My
understanding of learning of an additional language has changed drastically
from the beginning of the course to the end of the semester. When teaching
English Language Learners, teachers must have all aspects of individual ELL
students taken into account. It is highly important to know more about them
personally as to create lessons that will allow students to make real-life
connections to the topic and thus become engaged to learn. If lessons do not
incorporate anything that is relevant to that student, their willingness to
learn would be hindered. Furthermore, it will be beneficial to ELL students for
teachers to have a grasp of students' ethnics, home language, and culture.
Teachers can even further research information that can, “explain some of the
student’s behaviors in class and suggest things the teacher can do to be
sensitive to his or her culture and incorporate aspects of that culture into
the classroom” (Wright, 2015, p. 24). As a future educator, I need to be aware
of their individual differences in order to create activities that help ELLS
further develop their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in
English. Some activities that can be included within classrooms are listening
centers, oral presentations, read-alouds, and modeled writing. According to
Wright (2015), it would be best not to limit to one activity because, "no
one method or approach is applicable to every language classroom" and
"the context of the classroom and the needs of the students should be the
starting point, rather than the method itself” (p. 64). Even in my own
classroom in the field, my MT and I ensure to have different methods in place, all
that pertains to the ELL students.
All
of the newfound information I learned will be used to make my professional
practice much more suitable for ELLs. There were some promising strategies I
had acquired that I would like to incorporate into my classroom as well. Unlike
the previous course I have taken in Second Language Acquisition, I felt like
this class was more in-depth in the ways of teaching the ELL students. For one,
I have learned that there are different bilingual or English-medium programs
available for ELLs and that it allows us to compare and, “determine which are
the most effective for ELLs and which are the most appropriate for a particular
school or community” (Wright, 2015, p. 96). Depending on their needs and how
much their English Language Proficiency is can help determine the best program
for that particular student. I was able to learn more about how to classify and
rank the students on the ELP scale and figure out where they are and what they
need to help them do better. Also, when it comes to helping students improve in
the reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I have been able to experience
what it looks like in my own fieldwork. My MT on lesson plans labels the
different activities in the 5E Science Lesson. For instance, she would write
that a certain part of the lesson highlights the reading/speaking aspect for
ELLs. It has made me think more profundity about how I plan my own lessons for
teaching in my own classroom.
When it comes to the
aspects of the class and what should receive more attention in future courses,
I believe that we should talk more about assessment and how to assess English
Language Learners. This is something that is highly important to think about in
order to check student’s understanding without overwhelming them with questions.
Especially when it comes to high-stakes testing which according to Wright, “they
provide one piece of evidence about what students know and do” (2015, p. 144).
We should emphasize how important multiple measures are for ELLs and how
authentic assessments, “enable teachers to track the student’s progress and
growth during the school year” (Wright, 2015, p. 144). It would make sense as
to why authentic assessments are more reliable than an high-stakes test, with
how they are closely matched to what they learned in the classroom.
Through the use of our
blogs, I was able to gain more insight on useful strategies and activities that
can be used to help teach ELLs. I took notes of different implementations that
the students I watched had discussed in their blog entries. It was fascinating
learning how different districts teach their ELLs compared to my own district.
I felt like I learned a lot from my peers and I believe that it is the most
effective way to learn. This student-centered activity made learning more fun,
especially getting to learn it from other future educators. I felt that it was
also more engaging than just having us read from our textbook, as it gives us a
different way to learn the information presented throughout the course.
