Strategies for ELLs from Herrell & Jordan

These are strategies from Herrell and Jordan's 50 Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners.

Centers

Centers are created within a classroom to encourage students to seek them out independently by their interests. I really like the idea of learning centers and even creating centers based on the multiple intelligences (Strategy 5 & 8). I believe that group work is really important, but with centers it can be individualized as well as collaborative. I think that to create a love of learning it needs to be somewhat internally motivated, which centers can create if used effectively. I particularly liked the skills center because it gives the chance for students to practice what they have learned. Creating centers based on the multiple intelligences could allow students to excel where they feel most comfortable.

Guided Reading

Guided Reading is small, flexible groups that work well for beginning readers. I found the box on page 161 that described the students behavior and sample questions to ask the child when they are doing these behaviors. This is immensely helpful because I have always wondered about what to do when during read alouds. This strategy also gave a lot of beneficial guidance for assessment on page 162. It told us the formula for assessing a child’s reading level: student reads at a 90-94% accuracy, with 75% comprehension level. This strategy provided many tips I will be using in the classroom.

KWL Chart

            KWL charts are charts that are done with the whole class to determine what you already know about a topic, what you want to know, and at the end, what you learned. I think this strategy is so important in elementary school because it allows the students to have a part in the curriculum planning. It is also a really good tool to assess what students already know about in a particular subject or area. This is done as a great whole group activity that is fun and allows them to express their interests in front of their peers.

Realia

            Realia in the classroom simply means provided real life materials in the classroom. Especially with ELLs who might not have a language base, talking about a topic may lead students to not understand what is happening. If you are talking about an apple and no one has experience with an apple, how would they know what you are talking about? Realia is important in the classroom and can be implemented in many ways throughout the day. Field trips might not be possible, but bringing real items in is much easier. 

Student Centered Websites and Apps

Website One:

http://www.starfall.com/n/N-info/educators.htm

•         Helps young children learn to read. Research based materials focused on the "big five" recommended by the National Institute of Child Health and Development. It is a website, but it links you to various apps for young children. It would work for younger learners if English of L1 and L2. It also works with common core. There is also a section for math and music.The games look really fun, but most cost money to download. This would be a good free time activity to help learn English as well as getting experience with technology. This is more of an individual activity than a group one. 

Website Two: 

http://www.elllo.org

•          This website is geared towards older adults and listening skills. The website is created by and English teacher in Japan. The website ranges from videos, games, news stories and audio notes. It is a little wordier and so I think it would be better for older adults or more advanced English language learners. It would be able to use this more of a whole class and have them listen to clips and then work in groups. It would also be good for supplemental materials or homework. If you had enough computers, it could be a good tool for computer labs as well. 

Website Three:

http://www.eslmania.com/students/students.htm

•          This is a website that is geared towards adult learners and focuses more on skills needed as an ELL. Some of the focuses are idioms, grammar, business language, accent reduction, ESL books and more. I think this website can be beneficial, but I think it might be geared towards assimilation. I especially love the idioms section because I think this would be one of the most confusing things while learning English. It would be a useful tool to create lessons for the class using it as a starting point. 

Website Four:

http://www.englishgrammar.org/

•          This is a great website for teaching English grammar. Grammar is often overlooked because it is more important to try speaking a language and make mistakes than not trying. Nonetheless Grammar is important and this website provides information in an easy format. This would be great to use in class during free time or have a small group teach a subtopic within in grammar to the class. 

Teacher Centered Websites for Teaching ELLs

Teaching Strategies

·         http://aldnetwork.org/content/test5

•         This website provides many strategies involving ELLs. The article I read in particular gave strategies to use in regards to the common core and ELLs. The strategies are general enough that you can apply them to all ages and levels of English. The negatives are it doesn’t give you background information, so if you haven’t had experience with common core you would need to do additional research in other sections of the website.
•           There are many articles on this website that I think would be beneficial to look over on my own time. This is professional development done at home essentially. I will definitely be using the additional resources tab because it covers things from common core to lesson plans.

Lesson Plan

·         http://www.tesol.org/connect/tesol-resource-center/search-details/lesson-plans/2013/12/09/intercultural-holiday-party-planning

•          This lesson plan involves celebrating holidays in a culturally sensitive manner. The students get to practice research skills and then celebrate the holiday they researched. It could still be difficult to make sure all students are not offended/or being reached, but the research part could be geared towards finding a country first. Another negative could be that students may not have previous research background so they would not know how to begin.
•          This website provided a lot of different types of resources for ELLs (I.e. assessments, lesson plans, and activities). It can be organized by the type you are looking for, but not by age or English level. I could find a lot of fun activities to implement in the classroom using this site.

Songs + Activity Questions

·         http://mondostoppops.blogspot.com/?

•          This website has many resources for teaching ELLs and one of my favorites is the song section. It gives great popular songs for ELLs to listen to and provides questions for you to ask your students. I think that using songs you would actually hear on the radio allows students to hear what words are commonly used. The negative is that the songs are probably best to be used in high school classrooms, but not necessarily.

Professional Development

·         http://busyteacher.org/

•          This website has many great resources for teaching all kinds of students, with a great section for teaching ELLs. There are a lot of great articles that allow for professional development and bettering your teaching. There are also many worksheets available for students to use. I could see myself spending hours after work reading these articles that give great tips on how to teach ELLs. 

The Mask You Live In - Trailer

This video shows the damaging effects of the phrase "be a man". Makes you analyze what we are teaching our sons on what it means to be masculine.

Frozen - A Musical feat. Disney Princesses

A great video that addresses the way media, in particular Disney, has portrayed women in the past to now. Every princess does not need a prince to be happy.

Gender Issues in the Classroom

Link to a prezi I made about Gender Issues in the Classroom

http://prezi.com/kvebwtbg-xrx/gender-issues-in-the-classroom/

Personal Beliefs

My personal beliefs will influence the way I teach someday. After learning about ELLs, it makes me want to be able to help them learn the best way possible. Differentiation will be huge in order to make sure all of my students needs are being met. We were all pretty much immigrants at one point in time and we have to realize we need to accommodate our ELLs if we want to stay competitive worldwide. 

We have discussed in one of our classes that it shouldn't be called "achievement gap" but "opportunity gap". This is a systematic problem and not an achievement problem. Our students are not going out of their way to not pass standard tests, its external forces that are not enabling them to do so. 

Teaching ELLs is more than just good teaching. We need to learn more about how to teach effectively. When you have a serious medical issue, would you go to see a general doctor or a specialist? When going to a fancy restaurant do you want a chef or a cook to prepare your food? The same goes with teaching ELLs we need more than just good teachers, we need good teachers with specialized ESOL endorsements.