What about your particular classroom will be the most challenging for ELLs? Consider your mentor's instructional style and your own, as well as your instructional materials and the overall academic and social dynamics of the class.
Physically, the classroom poses a few logistical problems that are annoying to a native language speaker, but might appear as actual hindrances to an ELL. For example, because of the high ceilings, we have somewhat poor acoustics, which causes a slight echo and distortion of sound. When the person speaking doesn't articulate clearly or with enough volume, it makes it hard to understand. We usually end up asking students to repeat themselves, and even then, most of the time, I decipher from the context of the conversation, and from inferring, to some extent, what they are going to say. If you take away that context and strong capability of inference, I imagine that the very basic act of hearing voices to understand the literal words makes an already difficult undertaking even more so. The acoustics, coupled with our classroom's academic dynamic that favors and focuses on reading and writing, and tends to ignore the other two language arts of listening and speaking, creates an atmosphere that is often disruptively loud or resonating with an exasperating undercurrent of chatter. In short, oral language, through which most information is conveyed in our classroom, is not the easiest to understand. Though we are an English class, we have not created a visually rich language environment either.
The social dynamic of the class is one that hasn't yet mastered the essentials, purposes, or spirit of group work. As a result, ELLs do not benefit from the help of classmates, and potential exchanges (both social and academic) that might produce great benefits, are rendered valueless. Vocabulary tends to be taught as a do-it-yourself, look-it-up and write-some-sentences activity, which I imagine is difficult for all students, but especially ELLs who rely so heavily on context and words being embedded in meaning. My teaching style tends to be very fast-paced; I talk quickly. This fact, in addition to my tendency to go off on explanatory tangents (that wouldn't necessarily cause problems for a native speaker who could follow the disparate train of thought, but that resemble great leaps in subject and topic to an ELL)would be challenging as well. Lastly, our texts this year, especially the two plays, rely heavily on colloquialisms and poetic forms of English.
My classroom is co-taught by a biology teacher and a special education teacher, and it has a class size limit of 12 students. It is the ideal learning environment for teachers to be able to address students individual needs. Two of our students have IEPs that alert us that they are ELLs. I suspect that three other students are ELLs... so that's nearly half the class.
Since I am only in the classroom twice a week and because I am cranky from finals, my view is biased. Some of the positives that I see in class are that we are able to break down into groups of six or fewer and address individual questions, and we have ready access to students' IEPs. The school is well-resourced; we brought in a Portuguese translator for one ELL student. We incorporate visuals into our curriculum and hands-on activities for both special ed and ELL students... really for all students. We have several sets of biology texts at different reading levels, which gives students greater access to the curriculum content.
The challenges that we face: 1. If the assignment is to search the web to find material about a particular topic, our students struggle to identify the key words that would narrow their search. We could provide students with some key science web resources. We could grade both text article and video feeds as valid resources. 2. One ELL student told me that science teachers use complicated words when they give lectures. A challenge for me is to be able to predict what words students will have trouble with. Another challenge is to find a useful way for students to be able to tell me when they don't understand a word, whether that is writing it down phonetically and asking anonymously or asking verbally during class. 3. Finding ways to effectively communicate with other staff in the school about our students. For example, one ELL student excelled in his chemistry class this year, but is failing our biology class. We have brought in a translator for this student, and she is getting before school one-on-one tutoring. We could/should speak directly with her chemistry teacher and the ELL specialists in the school in order to better serve this student. 4. The atmosphere of the class is sometimes uncomfortable for students. During student presentations early in the semester, classmates laughed at each other, without much consequence from the teaching staff. This precedence makes it more difficult for students. Our challenge is creating a low-anxiety environment for class discussion. 5. It is difficult to assign readings that meet students at their ability levels. Our challenge is to make texts accessible without decreasing the exposure to high-level content. 6. My personal challenge is an expectation that students should be able to read high level texts by eleventh grade, and that they already have the willingness to work through difficult materials. Despite the diversity in my current classroom, I have not incorporated supports for ELL students and poor readers into my lesson plans. My challenge is to change my mindset for how high level science content should be taught, and to build a repertoire of strategies that I can use in my classroom.
I am having a bit of a difficult time with this question, since, as far as I am aware, there are not ELL students in my classes.
Two things come to mind. First, the variety of activities we go through in any given class. Students go from lecture, to group work, to sharing out. In one way, having these different dynamics is helpful, in another, it might feel choppy and not allow enough continuous application of one dynamic for the student to gain competence.
A second area, is that the class is very much text and conversation centered. We do not bring visual aides or other media very often. I think we could potentially build up or activate background knowledge for ELL's more effectively if we used more than text to activate texts (pictures, music, objects).
Like Holly's class, my class is still working on building a dynamic where they listen to and interact with each others thoughts. Our room is set up in a circle, so conversations can take place, and students also move desks into smaller groups; but, there is more work to be done as the teachers in conveying that learning from each other is of value.
OMG. I just have to say--and I know we are not to use IMspeak but I just could not help it just then, so I apologize--that reading the 21 page excerpt from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, despite the detection of numerous potentialities for ELLs to experience befuddlement, was the most delightful homework I have had in my many moons at HGSE. So thank you instructors for that.
Now, regarding my classroom, there are many circumstances which may set ELLs up to fail, the foremost of which comes to mind being that my mentor expressly, and often, advocates for students not speaking any Spanish in the classroom though we definitely have a predominance of Spanish speakers. While in a sense there is nothing she can do to stop students from doing this--she sometimes marks it down as a negative on their conduct grade tally sheet thingies--she at least looks disapproving most times. She does have reasons for asking students to stick to English which I won't go into here. Suffice it to say that we hold different opinions on the matter.
Another thing that I find curious is that my mentor hardly ever does pre-learning activities to access prior knowledge, or, if she does do them, I just haven't been there on those days (which is entirely possible since we were only at sites 2 days/week in the fall). As with Holly's classroom, mine has not yet seen much emphasis on those "other" language arts of listening (except to the teacher(s)), speaking, and (I'm adding this one) viewing; nor is my class--though ELA--visually literacy-rich. I have not seen any IEPs although I am aware that they exist in theory. Oh yes, we also have students for whom group work is challenging (although I admit that perhaps we have not scaffolded them enough there) both because of lack of student respect for peer contributions and because our classroom design is not necessarily conducive to deep group discussions. Furthermore, my mentor's style (and maybe mine?) is somewhat teacher-centered and didactic, although it seems to me that she tries to engage students in discussion (but another "problem" we have is that the Einsteins in the class shout out answers and/or are disruptive if they are bored) that often elicits responses from only a few, with the majority of our ELLs remaining silent (and not having a chance to speak, since she grasps those few constant commentators' nuggets of wisdom as evidence of comprehension and moves on--and I can't say that doing this is entirely unreasonable of her or that I fault her for this. I have no idea how to slow down instruction such that there would be more guided-learning and/or wait time for the ELLs.).
There are probably other classroom characteristics which are not the most conducive to teaching ELLs, but I don't want to continually air our dirty laundry--it makes me feel like I'm dissing my mentor, and I don't want to feel that way because I actually like and admire her--so I will only make one final reference to my aforementioned comments (see Day 1 of the blog) regarding our almost constant use of un-navigable texts.
Oh yeah--I was also supposed to remind Claire here to compile a list of questions TEPers can take to resource personnel (e.g. reading specialists or SEI instructors) in our building regarding ELLs and their reading abilities. Included on that list can also be (1) information regarding how teachers can tell whether a student needs reading instruction or just needs more comprehension strategies, scaffolding to access a text, etc. and (2) some concrete strategies to try out in the classroom.
We have a large number of Spanish speakers in our classes but almost all are fully bilingual. There are two that are less so. One male told me once when attempting a math word problem that he had an issue with comprehension. Generally at other math he is excellent. The mentor teacher very rarely uses word problems so I have only seen the issue arise once and helped him on that occasion.
There is a girl in another class who is quite shy with teachers although social with friends. Her math performance is in line with the majority of students in the class which is to say somewhat mediocre. The class has very few behavioral rules resulting in a social atmosphere that provides ample opportunity for the student to talk to and work with friends.
The mentor teacher is very verbal and conducts most classes in a teacher-led style. Examples are worked through on the whiteboard and discussed. There is very little reference to a textbook and on the occasions when there is, it is for simple examples with illustrations or equations. There are almost no handouts.
My style is less verbal and I tend to make more use of word problems. I intend to regularly assess the comprehension and performance of the tow students mentioned above over the semester. I am also aware that, not only do I have a different accent, but my vocabulary is often different in general conversation and with regard to math terms. This may pose problems for all students at times but especially so for anyone who is an ELL. I will be alert to this possibility.
I am in a middle school science classroom in Cambridge. I do not know the exact numbers of bilingual or ELL students, but there are definitely students who fall into both categories. As we’ve been reading about and discussing, the ELL students seem to have a variety of backgrounds, both academic and personal, so the challenges depend on the individual student. I have experience with some of these students while others I do not know much about. My mentor teacher and I have been talking about some of these students, what their challenges are, and what we might do to help them. One of the challenges is making the time in a classroom of more than 20 students to check in and gauge individual progress and difficulties. In some cases, it feels like we are still in the information-gathering stage, while other students’ needs are more clear-cut, at least to my mentor teacher who sees them much more than I do. Another challenge is that some classes have a high percentage of kids who engage in lively verbal conversations about the material, and there is little written on the board or provided visually. We do a lot of labs, which are great, but there can also be a lot of talk, which I imagine is harder for ELLs.
As other people have mentioned, acoustics are poor in my classroom. I often have to ask students to speak up and I worry that I sometimes allow my own voice to get too quiet to be heard clearly. We have significant numbers of ELLs in our classroom. The biggest native language groups are Spanish, Vietnamese and Creole but we also have students whose parents speak Haitian, Armenian and Dutch. We have significant numbers of native English speakers as well.
One challenge students may face in our classroom is that most of our lessons rely to some degree on Powerpoint presentations. For students who are struggling with English it may be harder to keep up with the pace of slides where a whiteboard / blackboard would offer them the opportunity to refer back to previously presented information. Also, with so many language groups it often happens that two ell students who do not share a native language end up working together. I'm not sure that if this is more difficult for the students than other pairings but Shannon's comment in class suggests it may be. Finally, while we do a good job of presenting mathematical content I think our curriculum is weak in the area of preparing students for the kind of word problems they will encounter on the MCAS. This is a problem for all students but will be a particular challenge for ELL students.
I am in a high school math classroom in Cambridge. There are not many ELL students and those who have an L2 are relatively proficient. The one student who is an ELL has advanced math skills and prefers to work independently. My mentor and I allow ample time for group work during class; our classroom setup (round tables) also supports collaboration.
There have not been any projects in either of the two Algebra classes, therefore it is difficult to assess what this student really understands. He is always the first student to finish worksheets with extreme accuracy. However, to assess his language skills through alternative assessments, such as group projects or presentations, I would provide both visual and verbal directions and explanations to maximize language acquisition.
When I take over full-time responsibilities at my HS site, the material that we study will be slightly different than the material of the previous chapters. I am beginning a unit on trigonometry and intend to focus heavily on trigonometric applications.
That said, there may be some challenges that arise for ELLs (however, my students are all 11th/12th graders and most, if not all, are very proficient in their second language). The most challenging obstacle that I forsee is my plan to present numerous word problems as assignments and assessments. Doing so requires students to sift through written problems and uncover the components necessary to solve the problem. Students will limited English proficiency may have a hard time doing this.
The second potential challenge comes with the use of new vocabulary in trigonometry. New words defining the trigonometric functions and specific angle orientations could be problematic as ELL students attempt to place them within the context of the problems presented throughout the course.
Hmmmm. . . this should be interesting. Being that I have 'honors' students, English is their native language, however, I have come to learn that many of them are children of immigrants so English may very well be their L2.
I definitely believe that some of the language included throughout the syllabus and in some of the discussions would be very difficult for an ELL to comprehend but because my mentor teacher and I do a great job at asking students if they are familiar with particular vocabulary words, this may not be as threatening. Fortunately my mentor teacher and I do not find using 'big' words during instruction necessary. . .I mean, it's history not English. Vocabulary is necessary but too much can be overwhelming for any studnet.
However, I have noticed that we have a couple of international students (foreign exchange) who have told me that some of the word usage on exams and classwork is difficult to comprehend.
Being at Brighton, and immersed in a a history department that is inclusive within a school that has no other inclusive programs has posed to be extremely difficult, not just for the ELL students, but for the enter class as the range of student knowledge in the classroom is cavernous.
Much of my stories are similar to those already talked about so I am going to focus on the problems that are posed for ELL students - in addition to the whole class - when the classroom is not a safe space conducive for learning. In particular, I managed to give the class a reading a few months ago that was way too difficult. While most of the class does not participate generally, this day I had almost no participation and some resistance from students about trying to get all the individuals to read.
The realization I made from this experience was creating that safe space for learning is crucial for actually having the ability to read a class and why you might get resistance to an activity. But more importantly, the creation of safe space may allow the ELL students and the smartest students feel comfortable to make mistakes, to struggle, to be diligent, and to learn despite the overwhelming nature of history learning.
On other aside is the use of primary source documents in history. Primary sources are much more complex than I ever realized and have so much nuance and intricacy that all students need high levels of scaffolding to learn how to interpret them. The introduction of vocabulary words is really important in history, but sometimes I do wonder where to even start when it comes to teaching vocabulary.
In regards to ELL students, I can not identify any that are definitively ELL but I have several that speak other languages fluently. My main challenge in regards to ELL students is a challenge that I have with all of my students. I assume that my students have a vocabulary and comprehension at a much higher level. For example, I thought that all should know about chromotography from Chemistry but that was not the case.
One effective method in teaching the students about diffusion was not only a lab that illustrated, via color, the concept was a silent demonstration that one of the teachers used to model instructions to the students. I was surprised at how effective this method was in putting forth to the students how to finish the lab. It was very clear what they were to do, in order, along with the materials necessary for completion. This lab and resulting concept was taught without any use of spoken language.
The pre-calculus class I work in showed me the beauty of friendship. In this class, students are allowed to choose their own seats which are in groups of six. Since the beginning of the year, the three ELL students as well as two bi-lingual students sit at the same table. Since the beginning of the year, the students have worked together on whatever is assigned to not only get the correct answer but also to help each other understand. They translate what the teacher says, specifically directions and one-on-one help sessions. However, the majority of the time they speak in English until they need clarification on specific words or phrases.
The pre-calculus students are also assigned to ‘read the text’ for homework. This poses some challenges to ELL students as the text contains many applications which are usually very abstract. Finally, students take notes by copying what my mentor teacher writes on the overhead. I think this could be a difficult task for ELL students because they are then focused on writing instead of understanding.
Similar to Dave, when I start teaching in a few weeks, my teaching style and methods will focus more on cooperative learning. That begin said, I know I need to be aware of the word problems and applications I use as well how I assign groups.
Similar to Melissa, I have several students in my classroom that are fluent in another language but I am not sure (with a few exceptions) if that is their L1 or L2. Our ELL student's L1s vary from Portuguese and Spanish to an Ethiopian language. The school has several resources for ELL students, however, like SPED services, I rarely see them employed in our classroom. I have only seen an aid in the classroom once.
Our Ocean Science class is a higher level science course that is extremely rigorous. ELL students may be challenged in many ways. The class culture is such that students are expected to answer questions using scientific terms. My mentor teacher is also very articulate and uses advanced vocabulary in his lectures (his Irish accent might also be difficult for students to understand). My mentor teacher supports students in the acquisition of vocabulary by reviewing all scientific terms orally and by writing the definitions on the board. He then uses that vocabulary repeatedly throughout the class to reinforce it, often reviewing the definitions of terms multiple times. The class utilizes a variety of pedagogical strategies to convey course concepts. These include videos, news articles, text books, group projects, labs, the construction of models and maps, etc. Some of these activities would be very demanding for ELL students (including lectures, news articles, and reading from the text). Many of these activities, however, are supported by additional activities that are more visual or through work in small groups. To better support ELL students we should improve the structure group work to increase equal participation.
Someone in class yesterday suggested turning on the subtitles when watching videos. While this would be very helpful if you had students with limited English proficiency I wonder if it would make that much of a difference for those with high proficiency. I could also imagine it being a distraction for students (whose L1 is English). I would probably be more likely to pay attention to the Spanish subtitles to practice my Spanish than pay attention to the content of the video. What if the subtitles were in English? This might be less of a distraction but could help ELL students by providing another avenue for comprehension.
My classroom is inter-disciplinary, so the study of English is combined with world history.
The challenges that may exist in my classroom for ELLs are also challenges that affect all students in general:
1. Social dynamics - group work is common in my classroom (it is more common than individual work) and students must be able to work well together in order to accomplish the assignment. Everyone is expected to contribute/participate, and this does not always happen. Most of the time, assessment of group work is conversation-based. This can be difficult for students who lack confidence in their thoughts and how they express them, especially when the discussions moves quickly based on how people talk.
2. Attention/focus - because the class relies heavily on group work and interactive assignments/activities, my mentor and I often times give students long, detailed instructions, and students tend to zone out or get confused.
3. Lack of constant/consistent scaffolding - due to the large amount of content that must be covered in history and language arts, most of the time my instructor tends to assess student understanding through students who can quickly comprehend and analyze what is being taught. The same students tend to do most of the participation. Because of this, the struggling students tend to fall further behind.
Despite the lack of scaffolding, my mentor tries to anticipate student problems. She always tries to incorporate visuals in the lessons. She also pauses to explain words that she think students might find confusing.
I work in a pilot school and have only two identified ELL students in my classroom, which may make their issues easier to handle on an individual basis. I foresee two major issues.
1. I am teaching a de-tracked American literature course. The cultural background knowledge needed for the upcoming unit - American Social Protest Literature - will be substantial. Working them to build an understanding of the context that the literature was written in may present challenges.
2. The literature that we are about to read is quite challenging. Malcolm X, in his autobiography, uses lots of slang and conversational language from the 1960's. Working to understand idioms, figures of speech, etc. may be difficult. In The Color Purple understanding the dialects of the characters is difficult for fluent English speakers and will most likely provide additional challenges for ELL students.
My mentor teacher provides additional assistance to ELL students and struggling readers by providing the opportunity to listen to the book on tape at lunch. I don't know what theory or specialists say about providing audio books as a resource, but it seems to have really helped our ELL to understand The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The classroom that I am now in has a few ELL students. One common pattern I see is that often ELL students are hesitant to ask for help in front of others. Mostly help was sought after class, which is good in the sense that the students were advocating for themselves. The drawback, however, is that the students march through a lesson without understanding what is going on.
I would say that there is a lot of inherent differentiation built into the way that my mentor teacher teaches, which will benefit ELL students. She uses a variety of sources, including a multitude of film and visual aids. She oftren tries to present information in more than one format. One pitfall may be that some of the text that is used can be quite difficult and she does not consistently provide vocabulary lists that accompany units. This could be problematic given the academic language that is required to access the sources.
I agree with Eveleen that group work can also be problematic for ELLs. We also do a significant amount of collaborative work in the classroom. Because group work is student-centered, students may not know how to accomodate a peer during small group work or react when a student is confused and not participating. Small group work could be a place where an ELL student may feel more comfortable sharing ideas because the stakes are not as high with a smaller audience. However, students are also expected to participate more in small group work, which may heighten anxiety. Perhaps assigning roles in small group work may ease some of these potential tensions for ELL students.
I am at the same school as Holly, so I have the same issue with the high ceiling acoustics...I have trouble hearing my students too!!! I was just constructing my lesson plans for this week, and it was really gratifying to have specific tools for how to adpat them to my one ELL student. I realized that I'm always thinking about her and never knowing what to actually DO about it...I would just kind of feel vaguely guilty and then move on. Now I can say to myself, okay, explain what this word means or leave it out entirely. It goes back to what we discussed yesterday to helping all students learn, because ultimately I end up making my lesson clearer for everyone (or giving everyone the opportunity to learn a new word that I teach explicitly for the benefit of an ELL student).
We do a lot of collaborative work in our classroom, but since a number of students are English/Spanish bilingual, this actually proves to be a plus. I think I'm lucky because my class is pretty hardworking and people help each other. However, their hard work is not reflected in the ELL student's failing grade. I'm taking over the class this semester and hope to learn more about how to help her.
The class that I am taking over is almost exclusively ELLs that have been mainstreamed in ELA 11. Everything my mentor does keeps this fact in mind; for example, we coordinate vocabulary words with Spanish cognates. The pacing of the class is also rather slow compared to others, and we do a lot of reading aloud.
The challenge, I think, lies within preparing them for other English classrooms that are less supportive. Are we doing enough to make them independent learners? Also, the quality of writing from some of the students is incoherent and involves a lot of guesswork. We rely heavily on class participation to make up for this gap, since students are able to handle academic material more fluently in an oral mode.
There are several ELL students in my mentor teacher's classroom, however she never puts support systems in place for them. She teaches directly from the textbook - students are expected to read and learn. This type of pedagogy is frustrating to be around regardless of ELLs, however it is especially doing a disservice to students with low language proficiency. I have noticed that many students simply give up trying to read and instead goof off, text, or wander the halls.
In addition, there are very few routines in my mentor's classroom. Technically there is a Do Now on the board, but students rarely complete it. Desks are not always in the same formation and the classroom is sometimes messy. Also, my mentor teacher is frequently finishing something up when students walk in the door so she is not giving them her undivided attention. All of these factors contribute to an unwelcoming environment that might be especially intimidating for ELLS.
I don't know if anyone looks at this after posting their original comments, but after reading Shannon's post and noticing her mention of subtitles, I just wanted to say in response that I find English subtitles essential for understanding even though I am a native English speaker and not bilingual. I have hearing issues--even at the theater when sound is amplified I often ask my neighbor what someone on the screen has said-- that are easily cleared up by reading the text at the bottom of the screen. When I watched films in Spanish classes in high school in which subtitles were Spanish, reading text increased my comprehension of the action that was hard to decipher because people were speaking too quickly for my low levels of automaticity. Thus, I would think that subtitles, maybe regardless of the language they were in, would be beneficial. My inclination would be to favor the English subtitles though because being able to decipher the written English would be beneficial to ELLs as an aid for developing their language abilities, whereas providing them the subtext in Spanish could be distracting if the majority of classmates don't read Spanish and could, in a sense, provide them with no incentive to figuring out the English spoken and seen on the screen. One other idea I had was that, if students are high achievers and using Spanish subtitles to supplement their Spanish language learning, I would question if they are also high enough achievers that they will figure out what's happening in the video regardless. To channel Vicki briefly: whether you put on subtitles and which language you use should in part be determined from your purposes for using the video. If part of your purposes is that you want ELLs to understand directions in English, put on English subtitles.
While we currently have no LEP students in our classroom, I couldn't imagine if we did!
The instruction is primarily lecture, supplemented by homework assignments from the incredibly dense chemistry text (full of academic language). Classwork and labs are also text driven, with directions on sheets of paper with text and no pictures. I could also see the questioning format of lectures to be stressful to ELLs. Also, many of the homework questions from the book are recall questions which would allow students to "hunt" for the right answers. This could inhibit the teacher from being able to see problems before the summative assessment.
On the bright side, our text has some very nice visuals which might help ELLs make sense of difficult language. Also, lab partners can help with text-heavy directions. Hands-on activities in the lab and observations are language-independent, allowing ELLs to feel comfortable and have a sense of efficacy in a place where they might otherwise feel overwhelmed.
As for my own teaching style, I don't know yet what will be a problem. I have mostly taught from my instructor's lesson plans and have yet to implement much of my own style, which is more activity-based. I could still see trouble with lectures, but will hopefully learn enough from this class to support students in my own practice. It will be helpful to reflect on my teaching practice this spring and discover areas where students might struggle, so that I can avoid these when I do have ELLs.
My student teaching site is in a 7/8 humanities class in Cambridge. There are many LEP students in the class, and many other students who speak Haitian Creole, Spanish. Arabic or Portuguese. I've never had an explicit conversation with my mentor teacher about the possibility that the reason why certain student struggle in the class could be language. I think that because there is a separate SEI class for native Portugese speakers at the school, there is a feel like the ELLs are receive services. There are, however, many elements of the classroom environment and class work that could pose a challenge to ELLs and LEP students.
My mentor teacher does a LOT of close readings with students, which is really good. Because we do not follow a state curriculum we can spend a lot of time on each section of text from a nonfiction source, or a news paper article. We use a variety of sources, but many of them are high school even college reading level. For the strongest readers in the class they are a struggle to get through. Even though we move very slowly, I wonder if substitute text that was just a little bit more accessible would give ELLs the confidence to really attack it the way my mentor teacher hope that they will.
My mentor teacher holds high expectations for ALL students, which is also very excellent because it pushes them to try harder. On the other hand, I worry that there is not enough scaffolding in the class, and that students experience more moments of frustration than success. She teaches in a very abstract way, holding very long, and deep, discussions for the attention span of any middle schooler. For ELLs who may be nervous speaking in class, it is inevitable that they may zone-out, especially without and writing or visual exercises during class to reinforce the work or refocus them
I think that my teacher has recently become aware of the need to use multiple sources and a variety of approaches to reach more students. But,it is hard because the skill-level for reading/writing in the class vary greatly.
My classroom is next door to Andy's and we share the same students, so you can refer to his comments regarding the composition of our students (summary: we have various ELL students)
I also liked Andy's thoughts on the problem of using PowerPoints, which we also commonly use. In addition to the fact that students can't look back at them, it also slows down class because you have to wait for nearly every student to get the notes down, where as using the board would allow for moving on without completely shortchanging these students.
I would say that the biggest hurdle for ELL students in my classroom, however is the "Notebook." THe notebook is heavily heavily used, there are two pages of notes or writing assignments a day and I think this can become a bit overwhelming for students. in reflecting upon this daily routine I realize that is very little assessment of students oral skills or opportunities for students to their thinking through discussion. For students who are much more comfortable with their English speaking skills than their reading/writing skills (which I would say is the case for all of the ELL students in our class) this prohibits their ability to tackle the larger thematic ideas we want to discuss in class. They may have great ideas about things, but because our way of asking them to process things is almost always a "do-now" which requires a 5-minute writing prompt or some other writing-based homework assignment student got bogged down in writing and never remember to do some thinking as well.
I tend to think that my mentor and I run a fairly ELL friendly classroom. Lectures are rare and students perform most work individually or in pairs. This arrangement allows us to circulate throughout the room and focus on students who are having trouble with the assignment. Also, we try to keep the context and purpose of each activity clearly in front of students. Additionally, we have students read most lengthy textbook or document passages out loud and pause after every other paragraph to guide students in distilling salient points.
Interestingly, one of our recurring problems has been keeping our academically average and advanced students from becoming bored. We are cognizant of this and continue to experiment with different approaches--usually through homogeneous student-groupings and allowing students to work at their own pace--to engage all learners.
Wow, there are a lot of great ideas posted so far! Thanks, everyone!
My mentor teacher teaches an A.P. English class, comprised of mostly seniors and two juniors. On the whole, these are the most "successive" students in the school, success being defined as various things: ability to follow directions and thus do well in classes and so progress; genuine love of learning and discipline; or even that mixture of neurosis and perfectionism that catapults mediocre thinkers into difficult or advanced classes. In any case, as I talked with my mentor teacher about today, these are not the kind of students I will encounter next fall as I begin teaching. There are a few ELL students (Spanish as native language, a few students from a handful of Asian countries, one Arab American student), but on the whole they are successful in the language, though I do note difficulties with idioms, the tendency to write thoughts that would make grammatical sense in another language (I notice this especially with the Spanish speakers, as I have some grasp of the language), or general errors that are still indicative of advanced language acquisition.
As I talked with my mentor teacher, I realized (or re-realized) that a lot of my experience with ELL students this year comes from my biweekly tutoring of 9th grade ESL students. I work one-on-one with students, specifically on English (vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, etc). I'm able to devote all of my attention to these students, something I would not be able to do in a classroom that has even two ELL students. I think one challenge for me is to balance the ELL support with the general curriculum; furthermore, I have to keep in mind the needs and abilities of ALL my students and that can be a bit overwhelming at times. I'm hoping that I can learn general good teaching strategies in this class, ones that will prove useful for all students yet particularly effective for ELL learners.
My classes are exclusive ELL Sheltered English Instruction math classes. My mentor teacher talks to many of her students in their native languages while she walks around during small group and individual work. The Geometry class is the culminating ELL SEI class for these students, so transitioning them to mainstream classrooms without depriving them of the SEI accommodations is one of our main goals.
One of my main concerns is that putting all of these ELL students together in all the same classes has increased the isolation between them and the mainstream students at my school (both in the classroom and out). How can I, as a student teacher, provide them with a smooth transition to mainstream classrooms both academically and socially?
In my chemistry class, I've seen ELL students struggle the most with writing assignments. Often times we ask students a question and have them write a response to the question. For example, early in the year, we had students express their opinion on whether air was matter or not and explain why. One of my student from Brazil asked me if she could write the assignment in Spanish (because she knew I could read Spanish). I told her that she had to try to write it in English and if she absolutely couldn't think of a word, that she could write that word in Spanish. Nonetheless, she openly was not confident in her ability to communicate her ideas through writing in English. I actually consider this to be one of my better examples because she recognized her challenge. I don't know if many of my other ELL students recognize the struggles they have with written English. As a rule, we don't correct spelling and grammar when students turn in assignment, but it seems like that might be needed. I am not convinced, however, that providing corrections alone will help students improve. I think something would need to be done as a part of the class where students have to make an effort to not make spelling and grammatical mistakes. The other obvious challenge for some ELL students is receiving oral directions. Usually, I've had other Spanish speakers translate or just went to the student and repeated the directions more slowly and in a more basic English.
I work at the same school at Andy H. As he said, we have many bilingual students and ELLs. These students speak mainly Spanish, Creole, or Vietnamese. I hypothesize that the high number of ELLs and bilingual students decreases the anxiety over academic or verbal isolation for some students. They may have less of the "only I can't understand the teacher - I'm dumb" syndrome since they can see others struggling as well.
Most teachers and administrators practice assertive discipline strategies in their classrooms. This decreases the occurrences of pleasant conversations between teachers and students. So ELLs may hesitate to ask teachers questions when they really need to!
Positives - My mentor teacher and I teach an inquiry-based science curriculum so we have a lot of hands-on activities. We also do a lot of pair-work to minimize interactions where only one or two people do all the work for a large group.
We have also created a word wall that displays the unit's vocabulary.
Possibilities for the future - Provide translations of the words on the word wall!
(Nick) Teaching both mathematics and history has posed an interesting situation in which I get to see students in very different subject matters struggle with different language issues. In the mathematics course the language becomes a problem for all involved as few have the prerequisite knowledge to know the terms without any explanation. This at least leaves the class is a similar state of confusion as they all work to try and learn things they do not yet have. The history course is quite different as levels of prerequisite knowledge cause huge differences in success rates and understanding. The class has such a wide range of abilities, as all the courses at the school are completely detracted, that it leaves teachers needed to teach all different levels of learners. It is an extremely challenging task. However, this can be done better as few teachers in the school bother to go over and explain vocabulary that is difficult-operating instead more on the you either know it or you do not premise.
East Boston High School poses many problems for ELL students. The school is majority minority and the majority of those students are Hispanic. This causes difficulty in our classroom because we have a few students who do not speak english very well and neither I nor my mentor teacher speaks Spanish. We have tried to use bi-lingual students to translate in class but when they are unavailable, it causes problems for the ELL students Additionally, I need to become more aware of the language I use to explain math. I have caught myself using words that are meant to refer to the same math process but are different in english. For example I have used the phrases "expand" and "break down" to refer to the same math process although these have opposite definitions in English
I too work at the same school as julie and andy. As a writing teacher my entire class can prove difficult for ELL's. As Holly mentioned, high ceilings make being able to hear us when we lecture difficult for students, as well as being able to hear students when having discussions in class. However, because it is writing and our class is pass fail, mostly focussed on improving the skills the students came in, i feel that ell's will feel comfortable writing in journals where they can practice the language on their own, with no one judging them. Furthermore, because we have many class discussions and conference individually with our students, I feel that my ELL students will find us more approachable. As Julie mentioned, having a world wall with translations would be beneficial. A math teacher has all the mathematical terms she covers during the year in both spanish and english, and she uses spanish and english during the class. Unfortunately, we have ELL's that speak many other languages, the two ELL's I have in my class are both Romanian, so this may prove difficult and perhaps make them feel marginalized if only certain languages are being featured in class.
I just came from my placement site where I attended a very tense meeting about the drastic budget cuts in BPS and the affects they will have on teachers at Brighton. Currently 15 teachers stand to lose their jobs, among them ELL and ELA teachers, as well as 50% cut on supplies (goodbye photocopying, let alone resource texts). These classes are already over-flowing and I can only imagine the reduction in support and resources that will occur once the 2009/2010 fiscal year actually begins.
I am lucky to be working with a mentor teacher in an 11th grade Literature class who speaks several languages and uses these to the students' advantage. He is explicit about valuing students' L1s, particularly when we are engaged in vocabulary instruction. He deliberately prompts students to use cognates in their L1 during definition processes. The drawbacks of the environment include a high amount of verbal instruction (not a lot of written directions, for instance) and not very many visual cues in general. The classroom is also very teacher centered, which means that the students who are loudest during discussion are the students who already are proficient orally.
[Amelie] I will write about one student that it outside the general story of ELLs, but too common. He is an older student from Somalia, socially awkward, and with limited skills. He puts his head down for most classes, or at times acts out. He writing is very limited and his reading even more so. I believe he has been transitioned out of the ELL program at the school and so I assume he gets no supports. He has gotten into disciplinary trouble, and I believe is failing history. My teacher does not differentiate her materials, but she does offer many outlets for grades. She gives him some special considerations, but he is in one of her biggest classes. This is just a little vignette about one ELL student, but I know it represents to many more.
In my history classes I have very few students who have been identified as ELLs and yet many more who struggle with academic language in English. I imagine that the pace of our classroom may be difficult for many students in that we may switch from lecture, to group activity, to a video very quickly. Still, these activities usually function to make material accessible to different learning styles so students who may be more literate than conversational or vice versa have a way of accessing the information.
My mentor’s style includes many personal anecdotes and cultural references that I think makes material more accessible for many students but may be confusing to ELLs who can not follow the connections she is making.
The group work and share-outs in our class are also difficult for ELLs. I have witnessed one or two of them struggle with the social dynamic involved, especially when other students are trying to work through the task as quickly as possible. The report-out is often incredibly quick fire with a lot of student enthusiasm and desire to put ideas on the table. This is an interesting reflection for me as I’m finding that many of the very methods (not all) that keep a majority of the class (English-speakers) engaged are synonymous with those that make the experience more difficult for ELLs
I have many of the same students as Robin, and as he mentioned, the vast majority of them seem to be fully bi-lingual. In our classroom, my mentor never comments on their usage of Spanish to communicate with each other, and the students often conduct their private conversations with each other in Spanish.
My mentor teacher frequently stops during class to clarify words or concepts for the benefit of the students in the class. Her frequent pauses to gauge understanding seem to function as one version of providing SEI to students; not only does she clarify what students seem unsure of, but she provides frequent definitions and synonyms for difficult words. While the pace of the class is therefore slow at times, I think her method of delivery makes the material more comprehensible to all of the students in class.
Our class is very challenging for ELL students because we deal with very difficult literature. We are studying The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet and various poems by 19th Century authors. The ELL students struggle a lot. They are not even fluent in reading modern English, and they are given very Shakespeare texts without much scaffolding. Also, our class focus is on writing. So even when the students do not understand their reading, they are asked to write about the given text. Although our ELL students are very hardworking and patient, they are not doing well in our class. Most of them are getting C’s and D’s.
I feel that the ELL students in our class are not getting enough encouragement to ask questions. Because the majority of the students are native English speakers, the ELL students do not feel comfortable asking basic comprehension questions during class.
My mentor teacher does try to use her knowledge of Spanish to help the Spanish-speaking ELL students, but the one Vietnamese ELL student in our classroom cannot get such attention.
Physically, the classroom poses a few logistical problems that are annoying to a native language speaker, but might appear as actual hindrances to an ELL. For example, because of the high ceilings, we have somewhat poor acoustics, which causes a slight echo and distortion of sound. When the person speaking doesn't articulate clearly or with enough volume, it makes it hard to understand. We usually end up asking students to repeat themselves, and even then, most of the time, I decipher from the context of the conversation, and from inferring, to some extent, what they are going to say. If you take away that context and strong capability of inference, I imagine that the very basic act of hearing voices to understand the literal words makes an already difficult undertaking even more so. The acoustics, coupled with our classroom's academic dynamic that favors and focuses on reading and writing, and tends to ignore the other two language arts of listening and speaking, creates an atmosphere that is often disruptively loud or resonating with an exasperating undercurrent of chatter. In short, oral language, through which most information is conveyed in our classroom, is not the easiest to understand. Though we are an English class, we have not created a visually rich language environment either.
ReplyDeleteThe social dynamic of the class is one that hasn't yet mastered the essentials, purposes, or spirit of group work. As a result, ELLs do not benefit from the help of classmates, and potential exchanges (both social and academic) that might produce great benefits, are rendered valueless. Vocabulary tends to be taught as a do-it-yourself, look-it-up and write-some-sentences activity, which I imagine is difficult for all students, but especially ELLs who rely so heavily on context and words being embedded in meaning. My teaching style tends to be very fast-paced; I talk quickly. This fact, in addition to my tendency to go off on explanatory tangents (that wouldn't necessarily cause problems for a native speaker who could follow the disparate train of thought, but that resemble great leaps in subject and topic to an ELL)would be challenging as well. Lastly, our texts this year, especially the two plays, rely heavily on colloquialisms and poetic forms of English.
My classroom is co-taught by a biology teacher and a special education teacher, and it has a class size limit of 12 students. It is the ideal learning environment for teachers to be able to address students individual needs. Two of our students have IEPs that alert us that they are ELLs. I suspect that three other students are ELLs... so that's nearly half the class.
ReplyDeleteSince I am only in the classroom twice a week and because I am cranky from finals, my view is biased. Some of the positives that I see in class are that we are able to break down into groups of six or fewer and address individual questions, and we have ready access to students' IEPs. The school is well-resourced; we brought in a Portuguese translator for one ELL student. We incorporate visuals into our curriculum and hands-on activities for both special ed and ELL students... really for all students. We have several sets of biology texts at different reading levels, which gives students greater access to the curriculum content.
The challenges that we face:
1. If the assignment is to search the web to find material about a particular topic, our students struggle to identify the key words that would narrow their search. We could provide students with some key science web resources. We could grade both text article and video feeds as valid resources.
2. One ELL student told me that science teachers use complicated words when they give lectures. A challenge for me is to be able to predict what words students will have trouble with. Another challenge is to find a useful way for students to be able to tell me when they don't understand a word, whether that is writing it down phonetically and asking anonymously or asking verbally during class.
3. Finding ways to effectively communicate with other staff in the school about our students. For example, one ELL student excelled in his chemistry class this year, but is failing our biology class. We have brought in a translator for this student, and she is getting before school one-on-one tutoring. We could/should speak directly with her chemistry teacher and the ELL specialists in the school in order to better serve this student.
4. The atmosphere of the class is sometimes uncomfortable for students. During student presentations early in the semester, classmates laughed at each other, without much consequence from the teaching staff. This precedence makes it more difficult for students. Our challenge is creating a low-anxiety environment for class discussion.
5. It is difficult to assign readings that meet students at their ability levels. Our challenge is to make texts accessible without decreasing the exposure to high-level content.
6. My personal challenge is an expectation that students should be able to read high level texts by eleventh grade, and that they already have the willingness to work through difficult materials. Despite the diversity in my current classroom, I have not incorporated supports for ELL students and poor readers into my lesson plans. My challenge is to change my mindset for how high level science content should be taught, and to build a repertoire of strategies that I can use in my classroom.
I am having a bit of a difficult time with this question, since, as far as I am aware, there are not ELL students in my classes.
ReplyDeleteTwo things come to mind. First, the variety of activities we go through in any given class. Students go from lecture, to group work, to sharing out. In one way, having these different dynamics is helpful, in another, it might feel choppy and not allow enough continuous application of one dynamic for the student to gain competence.
A second area, is that the class is very much text and conversation centered. We do not bring visual aides or other media very often. I think we could potentially build up or activate background knowledge for ELL's more effectively if we used more than text to activate texts (pictures, music, objects).
Like Holly's class, my class is still working on building a dynamic where they listen to and interact with each others thoughts. Our room is set up in a circle, so conversations can take place, and students also move desks into smaller groups; but, there is more work to be done as the teachers in conveying that learning from each other is of value.
OMG. I just have to say--and I know we are not to use IMspeak but I just could not help it just then, so I apologize--that reading the 21 page excerpt from Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, despite the detection of numerous potentialities for ELLs to experience befuddlement, was the most delightful homework I have had in my many moons at HGSE. So thank you instructors for that.
ReplyDeleteNow, regarding my classroom, there are many circumstances which may set ELLs up to fail, the foremost of which comes to mind being that my mentor expressly, and often, advocates for students not speaking any Spanish in the classroom though we definitely have a predominance of Spanish speakers. While in a sense there is nothing she can do to stop students from doing this--she sometimes marks it down as a negative on their conduct grade tally sheet thingies--she at least looks disapproving most times. She does have reasons for asking students to stick to English which I won't go into here. Suffice it to say that we hold different opinions on the matter.
Another thing that I find curious is that my mentor hardly ever does pre-learning activities to access prior knowledge, or, if she does do them, I just haven't been there on those days (which is entirely possible since we were only at sites 2 days/week in the fall). As with Holly's classroom, mine has not yet seen much emphasis on those "other" language arts of listening (except to the teacher(s)), speaking, and (I'm adding this one) viewing; nor is my class--though ELA--visually literacy-rich. I have not seen any IEPs although I am aware that they exist in theory. Oh yes, we also have students for whom group work is challenging (although I admit that perhaps we have not scaffolded them enough there) both because of lack of student respect for peer contributions and because our classroom design is not necessarily conducive to deep group discussions. Furthermore, my mentor's style (and maybe mine?) is somewhat teacher-centered and didactic, although it seems to me that she tries to engage students in discussion (but another "problem" we have is that the Einsteins in the class shout out answers and/or are disruptive if they are bored) that often elicits responses from only a few, with the majority of our ELLs remaining silent (and not having a chance to speak, since she grasps those few constant commentators' nuggets of wisdom as evidence of comprehension and moves on--and I can't say that doing this is entirely unreasonable of her or that I fault her for this. I have no idea how to slow down instruction such that there would be more guided-learning and/or wait time for the ELLs.).
There are probably other classroom characteristics which are not the most conducive to teaching ELLs, but I don't want to continually air our dirty laundry--it makes me feel like I'm dissing my mentor, and I don't want to feel that way because I actually like and admire her--so I will only make one final reference to my aforementioned comments (see Day 1 of the blog) regarding our almost constant use of un-navigable texts.
Oh yeah--I was also supposed to remind Claire here to compile a list of questions TEPers can take to resource personnel (e.g. reading specialists or SEI instructors) in our building regarding ELLs and their reading abilities. Included on that list can also be (1) information regarding how teachers can tell whether a student needs reading instruction or just needs more comprehension strategies, scaffolding to access a text, etc. and (2) some concrete strategies to try out in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteWe have a large number of Spanish speakers in our classes but almost all are fully bilingual. There are two that are less so. One male told me once when attempting a math word problem that he had an issue with comprehension. Generally at other math he is excellent. The mentor teacher very rarely uses word problems so I have only seen the issue arise once and helped him on that occasion.
ReplyDeleteThere is a girl in another class who is quite shy with teachers although social with friends. Her math performance is in line with the majority of students in the class which is to say somewhat mediocre. The class has very few behavioral rules resulting in a social atmosphere that provides ample opportunity for the student to talk to and work with friends.
The mentor teacher is very verbal and conducts most classes in a teacher-led style. Examples are worked through on the whiteboard and discussed. There is very little reference to a textbook and on the occasions when there is, it is for simple examples with illustrations or equations. There are almost no handouts.
My style is less verbal and I tend to make more use of word problems. I intend to regularly assess the comprehension and performance of the tow students mentioned above over the semester. I am also aware that, not only do I have a different accent, but my vocabulary is often different in general conversation and with regard to math terms. This may pose problems for all students at times but especially so for anyone who is an ELL. I will be alert to this possibility.
Robin
I am in a middle school science classroom in Cambridge. I do not know the exact numbers of bilingual or ELL students, but there are definitely students who fall into both categories. As we’ve been reading about and discussing, the ELL students seem to have a variety of backgrounds, both academic and personal, so the challenges depend on the individual student. I have experience with some of these students while others I do not know much about. My mentor teacher and I have been talking about some of these students, what their challenges are, and what we might do to help them. One of the challenges is making the time in a classroom of more than 20 students to check in and gauge individual progress and difficulties. In some cases, it feels like we are still in the information-gathering stage, while other students’ needs are more clear-cut, at least to my mentor teacher who sees them much more than I do. Another challenge is that some classes have a high percentage of kids who engage in lively verbal conversations about the material, and there is little written on the board or provided visually. We do a lot of labs, which are great, but there can also be a lot of talk, which I imagine is harder for ELLs.
ReplyDeleteAs other people have mentioned, acoustics are poor in my classroom. I often have to ask students to speak up and I worry that I sometimes allow my own voice to get too quiet to be heard clearly. We have significant numbers of ELLs in our classroom. The biggest native language groups are Spanish, Vietnamese and Creole but we also have students whose parents speak Haitian, Armenian and Dutch. We have significant numbers of native English speakers as well.
ReplyDeleteOne challenge students may face in our classroom is that most of our lessons rely to some degree on Powerpoint presentations. For students who are struggling with English it may be harder to keep up with the pace of slides where a whiteboard / blackboard would offer them the opportunity to refer back to previously presented information. Also, with so many language groups it often happens that two ell students who do not share a native language end up working together. I'm not sure that if this is more difficult for the students than other pairings but Shannon's comment in class suggests it may be. Finally, while we do a good job of presenting mathematical content I think our curriculum is weak in the area of preparing students for the kind of word problems they will encounter on the MCAS. This is a problem for all students but will be a particular challenge for ELL students.
I am in a high school math classroom in Cambridge. There are not many ELL students and those who have an L2 are relatively proficient. The one student who is an ELL has advanced math skills and prefers to work independently. My mentor and I allow ample time for group work during class; our classroom setup (round tables) also supports collaboration.
ReplyDeleteThere have not been any projects in either of the two Algebra classes, therefore it is difficult to assess what this student really understands. He is always the first student to finish worksheets with extreme accuracy. However, to assess his language skills through alternative assessments, such as group projects or presentations, I would provide both visual and verbal directions and explanations to maximize language acquisition.
When I take over full-time responsibilities at my HS site, the material that we study will be slightly different than the material of the previous chapters. I am beginning a unit on trigonometry and intend to focus heavily on trigonometric applications.
ReplyDeleteThat said, there may be some challenges that arise for ELLs (however, my students are all 11th/12th graders and most, if not all, are very proficient in their second language). The most challenging obstacle that I forsee is my plan to present numerous word problems as assignments and assessments. Doing so requires students to sift through written problems and uncover the components necessary to solve the problem. Students will limited English proficiency may have a hard time doing this.
The second potential challenge comes with the use of new vocabulary in trigonometry. New words defining the trigonometric functions and specific angle orientations could be problematic as ELL students attempt to place them within the context of the problems presented throughout the course.
Hmmmm. . . this should be interesting. Being that I have 'honors' students, English is their native language, however, I have come to learn that many of them are children of immigrants so English may very well be their L2.
ReplyDeleteI definitely believe that some of the language included throughout the syllabus and in some of the discussions would be very difficult for an ELL to comprehend but because my mentor teacher and I do a great job at asking students if they are familiar with particular vocabulary words, this may not be as threatening. Fortunately my mentor teacher and I do not find using 'big' words during instruction necessary. . .I mean, it's history not English. Vocabulary is necessary but too much can be overwhelming for any studnet.
However, I have noticed that we have a couple of international students (foreign exchange) who have told me that some of the word usage on exams and classwork is difficult to comprehend.
Being at Brighton, and immersed in a a history department that is inclusive within a school that has no other inclusive programs has posed to be extremely difficult, not just for the ELL students, but for the enter class as the range of student knowledge in the classroom is cavernous.
ReplyDeleteMuch of my stories are similar to those already talked about so I am going to focus on the problems that are posed for ELL students - in addition to the whole class - when the classroom is not a safe space conducive for learning. In particular, I managed to give the class a reading a few months ago that was way too difficult. While most of the class does not participate generally, this day I had almost no participation and some resistance from students about trying to get all the individuals to read.
The realization I made from this experience was creating that safe space for learning is crucial for actually having the ability to read a class and why you might get resistance to an activity. But more importantly, the creation of safe space may allow the ELL students and the smartest students feel comfortable to make mistakes, to struggle, to be diligent, and to learn despite the overwhelming nature of history learning.
On other aside is the use of primary source documents in history. Primary sources are much more complex than I ever realized and have so much nuance and intricacy that all students need high levels of scaffolding to learn how to interpret them. The introduction of vocabulary words is really important in history, but sometimes I do wonder where to even start when it comes to teaching vocabulary.
In regards to ELL students, I can not identify any that are definitively ELL but I have several that speak other languages fluently. My main challenge in regards to ELL students is a challenge that I have with all of my students. I assume that my students have a vocabulary and comprehension at a much higher level. For example, I thought that all should know about chromotography from Chemistry but that was not the case.
ReplyDeleteOne effective method in teaching the students about diffusion was not only a lab that illustrated, via color, the concept was a silent demonstration that one of the teachers used to model instructions to the students. I was surprised at how effective this method was in putting forth to the students how to finish the lab. It was very clear what they were to do, in order, along with the materials necessary for completion. This lab and resulting concept was taught without any use of spoken language.
Melissa
The pre-calculus class I work in showed me the beauty of friendship. In this class, students are allowed to choose their own seats which are in groups of six. Since the beginning of the year, the three ELL students as well as two bi-lingual students sit at the same table. Since the beginning of the year, the students have worked together on whatever is assigned to not only get the correct answer but also to help each other understand. They translate what the teacher says, specifically directions and one-on-one help sessions. However, the majority of the time they speak in English until they need clarification on specific words or phrases.
ReplyDeleteThe pre-calculus students are also assigned to ‘read the text’ for homework. This poses some challenges to ELL students as the text contains many applications which are usually very abstract. Finally, students take notes by copying what my mentor teacher writes on the overhead. I think this could be a difficult task for ELL students because they are then focused on writing instead of understanding.
Similar to Dave, when I start teaching in a few weeks, my teaching style and methods will focus more on cooperative learning. That begin said, I know I need to be aware of the word problems and applications I use as well how I assign groups.
Betsy
Similar to Melissa, I have several students in my classroom that are fluent in another language but I am not sure (with a few exceptions) if that is their L1 or L2. Our ELL student's L1s vary from Portuguese and Spanish to an Ethiopian language. The school has several resources for ELL students, however, like SPED services, I rarely see them employed in our classroom. I have only seen an aid in the classroom once.
ReplyDeleteOur Ocean Science class is a higher level science course that is extremely rigorous. ELL students may be challenged in many ways. The class culture is such that students are expected to answer questions using scientific terms. My mentor teacher is also very articulate and uses advanced vocabulary in his lectures (his Irish accent might also be difficult for students to understand). My mentor teacher supports students in the acquisition of vocabulary by reviewing all scientific terms orally and by writing the definitions on the board. He then uses that vocabulary repeatedly throughout the class to reinforce it, often reviewing the definitions of terms multiple times. The class utilizes a variety of pedagogical strategies to convey course concepts. These include videos, news articles, text books, group projects, labs, the construction of models and maps, etc. Some of these activities would be very demanding for ELL students (including lectures, news articles, and reading from the text). Many of these activities, however, are supported by additional activities that are more visual or through work in small groups. To better support ELL students we should improve the structure group work to increase equal participation.
Someone in class yesterday suggested turning on the subtitles when watching videos. While this would be very helpful if you had students with limited English proficiency I wonder if it would make that much of a difference for those with high proficiency. I could also imagine it being a distraction for students (whose L1 is English). I would probably be more likely to pay attention to the Spanish subtitles to practice my Spanish than pay attention to the content of the video. What if the subtitles were in English? This might be less of a distraction but could help ELL students by providing another avenue for comprehension.
My classroom is inter-disciplinary, so the study of English is combined with world history.
ReplyDeleteThe challenges that may exist in my classroom for ELLs are also challenges that affect all students in general:
1. Social dynamics - group work is common in my classroom (it is more common than individual work) and students must be able to work well together in order to accomplish the assignment. Everyone is expected to contribute/participate, and this does not always happen. Most of the time, assessment of group work is conversation-based. This can be difficult for students who lack confidence in their thoughts and how they express them, especially when the discussions moves quickly based on how people talk.
2. Attention/focus - because the class relies heavily on group work and interactive assignments/activities, my mentor and I often times give students long, detailed instructions, and students tend to zone out or get confused.
3. Lack of constant/consistent scaffolding - due to the large amount of content that must be covered in history and language arts, most of the time my instructor tends to assess student understanding through students who can quickly comprehend and analyze what is being taught. The same students tend to do most of the participation. Because of this, the struggling students tend to fall further behind.
Despite the lack of scaffolding, my mentor tries to anticipate student problems. She always tries to incorporate visuals in the lessons. She also pauses to explain words that she think students might find confusing.
I work in a pilot school and have only two identified ELL students in my classroom, which may make their issues easier to handle on an individual basis. I foresee two major issues.
ReplyDelete1. I am teaching a de-tracked American literature course. The cultural background knowledge needed for the upcoming unit - American Social Protest Literature - will be substantial. Working them to build an understanding of the context that the literature was written in may present challenges.
2. The literature that we are about to read is quite challenging. Malcolm X, in his autobiography, uses lots of slang and conversational language from the 1960's. Working to understand idioms, figures of speech, etc. may be difficult. In The Color Purple understanding the dialects of the characters is difficult for fluent English speakers and will most likely provide additional challenges for ELL students.
