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Nathan Gingras

Supporting ESL Students: 10 Tips For Mainstream Teachers - 0 views

  • 1.  Cultural Awareness: All teachers should take a moment to self-reflect about their own understandings and questions in regard to cultural differences. Take the time to learn about different cultures, gestures, and traditions and celebrate these differences with all of the students in the classroom. Encourage all students to share their culture with classmates.
  • 2.  Empathize: Try to imagine how overwhelming it must feel to leave your home country and family members while trying to assimilate, learn and socialize in a foreign language. Be aware that ESL students will be in culture shock and feel highly alienated for some time. Garner patience and understand that it will take time for ESL students to talk, as a silent period is highly expected. Smile and show support to your best ability. 
  • 3.  Provide A Comfort Zone: Assess where the ESL student’s abilities are in relation to basic survival skills and needs.  Assign a friendly and welcoming buddy to assist with common school locations, requirements and routines. If possible, keep an extra eye out during busy transition times to assure the student gets to the correct location. If possible, find someone in the school, another classmate, parent or volunteer that may speak the student’s language. Connecting the student with someone who speaks his/her native language will provide a great deal of comfort. 
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  • 4.  Spotlight Respect For All Cultures: Reaffirm the message about being supportive of one another, kind, understanding and patient. Encourage everyone to openly talk about their personal cultures, traditions and languages. Have parties celebrating the different cultures in the class, sharing music, historical family photos, dances, games, food and traditions.  Hold discussions about the history of America, immigration, and the value of diversity and differences. Encourage students to share their own stories of immigration, passed down from generation to generation.
  • 5.  Community: If the parents and/or guardians do not speak English, request an interpreter if possible for all school communication, including parties, conferences and special events. Invite parents to all school community functions to encourage and foster a sense of belonging. If possible, introduce other students and/or families who speak the same language as the ESL student. Sharing cultural commonalities will provide strong bonds for students, parents and teachers.
  • 6.  Assess Students Informally: Assess ESL students on an informal basis when they first arrive to class, and ongoing during the school year. It is imperative to primarily check for understanding in regard to basic and social needs. Pay attention from the sideline to see if they know numbers, letters and/or short English phrases. Continuously check for comprehension and growth informally, make notes and never be afraid to raise the bar and challenge a bit.
  • 7.  Don’t Discourage Native Language Use:  With all good intentions, this is a common mistake teachers can make. ESL students who have a stronger foundation of their native language will have a shorter route to acquiring English. Don’t discourage native language use, as this will result in negative feelings about the student’s language and culture, and may cause delay in English language acquisition. Provide free time for the ESL student to read and write in their native language
  • 8.  Use Manipulatives, Visuals, Games, Music and Hands-On Activities in the Classroom: According to William Glaser, we learn 80% of what we experience, and 95% of what we teach others. ESL students do exceptionally well when this theory is followed. Involve them in projects that will encourage them to talk as much as possible with their classmates.   Some ideas for projects are the following:  cooking (following easy directions), art (drawing, painting, sculpture), musical activities (music provides an amazing platform for learning), and acting (for example, charades).
  • 9.  Provide Various Opportunities For Talking and Consider Seat Placement: It is very important to consider seat placement in the classroom for the ESL student. All too often, ESL students are seated in the back of the classroom, which leads to a great lack of contribution, listening, and  participation. Try and seat the ESL student close to the front, especially with other students who are inviting and enjoy conversation. Provide the most opportunities as possible for talking and listening to others in the class via group work. You will be surprised how much shorter the silent period will end. 
  • 10. Communicate with the ESL teacher: Maintain communication with the ESL teacher as much as possible. The sooner both teachers are working together, the quicker the student will learn English. Be open to the ESL teacher’s suggestions, let him/her share in the modification of classwork, and invite the ESL teacher into your classroom. 
Nathan Gingras

Educational Leadership:Supporting English Language Learners:Best Practices for Adolesce... - 0 views

  • Heck. As specialists in English language learning, we don't even agree on what to call ourselves, our students, or our programs. ELLs, ELs, LEP, ESL, ELD, ESOL, bilingual. With chaos in terminology, our communication with content-area teachers, school administrators, and student services staff is often garbled and filled with off-putting labels.
  • However, in many high schools across the United States, 16- to 20-year-old immigrants who seek to attend school are discouraged from enrolling and referred to adult literacy programs offering far fewer hours of schooling.
  • The lack of enthusiasm for serving these students is unfortunate, but understandable. Public schools may feel they have little to gain and much to lose by enrolling older adolescents who have little or no English.
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  • No Child Left Behind demands that after one year of enrollment, ELLs must take statewide assessments, and the results must be integrated into the school's accountability measures. Enrolling large numbers of adolescent ELLs can put the school at risk of failing to make adequate yearly progress.
  • In these times of increasingly meager resources in which schools are paring down to essential programs and making contingency plans to deal with statewide budget cuts and federal program funding reductions, adolescent ELLs are often viewed as an unwelcome presence in schools, a drain on the limited resources available. Increasing the challenge is the reality that many immigrant adolescents enter secondary schools with a triple whammy—little or no English, interrupted or limited formal schooling, and limited literacy in any language.
  • There is no more diverse learning cohort than that grouped under the term adolescent English language learner. Although many of these students are newcomers (immigrants who arrived within the past five years), others have always called the United States home.
  • now, for example, that 57 percent of adolescent learners classified as limited English proficient were born within U.S. borders and thus are second- or third-generation residents (Batalova, Fix, & Murray, 2007). These students have often achieved oral proficiency but lag behind in their ability to use English for literacy and content learning for reasons that may be only partly related to second-language status—for example, mobility and switching between language programs (Short & Fitzsimmons, 2007).
  • The particular life circumstances of any adolescent ELL will predict the individual needs that his or her school must address. Immigration status, quality of education background, native language, cultural distance from U.S. culture, expectation of remaining in the United States or reentering the country of origin, and economic resources are just a few of the variables (Lucas, 1997).
  • Some immigrant students arrive in the United States with fully developed academic literacy in their native language and a strong record of academic achievement in their home countries. Filip, for example, entered U.S. schools in 9th grade after having attended a high-level academic school in the Czech Republic. Within two years, he had gained a command of academic English and was performing above grade level. Contrast Filip with Ben, who emigrated from the Sudan at age 16 after experiencing the trauma of civil unrest and a severe interruption in formal schooling, which resulted in a limited foundation in literacy in any language. Rosaria, unlike either Filip or Ben, is a U.S.-born English language learner. Although her home language is Spanish, at 17, her social language outside the home is English. However, her writing exhibits many of the linguistic differences of an immigrant English learner, and she reads at the 5th grade level.
  • Such reforms must also take into account the particular context of each school—its demographic profile, existing program models, community culture, and so on. With this caveat in mind, a number of principles and practices support improved achievement for adolescent ELLs as well as for their native-English-speaking peers.
  • there is surprising agreement in what constitutes best practice for adolescent English language learners. It is up to school leaders to implement the school reforms that work and to think outside the traditional boxes that have restricted the achievement of these students.
Nathan Gingras

10 Tips for Teaching English-Language Learners | Edutopia - 0 views

  • 1. Know your students
  • 2. Be aware of their social and emotional needs
  • 3. Increase your understanding of first and second language acquisition
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  • 4. Student need to SWRL every day in every class
  • 5. Increase your understanding of English language proficiency
  • 6. Know the language of your content
  • 7. Understand language assessments
  • 8. Use authentic visuals and manipulatives
  • 9. Strategies that match language proficiency
  • 10. Collaborate to celebrate
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