VBlog #2: Teacher Interview
Hello CUIN 4361 Class!
Ms. Machado is very familiar with working with ELL students in her classroom. She loves the journey of teaching ELL students because she can watch them grow over the year. She does say that when working with ELL students some challenges arise in the process of teaching them. Some of these challenges that she states that she faces with ELL students are culturally in terms of the dynamics that the student is used to from their home as compared to being at school, socially in being able to recognize and notice things and academically in taking what the student knows and compare it to English words/phrases. As Wright states, "teachers must get to know their students by obtaining information about their sociocultural background. This information will help teachers make the best possible decisions for providing effective instruction for their ELLs" (2019, p. 26). Ms. Machado does this amazing because she finds it in her mission to get to know all her students in the beginning especially her ELLs, so she can start building that exposure of English to ELLs.
A couple of approaches that she uses in her classroom for ELL students are providing them with sentence stems, pictorial models, and hands-on activities. She highlights the importance of providing sentence stems to promote oral language. The ultimate goal here is getting ELL students to begin speaking and writing in complete sentences instead of responding with one or two words. Ms. Machado also uses pictorial models as a reference for not only ELL students but for all her students to use so they can have that visual representation of a word and an object. As Wright states, "teachers need to find ways to make their instruction comprehensible for ELLs, and they need to provide ample opportunities for meaningful interactions in the classroom" (2019, p. 66).
In doing this interview with Ms. Machado, I was fascinated with all her responses. Having Ms. Machado share her experience in working with ELL students, I was allowed to gain insight into all the wonderful techniques that she implements in her classroom to support and drive ELL students' learning. As Ms. Machado continues to make great use in providing sentence stems, pictorial models, and hands-on activities in her classroom, she is setting up the building blocks of ELL students in learning the English language.
References:
Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (3rd ed.). Caslon Publishing
Hi Ivonne! I loved reading your post and watching your interview, your teacher had some great things to say about teaching English language learners! Wright says that “the appropriate models for a school must be determined by teachers and administrators working collaboratively to study the characteristics and needs of the ELLs and other students,” which I believe your teacher actively does by taking time to get to know her students to provide them the best instruction (p. 123). Every student is different, so it is very important for teachers of ELLs to take the time to get to know their students and understand exactly what their strengths and needs are so they can more effectively teach them everything they need to know. The teacher you interviewed sounds amazing and like her students are valued and learn so much from her!
ReplyDeleteWright, Wayne (2019). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice. Caslon Publishing. Third edition.
Hi Kaitlynn!
DeleteThank you for your reply. As teachers, it is our mission to ensure that we are giving the best learning to all students especially our ELL's. We have to start from the beginning which is getting to know them first and then start building from there. By getting to know our ELL's first, it builds that building block of viewing what they currently know and how they learn best. As Wright states, "teachers can then determine what is likely to be challenging about a particular activity, lesson, or unit for those students and select appropriate instructional and assessment strategies" (2019, p. 66). Once, the teacher have a good understanding about the ELL student they are able to better accommodate them with any lesson or activity.
Hi Ivonne!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and listening to your interview, and it was great to learn from Ms. Machado about her experiences in the classroom. I agree that there are a lot of challenges in the classroom with ELL students when we are trying to find ways to find connections so they can understand the content we are teaching. When it comes to the ELL programs in public schools, it is critical for students to learn academic content along with English words and phrases (Wright, 2019, p. 123). This process can be easier if we make a deep connection with our students to find the best way to teach them both the English language and the content at hand. Having these relationships and getting to know information about their cultural background can also help make meaningful connections to the academic content being taught, so they can understand it in a way that helps them learn.
In my interview with the ELL specialist, she also said that using sentence is a great scaffolding tool to use with her students. This allows for them to feel more confident in sharing what they know with the teacher and the class. Providing these sentence stems allows them to gain confidence in their oral communication which is also an important goal when teaching ELL students in the classroom. Getting these students to practice speaking in every context will help their success rate.
I cannot wait to take what I learned from your blog post and apply it to my classroom to be the best teacher of ELL's I can be.
Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (3rd ed.). Caslon Publishing
Hi Hannah!
DeleteThank you for your reply. There are so many strategies that teachers can implement in their instruction to promote meaningful learning to ELL's students. These strategies such as using sentence stems, visual representation, hands-on activities are all great methods to enhance ELL's learning. As Wright states, "Teachers should give grade-level content -area instruction that is provide in English but in a manner that makes it comprehensible to ELLs while promoting their English language development (2019, p.97). The teacher I interviewed, Ms. Machado mentioned that there are words in other languages that are closely aligned in pronouncing it the same way in English. For example, pronouncing the word "taxi" in Spanish is so similar when saying it in English. There's words in English that ELL's can make connection with their native language.
Hi Ivonne!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your interview and reading your post. I found your mentor to be really heartwarming, and I could definitely tell that she's passionate about her job. I teach 3rd grade math and science, but my partner teacher is ESL certified. With that said, since we share the same students, I get to see my mentor use different kinds of approaches to best aide our ELL's. For example, we try to implement a lot of hands-on activities in our lessons for math science. In math, we're always using manipulatives, such as fraction towers, counters, base-ten blocks, unfix cubes, and hundreds charts. For science, we try to provide a lot of visuals and incorporate a lot of technology. We use BrainPop, Education Galaxy, Blooket, and Generation Genius. These sorts of visuals and tools help our ELL students with engagement and comprehension during our lessons. Wright mentions, that it's "important for teachers to identify appropriate supplemental educational materials for use in the classroom" and I think that's a philosophy that has aligned with both of our mentors (2019, p. 26). Awesome post!
Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (3rd ed.). Caslon Publishing