Entry #1:  Philosophy on teaching literacy to English Language Learners

I interviewed our school SPED teacher who is also our school’s ELA teacher.  First of all I observed her teach an ELA class with a group of kindergarten, 1^st and 2^nd graders.  The lesson was about the topic of conflict, and I noticed how she drew out the language and context from the students, relating it to the playground to begin with.  She said this is very important so that they connect to the topic and talk from their own experiences.  She finds she has more success with getting them all to talk and share this way.  “I look at the advanced strand of language (from the ELA resource folder) and think about how it relates back to them.”   It’s important to keep it real.  Background knowledge is important so they have something to build on.

She always starts a unit with lessons on listening and talking so that she can see the vocabulary students are naturally using.  Then with further lessons, she plans to pull out and practice more related vocabulary.  They then progress to building sentence structures which she does through teacher modeling.  When students suggest other ways of saying the same thing, she accepts these as long as they are grammatically correct or works to get them that way.  Students then use oral rehearsal before producing a finished written product and also reading their own writing.  The end product is to promote vocabulary and grammar development.  Naturally she believes in differentiation within the mixed grade ELA groups, depending on the individual student’s ability. 

She supports a lot in the classroom, responding to what the teachers tell her about where a student has a specific need related to the curriculum.  She says this is a meaningful way to support and help fill in specific gaps that students have.  “We have to be thoughtful to allow them to access the curriculum the same way a native speaker could.”  “I always give them a language objective so that they are accountable.”

Entry #3:  Relationship between oral language and the reading process for ELL students

Oral language exercises are an important part of the learning process for English Language Learners.  Through talking with peers, they are able to listen to and use vocabulary, discuss background knowledge of a topic and also discuss how they understand new concepts.  Doing this prior to reading or during reading, aids the understanding of new texts.  Teachers in all content areas need to provide language support through oral opportunities, so that ELLs can access the same content as others at their grade level, by understanding content related texts.  “The development of the spoken forms of language are essential for second language learners as a bridge to the more academic language associated with learning in school, and with the development of literacy,” (Gibbons, 2002, p.14).  As students encounter academic language in school books and papers they will have more chance of recalling the meanings when they have been active participants in talking using the vocabulary, and hopefully being able to refer to key vocabulary displayed on anchor wall charts as an added support.  Allowing students to talk about texts in structured ways also encourages them to ask questions, clarify meanings and misconceptions, and reword.  Conferencing or talking with a teacher or proficient English speaker about texts, allows ELL students to pick up vocabulary and extend sentence structures through prompting and questioning.  “Producing language encourages learners to process the language more deeply than is required when they simply listen,” (Gibbons, 2002, p.15).  Without discussions, understanding and accessing texts would be much less comprehensible for our ELLs.

References   

Freeman D.E. & Freeman Y.S. (2004).  Essential linguistics: What you need to teach.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gibbons P. (2002).  Scaffolding language scaffolding learning: Teaching second language learners in the mainstream classroom.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.