My mentor teacher provides additional assistance to ELL students and struggling readers by providing the opportunity to listen to the book on tape at lunch. I don't know what theory or specialists say about providing audio books as a resource, but it seems to have really helped our ELL to understand The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The classroom that I am now in has a few ELL students. One common pattern I see is that often ELL students are hesitant to ask for help in front of others. Mostly help was sought after class, which is good in the sense that the students were advocating for themselves. The drawback, however, is that the students march through a lesson without understanding what is going on.
ReplyDeleteI would say that there is a lot of inherent differentiation built into the way that my mentor teacher teaches, which will benefit ELL students. She uses a variety of sources, including a multitude of film and visual aids. She oftren tries to present information in more than one format. One pitfall may be that some of the text that is used can be quite difficult and she does not consistently provide vocabulary lists that accompany units. This could be problematic given the academic language that is required to access the sources.
I agree with Eveleen that group work can also be problematic for ELLs. We also do a significant amount of collaborative work in the classroom. Because group work is student-centered, students may not know how to accomodate a peer during small group work or react when a student is confused and not participating. Small group work could be a place where an ELL student may feel more comfortable sharing ideas because the stakes are not as high with a smaller audience. However, students are also expected to participate more in small group work, which may heighten anxiety. Perhaps assigning roles in small group work may ease some of these potential tensions for ELL students.
I am at the same school as Holly, so I have the same issue with the high ceiling acoustics...I have trouble hearing my students too!!! I was just constructing my lesson plans for this week, and it was really gratifying to have specific tools for how to adpat them to my one ELL student. I realized that I'm always thinking about her and never knowing what to actually DO about it...I would just kind of feel vaguely guilty and then move on. Now I can say to myself, okay, explain what this word means or leave it out entirely. It goes back to what we discussed yesterday to helping all students learn, because ultimately I end up making my lesson clearer for everyone (or giving everyone the opportunity to learn a new word that I teach explicitly for the benefit of an ELL student).
ReplyDeleteWe do a lot of collaborative work in our classroom, but since a number of students are English/Spanish bilingual, this actually proves to be a plus. I think I'm lucky because my class is pretty hardworking and people help each other. However, their hard work is not reflected in the ELL student's failing grade. I'm taking over the class this semester and hope to learn more about how to help her.
The class that I am taking over is almost exclusively ELLs that have been mainstreamed in ELA 11. Everything my mentor does keeps this fact in mind; for example, we coordinate vocabulary words with Spanish cognates. The pacing of the class is also rather slow compared to others, and we do a lot of reading aloud.
ReplyDeleteThe challenge, I think, lies within preparing them for other English classrooms that are less supportive. Are we doing enough to make them independent learners? Also, the quality of writing from some of the students is incoherent and involves a lot of guesswork. We rely heavily on class participation to make up for this gap, since students are able to handle academic material more fluently in an oral mode.
There are several ELL students in my mentor teacher's classroom, however she never puts support systems in place for them. She teaches directly from the textbook - students are expected to read and learn. This type of pedagogy is frustrating to be around regardless of ELLs, however it is especially doing a disservice to students with low language proficiency. I have noticed that many students simply give up trying to read and instead goof off, text, or wander the halls.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, there are very few routines in my mentor's classroom. Technically there is a Do Now on the board, but students rarely complete it. Desks are not always in the same formation and the classroom is sometimes messy. Also, my mentor teacher is frequently finishing something up when students walk in the door so she is not giving them her undivided attention. All of these factors contribute to an unwelcoming environment that might be especially intimidating for ELLS.
I don't know if anyone looks at this after posting their original comments, but after reading Shannon's post and noticing her mention of subtitles, I just wanted to say in response that I find English subtitles essential for understanding even though I am a native English speaker and not bilingual. I have hearing issues--even at the theater when sound is amplified I often ask my neighbor what someone on the screen has said-- that are easily cleared up by reading the text at the bottom of the screen. When I watched films in Spanish classes in high school in which subtitles were Spanish, reading text increased my comprehension of the action that was hard to decipher because people were speaking too quickly for my low levels of automaticity. Thus, I would think that subtitles, maybe regardless of the language they were in, would be beneficial. My inclination would be to favor the English subtitles though because being able to decipher the written English would be beneficial to ELLs as an aid for developing their language abilities, whereas providing them the subtext in Spanish could be distracting if the majority of classmates don't read Spanish and could, in a sense, provide them with no incentive to figuring out the English spoken and seen on the screen. One other idea I had was that, if students are high achievers and using Spanish subtitles to supplement their Spanish language learning, I would question if they are also high enough achievers that they will figure out what's happening in the video regardless. To channel Vicki briefly: whether you put on subtitles and which language you use should in part be determined from your purposes for using the video. If part of your purposes is that you want ELLs to understand directions in English, put on English subtitles.
ReplyDeleteWhile we currently have no LEP students in our classroom, I couldn't imagine if we did!
ReplyDeleteThe instruction is primarily lecture, supplemented by homework assignments from the incredibly dense chemistry text (full of academic language). Classwork and labs are also text driven, with directions on sheets of paper with text and no pictures. I could also see the questioning format of lectures to be stressful to ELLs. Also, many of the homework questions from the book are recall questions which would allow students to "hunt" for the right answers. This could inhibit the teacher from being able to see problems before the summative assessment.
On the bright side, our text has some very nice visuals which might help ELLs make sense of difficult language. Also, lab partners can help with text-heavy directions. Hands-on activities in the lab and observations are language-independent, allowing ELLs to feel comfortable and have a sense of efficacy in a place where they might otherwise feel overwhelmed.
As for my own teaching style, I don't know yet what will be a problem. I have mostly taught from my instructor's lesson plans and have yet to implement much of my own style, which is more activity-based. I could still see trouble with lectures, but will hopefully learn enough from this class to support students in my own practice. It will be helpful to reflect on my teaching practice this spring and discover areas where students might struggle, so that I can avoid these when I do have ELLs.
My student teaching site is in a 7/8 humanities class in Cambridge. There are many LEP students in the class, and many other students who speak Haitian Creole, Spanish. Arabic or Portuguese. I've never had an explicit conversation with my mentor teacher about the possibility that the reason why certain student struggle in the class could be language. I think that because there is a separate SEI class for native Portugese speakers at the school, there is a feel like the ELLs are receive services. There are, however, many elements of the classroom environment and class work that could pose a challenge to ELLs and LEP students.
ReplyDeleteMy mentor teacher does a LOT of close readings with students, which is really good. Because we do not follow a state curriculum we can spend a lot of time on each section of text from a nonfiction source, or a news paper article. We use a variety of sources, but many of them are high school even college reading level. For the strongest readers in the class they are a struggle to get through. Even though we move very slowly, I wonder if substitute text that was just a little bit more accessible would give ELLs the confidence to really attack it the way my mentor teacher hope that they will.
My mentor teacher holds high expectations for ALL students, which is also very excellent because it pushes them to try harder. On the other hand, I worry that there is not enough scaffolding in the class, and that students experience more moments of frustration than success. She teaches in a very abstract way, holding very long, and deep, discussions for the attention span of any middle schooler. For ELLs who may be nervous speaking in class, it is inevitable that they may zone-out, especially without and writing or visual exercises during class to reinforce the work or refocus them
I think that my teacher has recently become aware of the need to use multiple sources and a variety of approaches to reach more students. But,it is hard because the skill-level for reading/writing in the class vary greatly.
My classroom is next door to Andy's and we share the same students, so you can refer to his comments regarding the composition of our students (summary: we have various ELL students)
ReplyDeleteI also liked Andy's thoughts on the problem of using PowerPoints, which we also commonly use. In addition to the fact that students can't look back at them, it also slows down class because you have to wait for nearly every student to get the notes down, where as using the board would allow for moving on without completely shortchanging these students.
I would say that the biggest hurdle for ELL students in my classroom, however is the "Notebook." THe notebook is heavily heavily used, there are two pages of notes or writing assignments a day and I think this can become a bit overwhelming for students. in reflecting upon this daily routine I realize that is very little assessment of students oral skills or opportunities for students to their thinking through discussion. For students who are much more comfortable with their English speaking skills than their reading/writing skills (which I would say is the case for all of the ELL students in our class) this prohibits their ability to tackle the larger thematic ideas we want to discuss in class. They may have great ideas about things, but because our way of asking them to process things is almost always a "do-now" which requires a 5-minute writing prompt or some other writing-based homework assignment student got bogged down in writing and never remember to do some thinking as well.
I tend to think that my mentor and I run a fairly ELL friendly classroom. Lectures are rare and students perform most work individually or in pairs. This arrangement allows us to circulate throughout the room and focus on students who are having trouble with the assignment. Also, we try to keep the context and purpose of each activity clearly in front of students. Additionally, we have students read most lengthy textbook or document passages out loud and pause after every other paragraph to guide students in distilling salient points.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, one of our recurring problems has been keeping our academically average and advanced students from becoming bored. We are cognizant of this and continue to experiment with different approaches--usually through homogeneous student-groupings and allowing students to work at their own pace--to engage all learners.
-Matt
Wow, there are a lot of great ideas posted so far! Thanks, everyone!
