Student Population
The population of our class is for the most part in the lower to mid middle class, with an average family income of 70,000$. Every student in the class is a French language learner, as there are no students in the class that are native French speakers. There are four students with particular needs that we need to take into account when planning, teaching and assessing.
- Jan has behavioural problems in the classroom. He will disrupt your class and cannot pay attention for extended periods of time. You notice that he is particularly disruptive during the literacy blocks, especially when it comes to reading and writing activities. He is far behind his peers in phonemic and phonological awareness. He can identify some of the word initial consonant sounds, but he has yet to make significant progress in phoneme segmentation and blending. He does not have an official diagnosis as of yet, though conference with his parents have revealed that he is just as inattentive and behavioural at home
- Betty has severe vision impairments as a result of her degenerative myopia which is only partially corrected even with glasses. Otherwise, Betty is neurotypical.
- Ban has shown symptoms of specific language impairments. He has very limited vocabulary in both French and his native tongue of Vietnamese. He does not speak English at all at the moment. In terms of grammatical errors, he has a tendency of using the same present-tense singular form for all expressions of that verb. Ban’s parent’s also speak very little English and French which makes communication difficult.
- Annie has shown symptoms of generalized anxiety in her daily life, but especially in social situations. Although it hasn’t affected her academic performance yet, she shows low mood and mood fluctuations across the school day. Her kindergarten teacher from last year reports that she doesn’t interact with the other students unless forced to, and does not seem to have friends either. Her family reports that even in family gatherings where people were known to her, Annie would feel uncomfortable and anxious, and cling to her mother.