention” (Spinnelli, 2009, pg. 103). To make sure that the information the student was providing us was accurate and that she understood the questions correctly, we wanted to ensure that she felt comfortable in the environment that we would be interviewing her. …show more content…
For one, an interview or interview assessment is flexible and is not rigid or in a strict format like a typical standardized test. In the Chapter 2 of the Herrera reading, he notes how, “Interviews need not and probably should not be highly uniform in nature” (Herrera, 2013, pg. 34). This flexibility allows the interviewer to deviate from the prescribed questions and to ask questions and inquire if the student wants to focus the conversation in a specific area or part of their life. For example, when we conducted our student interview, the student didn’t have much to say about her outside activities from school but was super passionate about talking about her family and religion. Due to the interview style inquiry, we had more liberty to ask our student more questions about her family and religion in order to find out more about that part of her life. In addition, this format is important to conduct this type of assessment for an ELL student because it is more about gathering information about an ELL student’s home life, background, interests, culture, and academic interests rather than questioning a student about academic content or testing a student in an objective way. The information that the interviewer or teacher gets can be a great tool for the teacher to modify curriculum and to find ways to better support his/her students. In chapter 1 of the …show more content…
Kaleigh and I asked questions like, what languages do you speak at home? at school? with friends? This was to see in what environments and people our focal student felt comfortable using her native language with and how english was being incorporated in her life. Another question we asked was How long have you lived in the United States? and Have you ever lived outside the United States? This question helps establish how long our focal student has been in the United States and how long she has been in the American schooling system. One question that we forgot to ask was if she had any previous schooling from when she lived in Burma. In total, we asked 12 questions ranging from our focal student’s language and family to the activities she enjoys doing in and our of school. Through the interview process, we gained great insights about our student. For one, we learned that she lives with her mom, dad and younger brother. In addition, her dad works two jobs and one of those jobs is cleaning airplane once passengers onboard the plane and her mom stays at home to take care of her brother. We also learned that our focal student has lived in

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