Helping My ELL Students Succeed

The reading this week affirmed many things I already know and taught me things I did not know about helping ELL students. Both classroom scenarios were very similar to experiences I have had this year in the classroom. Ms. Lockhart’s experience was very familiar (Curtin, 2009, 2-4). Just like Ms. Lockhart, I have several students who seem to understand the material in class, or even when I help them after school, but then perform poorly on tests. I have some students who should be in the ELL program, but are not, either because their parents do not want them to be, or because they have never been tested. I also have students who do not qualify for ELL, but they still have limited English skills. These students often have other responsibilities at home, such as caring for younger siblings or making food for the family. How can I help these students, when they do not have time to come after school and I try to alter my lessons so that I can help these students as much as possible?

It was also interesting to read about all the different methods of helping ELL students in school. Skyline uses a program similar to the partial ESL program, where the student spends one period a day in an ELL class, working with an ELL teacher on current material in other classes. The English Language Development (ELD) caught my attention (Curtin, 2009, 16). This program has one teacher who is trained in ELL, teaching ELL students the subject matter appropriate to their age group. I have heard of programs, such as one in the math department at Kentwood, where a subject is team-taught by two teachers, one certified in the subject matter, one ELL certified. I think this program would be the best for the students, because the ELL students have a second teacher to help them when they need extra help that the subject matter teacher is unable provide. This tactic would be difficult because of the shortage of ELL teachers we have. Skyline only has one ELL teacher. In order to make a program, like the one at Kentwood, work, we would need to hire significantly more ELL teachers than we have now.

Reference:

Curtin, E. M. (2009). Practical strategies for teaching English language learners. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.

“This is unfair”

It’s always hard to figure out how to objectively grade exams that contain multi-part questions. Exams are meant to test a student’s knowledge of the subject, and it is important that they are scored as fairly as possible. When we give multi-part questions, we have to take in to account ALL of the knowledge the students demonstrate. If they get the first part wrong, they will inevitably get the rest of the question wrong if one simply grades based on what the answer is supposed to be. I grade based on what the student did in the first part, so they do not keep getting docked multiple times for the same mistake. This means that students may put the correct answer for the third section, but it is wrong based on the work they did. Students have a really hard time with this, because they look at their neighbor’s test and see that they put the same answer and got it correct. I had a student get extremely upset over this last week. I explained why I had graded it the way I did, even showed him another problem on the same test that had been given full credit, even though it was wrong based on my key, because of what he had done in the first part. I thought I handled it pretty well even though he walked out of the room cussing. He was fine the next day, which was good. My mentors both grade the same way, which made me confident in my decision.

Student Exam Examples: A, B

Being the “tough” teacher

Now I have fully taken over both of my mentors chemistry classes, and the students are quickly noticing a difference in our teaching styles. Apparently, we do a lot more in my classes, and I give them MUCH more homework than my mentor gives his other classes. They got really upset with me today when I had them grade their labs for correctness, instead of completion (as they thought was normal). I tell them that I am trying to help them do better on their exams, and the more work they do, the better they will learn the material. We will see how they feel after the large quiz tomorrow.

My mentor also wants our classes to be on the same schedule, and I have been going a little quicker than he has. Today we spent time grading their lab reports, to give them extra practice at drawing shapes of molecules, a HUGE portion of the quiz tomorrow. I am trying to be flexible with my schedule, so that we can stay on the same page.

Podcasts: a new perspective on content

When we think about ways to use podcasts in our classrooms, many teachers immediately jump to the idea that students can still listen to lectures even if they are absent. Pair that with a power point, the students can easily make up missed classes. This is a beneficial technique, especially when teachers use power points as visuals rather than drawing on the white board (there would be no way for students to see that material first hand). However, there are other ways of using podcasts in the classroom.

I thought of a few other ways podcasts can be used, aside from recording our own lectures. The first idea I have is to have students listen to podcasts from other teachers. This way they can gain a new perspective on the material. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, students do not understand our way of explaining the concepts. If we have our students listen to a way someone else explains the concept, the students may understand more readily. New viewpoints can also give a fresh perspective, to help students apply the knowledge they understand to alternate situations. Podcasts are available at sites such as, http://www.learnoutloud.com/contents/LearnOutLoud.com-Podcasts/9/21, http://education.podcast.com/, and http://epnweb.org/index.php?openpod=18#18.

Another way to use podcasts in the classroom is to have students create their own for specific topics. Often, the most effective way to learn is to teach the material to someone else. Through podcasts, students can teach others about the material, and then refer back their recorded podcasts for revision. By the end of the year, there will be a full curriculum of podcasts, and they may be used to help give the following year of classes a new perspective. I think podcasts would be very beneficial when used in education because it gives students a new way to teach other students about a specific concept as well as giving them a different teaching strategy to learn through, rather than reading out of a textbook for a different perspective on the content.

Of course, the biggest issue with podcasts would be getting the students access to them. As the reading discussed, one easy way is to create a blog at wordpress.com and install PodPress plugin (Ovadia 2008). This will allow you to link podcasts to your blog, and allow students to subscribe to the blog so that they can receive notifications when a new podcast is added. I do not think that students will have a rough time with this as they live immersed in technology every day. The biggest problem would probably be gaining access to technology to record lectures. Either a teacher would have to re-do the lectures by the computer with a microphone or find some way of recording effectively in the classroom. Having students record podcasts may be difficult as well, because all students (or most students) would need to have access to a computer with a microphone.

References:

Ovadia, Micah. (2007-2008). PoducateMe. Retrieved from http://www.poducateme.com/.

Equity in the classroom

In class this past week, I paid attention to the students that are called on, by both my mentors and myself. In my chemistry class, I noticed that white males are called on much more than any other group. This is probably because these students raise their hands the most and my mentor in chemistry tends to call on  those who raise their hands, rather than calling on people who do not have their hands up. My mentor does not aviod calling on girls, they just do not raise their hands as often.

In IB environmental systems and societies, I notice that my other mentor does a very good job of calling on males and females equally. She switches between calling on girls and calling on boys, but I think more girls are actively participating in the discussions. There are a few girls that usually have their hand up. I found that my biology mentor is much more aware of this equity issue than my chemistry mentor. She even noticed that I was calling on males and females unequally.

In my classes, I noticed that I would tend to call more on boys because they are the ones raising their hands. I have been trying to switch between calling on those with their hands up and those who do not to try to even out this inequity. I alternate between a boy and a girl when asking for answers, or I wait until everyone has their hand up before asking for an answer. This also helps me call on many different students, rather than calling on the same student for every question. In my 6th period class, this is very difficult as I have 12 girls and 21 boys, but I try to call on them at least 1/3 of the time because the class is about 1/3 girls.