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Materials for Class
Useful Links for Class
- No Dentist Left Behind
- Standardized Testing- Simpson's Episode
- Assessing Students through Different Methods
- Spelling Assessments/Games
- Rubric Maker
- Discipline- Simpsons Episode
- CHP 12- Article 2
- CHP 12- Article 1
- Mr. Holland's Opus Movie Clip
- ChP 10- Constructive Classrooms
- CHP 10- Detailed info on constructivism
- CHP 10- Hyptermedia with constructivist approach
- CHP 10- Constrasting direct and constructivist approaches
- CHP 10-High/scope program for teaching
- CHP 9- Master Theater
- CHP 8- Youtube clip
- CHP 8- Memory Forum
- CHP 8- Memory Games
- CHP 8- Memory Games (NEMO)
- CHP 8- Boosting Student Memory
- CHP 7- Article about Difficult Child
- CHP 7- Management Scenarios
- CHP 7- Samples of Reinforcement
- CHP 7- Management Inventory
- FREE MUSIC
- Citation Machine!
- Library - for Research Articles
- APA Style guidelines
- Girls and Computers Video
- Links for Chapter 4
- Web Sites for Chapter 3
- Sample Video from EDPS 530 Student
- Possible topics for Video Presentation
- Article: Standards for Good Teaching
About Me
- Dr. Pratt
- Office Hours: Wednesday 1:00-4:00 TECH 206 (Education Office) Phone: 785-5578 email: dpratt@pnc.edu
I feel that I possess the sincere desire to assist English language learners in mastering our complex language and feeling confident in their communication skills. Beyond this, I do not feel as though I have learned all that I need to in order to fully service these children. It concerns me that conceptual learning is pushed aside or minimized because of the focus on skills practice. I worry that I cannot assist these children in maintaining and improving their native language skills. I am happy to say that my school system will begin having ESL teachers in the classrooms instead of pulling these children out of class to work with them, beginning this Fall. One resource available to me is this specialized instructor. They help to assess each child and set goals. Websites and additions to teacher editions have been useful in assisting these young learners by catching their interest. In my experience, ESL students seem so focused on the work ahead of them that they do not get excited about learning. These resources have great ideas for getting them excited about learning.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I struggled with and learned from a great deal last year. I had a student from India, who obviously did not speak English as his first language. He has lived in the United States for almost all of his life, but speaks little to no English when he is at home. He struggled with just basic vocabulary. For example, he did not know the word attic. He could not make a connection between the word and the room. He was pulled out of class two times a week for remediation, but that wasn't consistent. He often times didn't seem excited or happy with being pulled out of regular instruction time. He had a great work ethic and wanted to do well, but struggled in all subject areas. I partnered him up for activities with a peer buddy, who was a good friend of his. This seemed to help. This was a time, that I would have loved to have an ESL expert in our building or in my classroom to assist me in instruction. I did work with a ESL assistant and coach once during the year, who gave me great ideas to modify curriculum to meet his needs. I always wanted to give him an opportunity to bring his cultural experiences into the classroom. He seemed uncomfortable with this at first but opened up tremendously as the year progressed. My students were excellent, and they helped him to understand directions and curriculum as well as helped me to understand him sometimes when I was confused. I did reference my fellow colleagues who had experience working with ESL students, and they also provided great ideas. Looking back, I wish I would have done more with giving him reading materials in his native language or having him teach the rest of the class various topics of interest to him. It was a learning year for me, and I still have so much to learn!
ReplyDeleteI'm not very prepared at all in my opinion. I haven't had much experience or training in this area. While I did have two students who were classified as ESL this year, they were both very advanced, and in fact, will no longer be receiving direct services next year. I tried to do the best that I could to take time to have them re-explain the vocabulary to me or the process that they were to complete in order to ensure better understanding on their part.
ReplyDeleteWe do have a parttime ESL teacher that comes in to work with the students, but she said that they rarely have questions with the math homework.
I have never had any sort of formal training with this, but I also don't feel like a total idiot. I've learned a lot by experiencing these children in my classroom, and I hope my learning was not at their expense. Sometimes there is an acceptance problem by the other students,but my biggest worry for these children is that they feel inadequate at school. At my school, ESL students are pulled out of the classroom for 1-on-1 with a specialized aide who sets goals and gives us ideas to help within the classroom. I also sometimes use ideas from the teacher editions textbooks when trying to help ESL students feel successful. It's interesting and helpful to the non-ESL students if you read a simple picture book to them in a different language and ask them what the story was about, etc. This has really gotten English speaking students to better understand how class might be for an ESL student. It is just great that most children are so accepting of those around them.
ReplyDeleteI feel if I had a student whose native language was Spanish I would be able to help them adjust to our class and school. I only say this because I studied Spanish for eight years in high school and college. However, if it was any other language I would be stumped. In one of the other fifth grade sections we had a student from Ethiopia who moved here at the end of July and started school three weeks later. This student also had a brother in first grade and were both adopted by a family in our school. Ben received one-on-one instructional aide time for two hours a day, but she wasn’t classified as an ESL specialist. If given this extra help in the classroom, the student would obviously be able to learn and review more material. Our district hasn’t provided any training on ESL or similar programs. However, I feel it would just be like teaching a first grade and you would have to start with the basics of the language, since it is extremely difficult. I know our language and reading book provide supplement material for ESL learners. I know my district would provide me with resources, whether it is an aide or books to supplement material, if I needed them. My biggest concern would be that the student would feel disheartened and overwhelmed by all this new information and in a sense just give up or become frustrated.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I wish I had more formalized ESL training, I feel equipped to meet basic needs of ESL students who enter my classroom. I had a student who qualified for ESL services a few years ago. Most difficulties she experienced showed up in content-specific vocabulary, especially in the area of math problem-solving. She also had difficulty making longer written work sound fluent according to English standards. I think as an educator without specific ESL training, it helps to be aware of struggles these students may encounter, both socially and academically. With this in mind, classroom teachers can begin to build support within the classroom through more individualized attention and by setting up peers who work well with the ESL student(s). In addition to this form of academic support, I feel it is important to make efforts to know more about the cultural background of ESL students in order to make connections as you would with other children whose background may be more similar to your own. At our own school, we have an ESL aide position available to students who need additional instructional support outside the classroom. Some of this ESL instruction takes place during or immediately after school, depending on the specific need of the students. As teachers, we can also turn to support materials that seem to come standard with most content series and offer resources for ESL learners. I think the authors make an important point that helping an ESL child learn is about looking at individual needs of each student because the category of ESL encompasses such a wide range of diverse students with varying degrees of English proficiency.
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago I had a student from Chile join my class in May. To be honest, I was panicing because I was afraid he wouldn't know much English, and I have had less than minimal (if any) training on how to help ENL students. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to help him and that he would be miserable. Thank goodness he was able to communicate pretty well. He was given an hour a day of one-on-one with an aide. The aide mostly worked on vocabulary and language with him. I modified assignments and would make sure to ask him if he understood what I meant by certain words. He didn't have a problem letting me know when he didn't understand. I would explain it in different ways, and this seemed to work. An extra perk of this was that the additional discussion time also helped my struggling students. Another resource I used was a translator site on the web. This was helpful for things like better understanding the words used in the Preamble and to help communicate with his parents. They spoke less English than he did. This year, I had his little brother. In less than 1 1/2 years, his little brother has become a proficient English speaker along with his parents. As a matter of fact, he is trilingual. I also had a child from Spain, and the same was true of him. He has actually spoken 4 languages in his short life. I do have 2 other children who were born and raised in Valparaiso, but do qualify for ENL services. They received one hour of direct services a day with an aide. The aide used the ENL materials that came with our reading program to help them. I also had some games that dealt with idioms, "propositions of placement", and other language "issues" that can be difficult to understand. Both of these students have made great progress this year. I am a little more comfortable dealing with ENL students, but I would hate to deal with it without the help of the extra one-on-one (or two-on-one) time the aides give.
ReplyDeleteI have had a couple students who have needed ESL services. Fortunately, we have an instructional aide that works with our ESL students. Unfortunately, that only involves 30 minute sessions a couple times a week. That obviously is not enough. So, it is up to the classroom teacher to continue on. I feel slightly unprepared to assist ESL students as I have had no formal training or preparation. It may be easier in my situation because of the instructional level of the students. The skills that the ESL instructor teaches coincide with what is going on in the classroom. At the first grade level, all students are learning the alphabetic principle, high-frequency words, word attack skills, and reading fluency. Since we draw on background knowledge while learning, we can share experiences and provide vocabulary enrichment with the ESL students at the same time. I think it might be more difficult for middle school or high school students to try and "catch up" with their English speaking peers. I don't know what resources are available to classroom teachers for providing support to ESL students. Perhaps that would be a good inservice topic for professional development days.
