Chapters 2-3 Discussion

One piece of evidence that could be brought to the culminating event on May 15th to show learning and application is how you implemented your idea for a shift to an assets-based perspective (pgs. 42-43).

Culture is indeed complex and dynamic in all cultures. What is challenging is the nuances that exist within a culture. For example, dialectally speaking words of the same language can have different meanings within the same culture. The most outstanding difference is in many cultures especially South Africa children do not look at their parents when they are being disciplined verbally; however, in the United States many teachers take this action as a sign of not listening to instructions or not giving respect. It is important to understand the nuances presented within whatever culture is native to the student.

I am constantly reminded in my work with EL’s and in my endorsement program that vocabulary is so important for the EL’s. As an ELD and English teacher, I know to teach the new words in the story or passage, However, I tend to forget that they need help in our everyday world. This was a message that I got loud and clear when one day a student ask me a simple question about what a particular food was on the menu for the day.

As I did my EL endorsement, my research paper was questioning what helped EL’s the most. After much research, I realized that it was consistency in the teaching routine. This allows their brain to relax in not wondering what is happening next. The use of the same consistent Thinking Maps makes this a wonderful scaffold for them to constantly use. As I did several interims last year, even the youngest was understanding this scaffolding. If we all used the same ones from this PD, this would lead to continuality over all the schools and grades Second, was the need for the vocabulary with visuals in the content. Vocabulary is so important to help them transition. Finally, they needed help to understand background knowledge. It is easy for me to forget that their culture and previous education did not exposed them to the same knowledge that our typical students may have had. I just have to constantly remind myself to use a checklist such as on page 74, or I will overlook one small area for me that is crucial for my EL students.

The idea that culture is generational was a pretty powerful one for me. It puts into words an idea that I have been inching around for a while. Even though my family has a specific culture, for example, I think that my own cultural experience is drastically different from my sister who got to high school in 1983.

We can’t rely on some historical notion of students’ culture or even just the word of their parents to understand where they are coming from. Pop culture, for some students at least, can be a bridge to reach students while helping them to think through their own.

Guideline 2 (“Culturally responsive teaching places students at the center of the learning”) stood out to me the most. Specifically, when the chapter discussed how it is important to make sure “that the learning goals are explained in student-friendly language so that students can participate in setting goals for their learning and assess their learning” (45). I recently attended a PD on “Thinking Maps”, where we discussed that it would be beneficial for students to see a map/visual of the current unit up in the classroom, so they could better understand why they are learning what they are learning, and where this would be taking them/what the end goals would be. I loved the example given in the chapter that took a CCSS standard and turned it into a student-friendly language objective. In the future, I plan to create a visual unit map with student-friendly language and objectives that will help them understand what they are learning and goals for the unit (I plan to use a Flow map.. for those of you who are familiar with “Thinking Maps”).

Guideline 3: Culturally responsive teaching values students’ languages, cultures, and backgrounds. The more authentic resources and actual artistic objects from a culture can increase the understanding of students relating to each other’s cultures. Once they begin to form relationships with each other through appreciation of different cultures, then the ESL teacher can move forward easily to relate all the different cultures to the American culture. Some suggestions for sharing the various world cultures could be through food days – or at least a tasting day, when each student could bring a typical type of food to be tasted by the class. Other days could be centered around dress, greetings, and native holidays and the meaning behind the celebration. