Task 2: Readings – Freeman & Freeman Chapter 8 & 9
Pre-Posting – Read both of these chapers (8-How Should We Teach Reading to Emergent Bilinguals? & 9-How Can Teacher Help Ells Develop Academic Language?) and consider what they confirm or add to your knowledge of working well with English language learners.
Posting – Review the applications section at the end of each chapter p. 223 & p. 256) identify 2 you would like to try/explore in the future. Please explain why you chose it, what its relevance is for you personally, and your plan for the application you chose. Clarify what you see as the key to English language learners
I feel that engagement is a big key to success. By bringing books to class that get their attention, a whole new avenue can be explored. I have introduced different music using various languages to my students and while I do not have any ELL students, I can see where bringing in music that relates to their culture would be highly intriguing for them. I believe it would spark their interest as the music of different cultures has many unique qualities. We could integrate academic language and help the student to gain some concepts about music that they normally wouldn't grasp. They could learn how the accents and expressions vary from music from their culture to the music of another culture. This gives me some great ideas for the future when talking of music around the world!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great way to help students learn. You are right each different culture of music does have different sounds and symbols used that help it make it sound like that culture. It is a great way to teach about accents, dynamics, etc.
DeleteWord callers exist in the music world as well. These students are notorious for not reading the music but rather trying to play by ear. When I ask them about tempo, they will typically name a dynamic sign (I'm asking for fast or slow, they may tell me loud or soft instead). They truly do not take the time to learn the other concepts because they are too anxious to just 'play' the song. The book talks about how students spend too much time on decoding and not enough time on reading texts that get them absorbed in using their skills of reading. I find that if I use a variety of activities including music reading (using lyrics), activities on the computer (which my students thrive on), and actually playing on their instruments, the students learn faster. They seem to like a variety and get tired or bored of the same method day to day. I have worksheets with word finds that the students need to fill in the missing word but I also have them musically so they need to play the song to figure out the missing note. This encourages them to put it all together and read without even realizing it.
ReplyDeleteCummins' quadrant: quadrant B - cognitively demanding and context embedded
ReplyDeleteEach lesson must be taught in a variety of ways including the use of visuals, hands on, and modeling. There are many different learning types within any one classroom so it is important to use different methods so that we can address as many learning types as possible.
The activity that I just did with my first graders was on rhythm and teaching them the concept of using music notation after they broke down a word into syllables. This activity was presented by me reading the word, having the children spell it, modeling the syllables by clapping, having them echo-clap me, and then seeing if they could decipher and do it themselves. In another lesson on the following day, we used a PowerPoint presentation to show the students visuals of the same words and additional words. We also included pictures of the what the word symbolized (a picture of a cornucopia, the spelling of the word cornucopia, the rhythmic notation, and finally, the musical notation which was placed under the word cornucopia). The following lesson involved an activity that the students needed to create the rhythmic patterns using craft sticks. The teacher demonstrated and spoke the rhythm, the students repeated it and then proceeded to draw the pattern using their craft sticks. After this lesson, the students participated in a group activity where they spoke the rhythms and musical notations as a group and then were able to view the correct answer and speak and clap it. They also did an activity where they played their drum to the rhythm that was demonstrated and shown to them on a card. They were to demonstrate the rhythm, figure out the musical notation, and then demonstrate playing the drum while saying the musical notation. This seems to fit in the cognitively demanding and context embedded quadrant.
teaching one lesson in a variety of ways is great. The only concern i would have with this approach would be not attending to the needs of the high achievers in the class, but there are a litany of pitfalls ahead of us. We all need to keep trying to the best of our ability each day.
DeleteI agree with you, Paul, that sometimes when too much variety is used, then sometimes we can miss some of those high achieving students. However I think depending on your content area, variety has different levels of importance. There are some things that can only be taught one way and there are other things that have multiple answers. Sometimes we have to teach our students how to do things multiple ways. For example, if I am teaching parenting, it will be important to teach it a variety of ways as there are many different ways to parent. It will be important for my students to understand that sometimes parenting can be different for each child in the family and that is ok. Allowing the students to read, discuss, and role-play may be very important to do so that they can understand the concept.
DeleteI think for all learners, but especially ELL students, using the variety of visual, demonstrating, group work, and hands on work is important. It gives the students ample opportunity to grasp the content and the concepts that are being taught while increasing their vocabulary. They are able to see, hear, and do which I think is essential to any age group.
ReplyDeleteFrom page 223 #5 What are some ways you can use bilingual books in your classroom? Thinking of all the opportunities in social studies I believe there will be a multitude of ways to use bilingual books. For the most part I would like to find books that explain an event from history from the “other side”. Having this information with another perspective and in the native language would be very useful to fully examine a historical event. The chapter seemed to be only concerned with Spanish, but taking a more worldly view, this could be done for any language.
ReplyDeleteFrom page 256 #4 The chapter suggests ways to help students write cohesive paragraphs. I was so happy to read about this. I often think back to my own academic career and I think of all the times a teacher said or had on a syllabus, “You will write a 400 page research paper that would be suitable to be used as a national security briefing…” Hyperbole aside, the task regardless of length, width, or breadth was always daunting to me. I have had the thought many times why not challenge the students to write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, then one page? As a teacher you would build the skills needed to write that research paper a step at a time. From a student’s perspective each step would seem surmountable. How do you eat a whale? A bite at a time!
It could be interesting to find a book in Spanish talking about the Spanish/American war. It would be good to find it in the opposite language and the opposite side to have a good discussion.
