Entry 4: Reflection

            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.