Reflection 6: Responde to a question about English Teaching

http://www.everythingesl.net/askjudie/?i=4189&n=250

Ells with learning disabilities.

by Sandy Costin on Oct 01 2006 6:09 AM

How long do you continue to service ELLs who have already been classified with learning disabilites? They will continue to qualify for services because of the disablity.

Re: Ells with learning disabilities
by Claudio A. on Nov 27 2008 2:20 PM

Nowadays, classrooms are filled with an increasing number of students who have been identified as having "special needs", from English language learners, to children with behavioral problems, to those with learning disabilities, as well as some who are labeled "gifted and talented." Experienced teachers know, though, that every student has special needs on some days, and will sometimes be gifted and talented. Part of the skill of teaching involves being able to respond to those needs in a way that helps each student learn. These days, with the increasing diversity of classrooms coupled with pressure to cover more curriculum in less time and have all students perform at a standard level, even the best teachers can benefit from having a collection of best practices for differentiating instruction at hand.


I personally believe that those students must have access to high-quality instruction designed to help them meet high expectations. Teachers should employ strategies known to be effective with English learners, such as drawing on their prior knowledge; providing opportunities to review previously learned concepts and teaching them to employ those concepts; organizing themes or strands that connect the curriculum across subject areas; and providing individual guidance, assistance, and support to fill gaps in background knowledge. Another examples of sheltered English techniques are the use of visual aids, such as props, pictures, gestures, and facial expressions, to help convey meaning; encouraging children to expand and elaborate their responses to help develop oral expression abilities; and structuring oral input based on the level of understanding that children have.

Reflection 5: She already knows

The students whom I am working with, are Spanish language learners and the teacher in order to make this process easier, she is always planing funny activities for them keeping always in her mind the Comprehensible Imput Hypothesis (suggested by Krashen). According to this hypothesis, the students are able to acquire a language only if they can understand it. For this reason, the teacher is always motivating the students to participate in the class. In order to do that she has to find different didactive ways to make information more comprehensible for the learner by using different strategies like connecting new information to prior knowledge, using gestures, body language, drawing, etc.
The teacher had not had the opportunity to work with a native Spanish speaker before. Now that I am working with her, she is teaching with social interaction because she is encouraging her students all the time to ask me things in order to practice their Spanish with me. This strategy is resulting very effective because all the students, even those who were always afraid of speaking are taking risk and participating.

Reflection 4: A topic in Language education that I want to know more about.

In my years of study, I have learned many things about teaching, different methods and some very effective techniques. However, I realized that I did not know much about how to work with students with developmental disabilities. So, I would really like to know how to work with these students and also how could I evaluate them. Students with developmental disabilities are a rapidly growing minority on schools,this is the main reason why schools are facing the ethical dilemma of how to balance the rights of students with learning disabilities with the academic integrity of a course of study.

The other day, I was talking to the teacher who I am working with about this issue, and she told me that a small percentage of students with disabilities, specially those with severe cognitive disabilities, are not able to participate in the assessments that their teacher has developed for all the students, so they have to be assessed differently.

http://www.ncld.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=271

Reflection 3: A case of effective language teaching.

The students whom I am working with are all native English speakers. They are studying Spanish right now, and the teacher is always motivating them through funny reviews, games and group work, in order to help her students to learn in a better way. This is the reason why the students are always motivated and willing to participate in all the activities she plans for them.

These students began to learn spanish only three weeks ago,so they already know just some basic topics like the greetings, numbers, colors, months of the year, days of the week and some daily expresions. The teacher asked the students to create a list of words with different categories (greetings, colors, number, days of the week, months of the year and daily expresions), and the students had to clasify the words according to their categories. Each category had to be represented with different color. Students also could clasify the words by making some drawings that represent the actions of the word. For example, a man moving his hand could represent either Hola or Adios. what I like the most about the teacher is that she is always motivating her students to participate encouraging them not to be afraid of making mistakes and if they are having difficulties this is not a reason for fear or embarrasement.
The teache

Reflection 2 : Websites that might help.

I am doing my teacher shadowing with the World Languages teacher at Sacajawea Middle School. She is teaching a Spanish unit, and the main problem that students present is about pronunciation. But, as I am not going to teach Spanish to my future students in Chile, I looked for some websites that might help them in their process of learning the ENGLISH language and I found some.

http://voicethread.com/#home

http://voicethread.com/#q.b45155.i236192


I chose the link above(a Mini-story) because I firmly believe that when the teacher uses Listen & Answer Mini-Stories, students learn two to four times faster than students in normal English classes. In these stories, the teacher can ask a lot of easy questions while telling a story. The questions encourage students to think and respond quickly in English, without translation. This is the reason why I would use Listen & Answer Mini-Stories in all of my lesson sets.
Students' time is valuable and I want them to make maximum progress for each minute they spend with my lessons. I think that if I use listen and answer mini-stories, students will have more fluent speech, greater confidence, and better listening comprehension.

Reflection 1: Podcasting my way to mastery of English

While I was looking for podcasts for my students to use, I came across with some interesting websites in which I could find a lot of videos with very useful information not only for my future students to use, but also for me to learn from.


http://voicethread.com/#q

This website provide a wide range of information from which everybody can choose the one that is more suitable for them according to the topic they are interested in.

http://www.teachertube.com

This website is quite useful for any teacher because it does not matter what major they have, there are a lot of information available here for teachers to use.

In my personal case, I do not want to be a boring teacher, with very old fashion teaching methods and strategies, so I do think that these websites will help me to be always updated.

The Classroom Story.

Stone Fox.
Strategy: Teaching with High Speciation.
The teacher has high expectations of his students. So he feels comfortable and confident to their abilities.
This strategy is quite effective


Wine Box Sledding.
Strategies: Teaching through Social Interaction.
Students are support in L1 and also in C1
Students play role and have outdoor activities
These strategies are quite effective to catch students’ interest


Scene- Setter Visuals.
Strategy: Teaching Through Content
The creation of a pre reading activities facilitates the students’ process of learning, even more if they are exposed to images and videos.
Paraphrasing is another useful strategy to facilitate the learning process.
Very effective strategies.


Power Words.
Strategies: Multimodality (use of color, drawings, magazine pictures, charts stick on the wall, etc)
Students create a list of terms that they want to use. Also they have to classify words into categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.)
These are good strategies because each student learns different. For example, some can learn vocabulary faster classifying words into categories.


Spin-Off Stories.
Strategies: Teaching Through Content
After reading the story, students share some personal experiences related to their pets and also the teacher does. There is a kind of rapport between students and the teacher. Students can express themselves using the multiple intelligences. Some of them are better in expressing their ideas writing them and other is better in expressing their ideas through drawings.



All the strategies that I could find in the text are quite useful; after all, the purpose of each strategy is to improve students’ skills.

Personal thoughts about my future students

1. How do I make learning motivating for my students?

First, by making them aware of the importance of knowing English and all the opportunities that they can have in life if they learn English.
Secondly, by providing a variety of activities so that all of them can participate.
By showing them through those activities, they can use the language in different contexts
By taking their ages and interests into account when plannning a lesson.

2. What are the barriers for teachers to teach english in a way that's motivating to students now?

One of the barriers is the lack of knowledge of English students may have and that make them feel frustrated because they are not able to follow the class.
Another one is that students have just a few hours of English per week and this may mean that English is not so relevant in their curriculum.
Most of the times clases are based on grammar only so students do mechanical exercises all the time.


3. What do I need to know about my students in order to make the class more motivated for them?

Their social and cultural background, their interests and their expectations in life, also to know about the topics they would like to know about in their classes and the way they would like to work in classes.