ReplyDeleteFor the past few years, I have had the United Nations class. I have had 3 Mexican children, a Romanian student, and a child from the Philippines. Luckily, all of these students spoke English fairly well, but the problem was communicating with the parents. Even though I have had 6 years of Spanish, I have lost most of my conversational skills. I have not had any formal training for working with ESL students, but I fill confident that I would be able to help them. The biggest challenge for these students is fitting in socially. They have many more barriers than just language. The children I have had in my class have strong parent support, which most of my students do not. My ESL students would never think of disrespecting an adult and they follow the rules. They have a hard time understanding why others do not. They do not mix well with kids that do not follow the rules, so finding friends is difficult. I always make a point to partner these students with my other students that follow the procedures and can be good leaders. My ESL students do have an assistant that works with them one-on-one plus I give them extra help.
ReplyDeleteI feel woefully unprepared to teach ENL/ESL students. I know our school has an itinerant ENL teacher who provides services to these students (primarily Latino), but most students who come through my classroom door are at a higher level of English mastery. Fortunately, I'm not being held responsible for teaching them to read or write. Luckily also for me, music translates very well in different cultures, and I have a great text system for band and chorus that has a diversity of tunes, with explanations of the cultural importance and impact of music.
ReplyDeleteI did have a student this year who signed up for band, but when I contacted the home to arrange an instrument try-out, the parent had very limited English skills. I utilized an administrator in our school corporation with good Spanish skills, and was able to bring the family in and successfully match the student with an instrument. Because of this, we're going to make a Spanish-language version of our info sheet for future years.
I have to admit, I don't feel confident at all in assisting ESL students. The only Spanish I have had was almost 20 years ago! I do have a Spanish/English dictionary in my classroom, not that that will do much good. I can say that I have been in my district for 11 years and have not had to deal with this yet. I'm sure the key word is yet. And I'm sure I should look into how I would handle this. I really don't know if we have resources. I had a child once that English was the second language in her home. She spoke flawless English, however, she was pulled during testing and had an IEP for reading and writing to get extra time if needed. This was facilitated through our counselor.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with many others in that I don't feel all that prepared to teach ESL (ENL, ELL) students. Besides some Spanish classes in high school, I haven't had any other formal training. It was never required for elem. ed. students at IU to take a foreign language during undergrad. I found that very surprising! I did have one ESL student this year, and a boy who had tested out of being considered ESL at the beginning of the year. (LasLinks I think was the test?) This student had ESL tutoring 4 days/week in the morning before school started from an aide and also left my room during the ISTEP tests to work with an aide. When teachers encounter language barriers with students there can be many struggles with meeting that student's cognitive, social, and emtional needs. I would feel better if there was professional development provided to teachers, at the very least. Of course taking actual Spanish (or other language courses) would be best to prepare me for the increasing number of ESL students coming my way.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I do not feel as prepared as I would like to be due to my lack of training. As several of our classmates have stated, we haven't had any formal training in another language in years, myself included. I have been fortunate thus far that the students who received ESL support could already speak English...these students just needed the reinforcement as their primary language was mostly spoke in the home. I think that teachers who are bilingual, especially in Spanish, have a real advantage over those of us who are not. In thinking about having students who speak little or no English, there are so many concerns. To begin with, if understanding is not taking place due to the language barrier, than how can comprehension, vocabulary development, and critical thinking be utilized? It seems rather impossible, in my opinion. My fear as the teacher of these students is that I would be cheating them of the educational experience they so readily deserve. There would have to be significant interventions and modifications to the curriculum. Luckily, my school corporation does employ ESL teachers who pull students once or twice a week for remediation. As I said earlier, these teachers assist students who already can speak some English. On the other hand, we need more help in the classroom so that the students who speak no English but are trying to learn can be supported. In terms of resources, I can either contact one of our ESL teachers, or find books that are language specific. Other than that, I don't really feel prepared in this area. I hope that teachers can receive some sort of training in the future with the expansion of our country's diverse population.
ReplyDelete