English Language Learners

Before I read the assigned content, I already knew that learning a second language is a challenge for students. During my secondary education, I couldn’t even master French after taking it for six consecutive years. So I could never understand how ELL’s would be expected to learn a language and their academic content. I realize ELL students are given more than the 45 minute class periods I had to learn French, but that is only for their first year or so. My observations at CF reinforce my belief. As I previously noted, one of the teacher’s is learning Spanish to communicate better with her students because the students have issues understanding English. A lack of clear communication between teacher and students means that some students aren’t retaining as much as they could. As such, I always thought the students should be able to have classes in their native language until they made a better transition into their second language so the process would better for them.

Now that I have read this brief I never realized just how daunting it is to learn another language. Under the section entitled, “Differentiate the content” the ELL brief clearly outlined what ELL students need to know and by the end of that section my mind was spinning (2). Grammar, academic content, social skills, and all the subsets of these categories must be accessed in order for the student to grow as a student. I have thought about teaching many of these concepts to ELL students, but never thought about everything they had to do all at once. Seeing it plainly on paper is what caused me to feel extra sympathy for these students. Even though I think ELL students clearly need more time and attention, I am now re-evaluating just how much of my time and attention they need. I have never really thought about teaching the “social” language because I don’t see that as my responsibility to ELL students. I view learning slang as something people pick up as cues from their peers. There is no doubt in my mind that the students need to learn these words. Without the everyday slang, it will be hard for any student to fit in with their peers. As we all know, lack of friend's has detrimental effects on the student’s mental and academic well-being. So I am wondering, how much time should the student be spending with their non-ELL peers? Or was my original idea of keeping them in a separate classroom actually the better option? Have a let my sympathies for these students result in an over analysis of a simple issue? I need more time to process this before venturing at some firm answers.

In regards to academic content, the ELL brief in conjunction with Subject Matters helped me resolve some issues I have with teaching ELL students my subject language. I especially became aware of just how hard it can be to communicate with ELL students, when I was asked to help out in the all ELL room at CF a few weeks ago. Since then I have been troubled with the task of how I can reach these students. While I am still not entirely clear how to help a pupil who speaks close to no English, I realized many of the suggestions for helping ELL learners are similar to reading strategies that are prescribed for every student.  For instance, Daniels and Zemelman discuss how “prior knowledge is the main determinant of comprehension” (25). While the brief also advised to keep student’s background knowledge in mind when “differentiate(ing) the content” (3). The brief also mentioned the need for “variety,” which is a concept Daniels and Zemelman explore throughout chapter 4: “Towards a Balanced Diet of Reading.” From this chapter, I think the idea of using shorter texts to introduce a concept is something that would definitely be applicable to ELLs (60). It gives content at a rate that is unlikely to overwhelm them so as not to distract from the main instructional point. It is important to realize this overlap when planning a lesson. During many of my daily plans I will try to differentiate texts for the ELLs. However, I am now more apt to use a strategy that benefits more than one group of students because I will want to reach as many students as I can in one lesson (see an idea of a technique I would use that helps ELL and another group of students below). I am sure there are other factors I will need to take into consideration when focusing on my ELL students, but understanding how to balance the needs of many puts me one step closer to better serving all my future students.

               

Image taken from: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/232850243204256989/

*Last semester one of my teachers would use flash cards as a means to learn new vocabulary and I found it incredibly helpful. It was a simple activity, but using just a few of the same flash cards throughout the semester highlighted the information he really wanted us to know. He didn’t have pictures on the cards, but I know many visual learners would appreciate the extra touch. Also, as the brief mentioned ELL students would like it too because it enable them to associate the word better. Thus, I have an easy method of furthering students vocab with a tool that helps a couple different kinds of learners.

I also want to point out that I realize Pinterest isn’t exactly the most academic of websites, but I like looking at some of the education ideas there because some teachers will post some pretty creative ideas. The guess who game with historical figures that is on Jenifer’s blog is actually something I saw on Pinterest first.