English for Nursing Assistants

Hello colleagues, There is a huge need for Certified Nursing Assistants in many communities, including mine, and many adult English learners are interested in working in health care. While a CNA job is a entry-level, low-wage job, working as a CNA can be a gateway job to a better job in health care. Some nursing homes will even pay for a CNA's nurse training.

Does your program offer classes to support students to enter CNA training? If so, how is this working?

Some members may be aware of this self-paced online course designed to teach English for Nursing Assistants. Are you using this course in your program or recommending it to learners who are interested in health careers?

If this is the first time to visit this site, please share your thoughts.

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, AELL CoP

Comments

 “Specific, concrete, and descriptive” observation: Using Questions like "Do you speak English" and approaching it from Whole to part to whole was one observation int he video. Also, I am not sure I am typing this in the correct spot. This is where the link is sending me but the conversation does not seem to be related to the class. I apologize if this seems a little out there. 

The most challenging concept for me to implement is Ground concepts in concrete experiences so trying to watch the video to observe how Andrea does it and thinking about how I can improve on my techniques was difficult for me.

I had to watch the video again all the way through, looking for the areas where she was able to ground concepts in concrete experiences, then go back through this time pause the video, reflect on how I could implement the skill, write down my ideas, then restart the video.

I liked how Andrea had the class generate a story/common experience for them to work on Literacy/Life Skills. It was excellent. Her techniques and approach to help students connect oral language to the text. I learned a lot!

Watching the instructor involve the ESL students in the learning process was interesting to observe. Not being an ESL instructor, I don't deal with those kind of challenges everyday. My students tend to be English-language speakers and/or ESL students who tested out of ESL and have a pretty good working knowledge of English. 

I did like the instructors different teaching strategies in order to to reach all types of learners. For example, the getting up and moving around the classroom is a good technique. 

Reviewing constantly is something one cannot do enough of. As an Adult Ed Math Instructor,  my neglecting review of older material would be very short-sighted on my part. 

I liked how she interacted with the students. When they were reading their sentences she walked around and pointed to their paper as they read. She didn't just stand in front of the class as they were reading. That's a nice way to keep them engaged and to make sure they're understanding the lesson and where they should be in the process.

 

I would say the challenging part was identifying which category to place her actions into. Some of the items seem to overlap. She used varying examples and formats that allowed the students to generate content. So, I would put those in the same category, but they are also separate methods that are effective.

 

 

The strategy that stands out for me is experiential learning.  All students learn differently and there have been so many studies that students are learn more when they are partnered, or social with students in their classroom in a variety of activities rather they are introverts or extroverts and no matter what learning style they have.  Teacher can give students great tools for learning- just by assisting them to experience learning in ways they aren't used too. 

I find that the most difficult of the 14 principles for me to execute in the classroom is presenting material in a clear and organized format.  My brain doesn't think like that, so I find that challenging.  Even when I think about it and lay it out, it never comes out on the board that way. 

Hi Andrea, 

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed this video.  It's wonderful to see how many unique and cognitive/social dynamics you put in to your classroom in 30 minutes.  I can tell that the students were grasping the material and it was fun in the process.  They also established a unique connection with eachother with all the relevant things they were experiencing.  Thank you for demonstrating what a class that is both educational, informative and but also a blast for students to learn in, looks like.   

Andrea's class was wonderful.  I found nothing challenging in doing this observation.   There was only one activity I felt was too juvenile, but I also saw her point and understood why it was being executed this way.  If I were an administrator, I would probably ask her to explain a bit more about it.   

I really enjoyed watching Andrea using simple, yet very useful topics in her classroom.  She made sure the students understood every single part of the language using one simple text that was student-created and led.  

My immediate  observation was how comfortable the students were with Andrea. A classroom with laughter and smiles indicates that the students and teacher have positive relationships and feel safe to participate without fear of being wrong. The teacher worked hard to build simple, meaningful vocabulary into the language experience story. The material was very relevant to the adult learners. Andrea did an excellent job of scaffolding prior vocabulary and skills with new material. The phonics instruction was ground into concrete experiences and will be very helpful with pronunciation.

My biggest challenge was focusing on the 'play by play' and instructional design principles and not on how I could addapt the activity to my class. I have to admit I watched it twice.

I liked that the same language continued to be used throughout the class (and from a previous class). She used specific vocabulary with choral speaking, reading, writing throughout the class. Students were able to think for themselves AND count on the answers of others to support their learning. Students could hear right and wrong answers (with correct answers given). 