DeleteI also like how it breaks the papers down into paragraphs as it makes things so much easier. I can kind of relate it to the Thematic Unit we just completed. That project seemed so scary, while it still was, because it was broken down into sections, I felt as though I could tackle it a bit easier.
That would be an interesting find... I'm sure the book is out there somewhere and it would be interesting to hear the lessons in which the teacher would provide to the students.
DeleteYes, I completely agree with you on breaking things down a bit. Students get overwhelmed even if they do know how to write proficiently. Starting with small assignments and making sure they can actually write a sentence, then a paragraph, and then a paper makes complete sense. In my high school days, we weren't assigned large papers but I know it would have been daunting if we were. Even now (like Kaylee mentioned) the Thematic Unit seemed scary but once it was broken down, it wasn't as bad. I am a list maker, so being able to tick things off the list helped. For young students, starting slow and building to the final "paper writing" process is a smart way to go.
I think there are a lot of benefits to offering bilingual books in social studies and history and this is because it's culturally complex and they often contain linguistically challenging vocabulary and grammatical structures, which can be difficult for ELLs.
DeleteI also liked the section about writing cohesive paragraphs. Sometimes this can be a chore all by itself for students that are learning the English language. I did a lot of teaching in a Housing and Interior Design class this semester, especially during the Elements and Principles of Design Units. The students cut out pictures of rooms that they liked at the beginning of the unit. As we went through each principle and element of design the students added a few sentences to a paragraph of information with the new material they were learning about all the principles and elements that they found in their pictures. After the unit is done, it should be much easier for the students to put all these ideas together to write information about it. I think this is a great way to be able to help students learn the academic language that is needed for the content.
ReplyDeleteI also really gravitated to the misconceptions that Kaylee discussed because they are very hot topics in ESL. Most teachers think that for ELLs to be successful in English they should only engage in reading and speaking in English and the research simply does not support this claim. Yes, research does support the ideas of emersion as a means to learn a language, however the implication that a student must only engage in learning one language or reading in one language, out of fear of interference is not only outdated, but pretty much objectively wrong. Yes, students should be immersed in a language to learn it, but simply by being in an English dominated culture they are being immersed and to act like allowing them to read in Spanish or speak to other in their first language at school is detrimental to their developing fluency in English is just an unfair account of what is happening for these students when they are engaged in these activities.
ReplyDeleteAs for the question in the book about keeping bilingual books in the classroom and what the results might, I can say that it is certainly helpful for the student's development, not just in their understanding of the content vocabulary, but in a broader understanding of language as a whole. I would highly recommend that general ed teachers invest in bilingual books because I think it helps students achieve a greater understanding of the content, it helps them feel more represented at school and it creates another opportunity for students to learn from other students. Furthermore, when you allow students to have bilingual resources in school you are encouraging different brain processes and this leads to better test scores, a higher understanding of the vocabulary (because you understand the terminology in two languages) and you are faced with different grammatical structures which encourages you to be more critical of your writing over time. Also, most if not all research suggests that multilingual people have higher IQs than monolingual people and this is because of the simple fact that it allows you to see the world from multiple perspectives and that is because language in many ways guides your actual thought process.
That's a great point - having bilingual books in the classroom is helpful to the students because they may provide a broader understanding of the content. I think that if a student is more comfortable with one language and teachers are trying to get them to learn another language fluently, that this would make complete sense. We are trying to teach literacy in our classrooms, so why not have as many tools available as possible to make it easier on students. Students who struggle (such as ELL students) will gain momentum by having bilingual books to use, in my opinion. I do believe that it creates greater opportunities for them to better understand the material.
DeleteI'm glad that you see the value of bilingual books in the classroom and I do think that most teachers see the value in this, but getting the funds and resources to do this is easier said than done. One important thing to decide is how important it is to you because even when the school doesn't provide the resources, you need to make it a priority and that does sometime require your own funds. I think that if something is worth doing than you should do it and there are tax deductions that can be applied to these sorts of investments, you've just got to be the one to take that step and as someone in ESL I really think it's worth your time and money.
DeleteWhat a great way to implement writing with design. I really like the symbolism, because of my lovely wife I watch more HGTV then a man ought to. As I watch those programs when they redo a room or garden project there is a sense of steps to the project, building up until you get to the final project. To take that idea and apply it a writing skill is genius.
ReplyDeleteDid you see improvement in writing? Did the students feel that growth and success? Again very cool real world story, thank you Kaylee.
That class would be interesting to be in - to see the students translate information from their language to the English language. I think that peers working with each other is a very successful way to achieve this. That's great that you've experienced this and have first hand experience seeing the teaching of students to parents in place. I'm sure there are a lot of young students whom their parents rely on for information in today's world. It must be difficult for the students to carry that kind of responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI think that would be great to have the preschoolers, or any age group, hear a familiar story in both languages. I feel that the younger children would really absorb it and the older students may be intrigued as well. It could be an interesting feedback session to hear what the students understood from each rendition of the story.
As I mentioned in my entry, there are a lot of benefits to having bilingual books in your classroom and this applies to both ESL and non-ESL teachers alike. In the end, it's the responsibility of all teachers to help students and this includes subgroups of students such as ESL and SpEd and that is accomplished through differentiated instruction and student specific resources. Furthermore, we need to think about how ELLs can be served equally to that of the general Ed students and that requires that we provide resources and books in other languages. Obviously this is difficult to do with many different languages in one school, but at the very least we can offer resource links and provide books to the larger ELL groups that exist.
ReplyDelete