ReplyDeleteMy mentor teacher teaches an A.P. English class, comprised of mostly seniors and two juniors. On the whole, these are the most "successive" students in the school, success being defined as various things: ability to follow directions and thus do well in classes and so progress; genuine love of learning and discipline; or even that mixture of neurosis and perfectionism that catapults mediocre thinkers into difficult or advanced classes. In any case, as I talked with my mentor teacher about today, these are not the kind of students I will encounter next fall as I begin teaching. There are a few ELL students (Spanish as native language, a few students from a handful of Asian countries, one Arab American student), but on the whole they are successful in the language, though I do note difficulties with idioms, the tendency to write thoughts that would make grammatical sense in another language (I notice this especially with the Spanish speakers, as I have some grasp of the language), or general errors that are still indicative of advanced language acquisition.
As I talked with my mentor teacher, I realized (or re-realized) that a lot of my experience with ELL students this year comes from my biweekly tutoring of 9th grade ESL students. I work one-on-one with students, specifically on English (vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, etc). I'm able to devote all of my attention to these students, something I would not be able to do in a classroom that has even two ELL students. I think one challenge for me is to balance the ELL support with the general curriculum; furthermore, I have to keep in mind the needs and abilities of ALL my students and that can be a bit overwhelming at times. I'm hoping that I can learn general good teaching strategies in this class, ones that will prove useful for all students yet particularly effective for ELL learners.
Oh I meant the most "successful"
ReplyDeleteMy classes are exclusive ELL Sheltered English Instruction math classes. My mentor teacher talks to many of her students in their native languages while she walks around during small group and individual work. The Geometry class is the culminating ELL SEI class for these students, so transitioning them to mainstream classrooms without depriving them of the SEI accommodations is one of our main goals.
ReplyDeleteOne of my main concerns is that putting all of these ELL students together in all the same classes has increased the isolation between them and the mainstream students at my school (both in the classroom and out). How can I, as a student teacher, provide them with a smooth transition to mainstream classrooms both academically and socially?
In my chemistry class, I've seen ELL students struggle the most with writing assignments. Often times we ask students a question and have them write a response to the question. For example, early in the year, we had students express their opinion on whether air was matter or not and explain why. One of my student from Brazil asked me if she could write the assignment in Spanish (because she knew I could read Spanish). I told her that she had to try to write it in English and if she absolutely couldn't think of a word, that she could write that word in Spanish. Nonetheless, she openly was not confident in her ability to communicate her ideas through writing in English. I actually consider this to be one of my better examples because she recognized her challenge. I don't know if many of my other ELL students recognize the struggles they have with written English. As a rule, we don't correct spelling and grammar when students turn in assignment, but it seems like that might be needed. I am not convinced, however, that providing corrections alone will help students improve. I think something would need to be done as a part of the class where students have to make an effort to not make spelling and grammatical mistakes. The other obvious challenge for some ELL students is receiving oral directions. Usually, I've had other Spanish speakers translate or just went to the student and repeated the directions more slowly and in a more basic English.
ReplyDeleteI work at the same school at Andy H. As he said, we have many bilingual students and ELLs. These students speak mainly Spanish, Creole, or Vietnamese. I hypothesize that the high number of ELLs and bilingual students decreases the anxiety over academic or verbal isolation for some students. They may have less of the "only I can't understand the teacher - I'm dumb" syndrome since they can see others struggling as well.
ReplyDeleteMost teachers and administrators practice assertive discipline strategies in their classrooms. This decreases the occurrences of pleasant conversations between teachers and students. So ELLs may hesitate to ask teachers questions when they really need to!
Positives - My mentor teacher and I teach an inquiry-based science curriculum so we have a lot of hands-on activities. We also do a lot of pair-work to minimize interactions where only one or two people do all the work for a large group.
We have also created a word wall that displays the unit's vocabulary.
Possibilities for the future - Provide translations of the words on the word wall!
(Nick) Teaching both mathematics and history has posed an interesting situation in which I get to see students in very different subject matters struggle with different language issues. In the mathematics course the language becomes a problem for all involved as few have the prerequisite knowledge to know the terms without any explanation. This at least leaves the class is a similar state of confusion as they all work to try and learn things they do not yet have. The history course is quite different as levels of prerequisite knowledge cause huge differences in success rates and understanding. The class has such a wide range of abilities, as all the courses at the school are completely detracted, that it leaves teachers needed to teach all different levels of learners. It is an extremely challenging task. However, this can be done better as few teachers in the school bother to go over and explain vocabulary that is difficult-operating instead more on the you either know it or you do not premise.
ReplyDeleteEast Boston High School poses many problems for ELL students. The school is majority minority and the majority of those students are Hispanic. This causes difficulty in our classroom because we have a few students who do not speak english very well and neither I nor my mentor teacher speaks Spanish. We have tried to use bi-lingual students to translate in class but when they are unavailable, it causes problems for the ELL students
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I need to become more aware of the language I use to explain math. I have caught myself using words that are meant to refer to the same math process but are different in english. For example I have used the phrases "expand" and "break down" to refer to the same math process although these have opposite definitions in English
I too work at the same school as julie and andy. As a writing teacher my entire class can prove difficult for ELL's. As Holly mentioned, high ceilings make being able to hear us when we lecture difficult for students, as well as being able to hear students when having discussions in class. However, because it is writing and our class is pass fail, mostly focussed on improving the skills the students came in, i feel that ell's will feel comfortable writing in journals where they can practice the language on their own, with no one judging them. Furthermore, because we have many class discussions and conference individually with our students, I feel that my ELL students will find us more approachable.
ReplyDeleteAs Julie mentioned, having a world wall with translations would be beneficial. A math teacher has all the mathematical terms she covers during the year in both spanish and english, and she uses spanish and english during the class. Unfortunately, we have ELL's that speak many other languages, the two ELL's I have in my class are both Romanian, so this may prove difficult and perhaps make them feel marginalized if only certain languages are being featured in class.
I just came from my placement site where I attended a very tense meeting about the drastic budget cuts in BPS and the affects they will have on teachers at Brighton. Currently 15 teachers stand to lose their jobs, among them ELL and ELA teachers, as well as 50% cut on supplies (goodbye photocopying, let alone resource texts). These classes are already over-flowing and I can only imagine the reduction in support and resources that will occur once the 2009/2010 fiscal year actually begins.
ReplyDeleteI am lucky to be working with a mentor teacher in an 11th grade Literature class who speaks several languages and uses these to the students' advantage. He is explicit about valuing students' L1s, particularly when we are engaged in vocabulary instruction. He deliberately prompts students to use cognates in their L1 during definition processes. The drawbacks of the environment include a high amount of verbal instruction (not a lot of written directions, for instance) and not very many visual cues in general. The classroom is also very teacher centered, which means that the students who are loudest during discussion are the students who already are proficient orally.
[Amelie]
ReplyDeleteI will write about one student that it outside the general story of ELLs, but too common. He is an older student from Somalia, socially awkward, and with limited skills. He puts his head down for most classes, or at times acts out. He writing is very limited and his reading even more so. I believe he has been transitioned out of the ELL program at the school and so I assume he gets no supports. He has gotten into disciplinary trouble, and I believe is failing history. My teacher does not differentiate her materials, but she does offer many outlets for grades. She gives him some special considerations, but he is in one of her biggest classes.
This is just a little vignette about one ELL student, but I know it represents to many more.
In my history classes I have very few students who have been identified as ELLs and yet many more who struggle with academic language in English. I imagine that the pace of our classroom may be difficult for many students in that we may switch from lecture, to group activity, to a video very quickly. Still, these activities usually function to make material accessible to different learning styles so students who may be more literate than conversational or vice versa have a way of accessing the information.
ReplyDeleteMy mentor’s style includes many personal anecdotes and cultural references that I think makes material more accessible for many students but may be confusing to ELLs who can not follow the connections she is making.
The group work and share-outs in our class are also difficult for ELLs. I have witnessed one or two of them struggle with the social dynamic involved, especially when other students are trying to work through the task as quickly as possible. The report-out is often incredibly quick fire with a lot of student enthusiasm and desire to put ideas on the table. This is an interesting reflection for me as I’m finding that many of the very methods (not all) that keep a majority of the class (English-speakers) engaged are synonymous with those that make the experience more difficult for ELLs
I have many of the same students as Robin, and as he mentioned, the vast majority of them seem to be fully bi-lingual. In our classroom, my mentor never comments on their usage of Spanish to communicate with each other, and the students often conduct their private conversations with each other in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteMy mentor teacher frequently stops during class to clarify words or concepts for the benefit of the students in the class. Her frequent pauses to gauge understanding seem to function as one version of providing SEI to students; not only does she clarify what students seem unsure of, but she provides frequent definitions and synonyms for difficult words. While the pace of the class is therefore slow at times, I think her method of delivery makes the material more comprehensible to all of the students in class.
Our class is very challenging for ELL students because we deal with very difficult literature. We are studying The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet and various poems by 19th Century authors. The ELL students struggle a lot. They are not even fluent in reading modern English, and they are given very Shakespeare texts without much scaffolding. Also, our class focus is on writing. So even when the students do not understand their reading, they are asked to write about the given text. Although our ELL students are very hardworking and patient, they are not doing well in our class. Most of them are getting C’s and D’s.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the ELL students in our class are not getting enough encouragement to ask questions. Because the majority of the students are native English speakers, the ELL students do not feel comfortable asking basic comprehension questions during class.
My mentor teacher does try to use her knowledge of Spanish to help the Spanish-speaking ELL students, but the one Vietnamese ELL student in our classroom cannot get such attention.