It was a great class to observe! 

One aspect that I found challenging about the video is that I would have liked another opportunity to see the same class either BEFORE this lesson OR AFTER this lesson, so I could mark the progress the class made over time. 

While I know that the techniques that Andrea was using WILL work when put into practice in an effective way, the best way to see if this works is to see what the students are able to produce. I would love to hear their progress in English after a few more weeks time (or where they came from in their English skills up to the point of the video.)

 

Most difficult of the 14 principles for me is use of varied and multiple formats of material.  Sometimes I pull from many sources which I think will engage my students only to have it fail.  I forget they may not have prior knowledge of the concept I am trying to discuss.  THere is always the opportunity to return to the topic and reteach the comcept.  Grammar is a key example.  Many students learned English grammar by rote but do not understand the workings of grammar.  Using an interactive approach -- similar to the sentence building we saw in the video -- is a good tool to present intangible concepts.

Amazing classroom! I have been teaching English for almost a year and this was my first time observing an in-person class. I really appreciated varied activities, the movement, engaged class, and the importance of the topic to the students. It was wonderful to see the emphasis on literacy and life skills. I loved seeing the students build confidence by saying, "I am learning English." I saw the sign also included the phrases,  "I am smart. My brain is good." As I enter my second year I look forward to creating curriculum that is appropriate, clear, varied, relevant, and important to the students. 

I was curious about the opening sentence, " On Friday we go to the hardware store." Did anyone else wonder if the sentence should be, "On Friday we will go" or "On Friday we went?"

The instructor based the language lesson in the real life experiences of the class and used a wide variety of formats and activities to promote practice and retention. In constructing the basic story, the learners created content with which they would work for several days. The teacher gave immediate feedback on many occasions.

I watched the video on students learning positive and negative numbers.  The teacher effectively related the concept to real-life using degrees of temperature.  She also engaged the learners physically by having them stand by a negative or positive number written on a sheet of paper placed on the floor and having them pass a ball up or down.  After the lesson, the teacher reflected on the lesson and shared her observations both negative and positive.

A challenge in observing the lesson on negative and positive numbers was determining which of the learners were independently comprehending the lesson.  Could they transfer cognitively what they were doing physically?

I tried to focus on all the aspect of our document for our Instructional Design Strategies, but then I loved how the students were so involved in the class and Andrea's attitude. I think it is a factor with huge importance in the involvement of our students as well.

I don't always find creative ways to have students generate content.  I really liked the way that Andrea had the students collaborate on a group story about their field trip, and then had the students hand copy the story.  Andrea then recycled the story by reading it out loud in class and having the students read along silently.  Then she read it sentence by sentence and had them reread it after her.  Then, she gave the students a vocabulary work out from the story.  I felt that Andrea was at the top of her game in teaching the language of the topic (hardware store/landlord) and the emergent literacy together in one seamless lesson.

I think the hardest principle for me to incorporate in lessons is principle 14: Learning is enhanced by opportunities to practice and use skills for a purpose.  The goal here is to get adults to apply language and literacy learning to new, real-world contexts, but their ability to do so greatly depends on the similarity of the lesson tasks and the real-world tasks.  As noted on the summary sheet of the principles, we have a lot to learn about how to design these types of tasks for adults.  More research is needed.  Can one of you guys take this on, please?

Andrea,

Hi!  When I observed your classroom, I saw some fascinating word work going on.  You had highlighted three consonant blends: th, ch, and sh.  Students then categorized the vocabulary items by which words had these featured blends.  Then partners spelled the words with the letter tiles.  I observed many students practicing the pronunciation of these words as well.  Because the students had used these words in the class story, they were familiar with their meanings.  This is just one activity out of many in what appears to be a balanced literacy/English language learning classroom.  Thanks for letting me observe!

The challenge during this observation for me was to take it all in, noting what seemed to be working well for students' learning.  Of course, I plan to take a lot of these ideas to my next opportunity working with beginning students.  When I see a great teacher at work, I have many emotions: inspiration, awe, and sometimes frustration and disappointment with my own classroom.  The challenge is to take the best of what I see here and adapt it to the learners and limits that I have (six hours per week, different levels, standardized online curriculum, heavy testing, Zoom course delivery, etc).  There is a place for the word order activity and the fly swatter/sightword activity in my own classroom, with the right learners and lesson plan.  Also, the focus on RELEVANCE was the big takeaway for me here, and it applies to all levels and course delivery formats.

