Best Practices for Serving English Language Learners and Their Families

11,000,000 children under age nine are Dual Language Learners 

    I chose this webinar because I want to be prepared and educated on how I can best serve English Language Learners in my classroom. This webinar provided a variety of ways in which you can be supportive in the classroom and I will talk about some of those ideas below.

Make the curriculum relevant→ embedding stories, reading, and perspectives that focus on history and immigrations in the units that are taught. You want to include your students in the curriculum.

Use a variety of teaching modalities→ Call and response, using movement, graphic organizers, visual representations in order to make the curriculum more understandable for all the students.

Familiarize yourself with cultural norms→ Respect looks different in different parts of the world. What a student does might be respectful to them, but you do not read it as respect. Get to know their culture and the different ways they may send messages.

Get to know your students’ contextual skills and educational backgrounds→ Can the students write on lined paper? Can they use scissors? Do not embarrass them if they do not know this. Rather, figure out what they do and do not know and teach them the things they should learn to be successful in the classroom.

Distinguish between academic English and conversational/home English→ Create the bridge between home and academic english. Some may be less familiar with academic English but this should not be seen as a deficit. It takes 5-7 years to become proficient in English and 7-11 years to become proficient in academic English.

Honor your students’ first languages→ find ways to bring it into the classroom and celebrate the language. Have students bring in artifacts of that language or tell stories about their language that they know.


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In the classroom….

    

Limit pulling ELL students out of the classroom for separate instruction time because this puts them at a disadvantage of working with peers and forming relationships. Give the ELL students the same curriculum as everyone else while being aware that they may need scaffolding. Use texts that show mirrors for the students so using texts from their culture s o they can see themselves. Allow the students to teach us about their language (teacher and other students) in the classroom. Finally, go beyond the classroom and allow ELL students to work alongside their peers and allow them to feel comfortable working with others.


Regarding family engagement…

    Being clear about the purpose of meetings means that you are setting goals and making sure that all parties are on the same page with realistic expectations. Be mindful of the power differences between parents and teachers. They may be uncomfortable because they do not speak english or because they are immigrants so be mindful of this and eliminate any power difference that may be present. Another important part of meeting with families is to have a translator in order to be able to communicate effectively (hint: the student is NOT the translator here, that is too uncomfortable for them and they should not be put in this position).


    I recently just had a guest speaker come to my MLED class to discuss teaching English Language Learners (Rachel Toncelli) and so I learned a lot of information from her and now through this webinar, I learned even more! I feel a bit more prepared for English Language Learners in my class and I still want to do more work on this. I want to be educated and informed so I can provide the best education to all my students in the classroom. What is worse than a teacher not being educated on this for an ELL student? It is already a scary time for them and I cannot imagine them feeling uncomfortable in the classroom because of their teacher. I want to avoid this at all costs!