I know a very qualified... and published... nurse in Venezuela who is a specialist in obstetrics. She is one of my online English students.

Does anyone know if there are programs to grant work visas for nurses and  nursing assistants?  

She wants very much to come here but there are many obstacles, so I thought I would investigate the possibilities.

 

 

I found Andrea’s form of teaching effective in the way that attract everyone attending to participate and enjoy learning. I would like to try her strategies in my course soon. 

Something I observed in the video is how each student is uniquely engaged in the learning because they are using personal events or things in their life.  Which can help them retain more information. 

The biggest challenge in the video was that I was unable to follow 1 student around to observe if the form of learning was effective. But otherwise very clear as to what Andrea was teaching. 

Remarks made by Rob Jenkins and Maricel Santos regarding examples of key principles describe how the two instructors effectively used strategies that align with the principles. I was amazed how Andrea used her strategies. She had the students take a field trip and then generate their own story. She then used words in their story to facilitate other parts of her lesson like; students creating new sentences with the words and doing a fly swatter game. 

In my opinion, the principles that are the hardest to implement are Encouraging learners to generate explanations and resolve contradictions. This requires the student to stretch their thinking and look at varying perspectives. This is not always easy for students to do. Especially when they don't have proper understanding of a concept. 

I noticed that Andrea helped the students with word recognition by taking the words already used in the story and having the students first listen. Then the students would listen to the sentence and repeat the sentence. Next, students read the story out loud together. Students then use the fly swatter game to recognize the words. While two students were up at the board looking, the whole class was also looking and helping the students at the board find them. 

I can often be difficult to focus on both the teacher and the student. You can gain valuable information and incite watching how engaged students are and this sometimes can be an indication of how effective a strategy is.

I only remember the bad example:  Amy was an English Literature teacher, not an ESL teacher.  The majority of her students were ESL students.  She was not teaching them effectively.  She was just lecturing.  The students behaviors in class suggest that they didn't understand her.  The students should have been placed in an ESL class instead.

14 is difficult to implement if you are in a remote area where you can't take the students on field trips or your organization prohibits field trips because they don't want to be liable in the event someone gets hurt.  Number 9 is difficult to get students to look beyond themselves and to get them to understand that you want them to look beyond themselves.  But when I used to teach academic ESL at MCC we had an excellent publisher that was really good at getting students to think about the world around them.  That was the best job I ever had.

I have worked with educators in my rural region of Colorado who train CNA's yearly to meet worker demands in this area. Once students complete CNA training, they often continue to pursue training to enter other health fields IF they are (1) encouraged to do so and (2) become exposed to what options they have in that regard. 

This following resources is available to programs who wish to expose students to other options in the field: https://www.oercommons.org/courses/health-professionals-the-people-in-healthcare/view. 

Notice that the resource, Health Professionals - the People in Healthcare, is listed with oercommons.org, so the material is free to all with a generous CC license. That means that  programs can edit and distribute the materials for ESL students at different levels. Of course, that also means that students themselves can modify and use the materials themselves, applying the "we learn what we teach" concept! Leecy

During the Flyswat game the two participants at the board were practicing looking for the sight word, but all students had the opportunity to participate because they could use direction words to help the two students at the board locate the sight word thereby practicing using the direction words correctly.

I guess it wasn't necessarily challenging, but rather brought awareness to me was that prior to watching the video the second time I read somewhere within this course that observers sometimes forget that observations are not evaluations, but rather observations.  And sometimes observers forget to observe the students and other important things within the classroom setting in addition to the teacher.  Having been in the role of observer, I appreciate these distinctions and intend to keep them in mind when I have the opportunity to observe moving forward.

Hello-

I have been team-teaching NA courses in what we call Career Pathways Bridge Program at NWTC for 13 years. This is an I-Best type program. Our students are very successful in the course and they would pass the certification exam with flying colors however there is a new certification agency that has taken over the testing. Our students are struggling with passing the certification exam now. It is more difficult and more rigorous. Headmaster will not allow accommodations for EL students. Has anyone experienced this? It is so frustrating as most of our students would become lifetime CNAs and as we all know there is a severe shortage. I welcome any comments or suggestions. As a state, WI is hoping to petition Headmaster and ask for accommodations for testing.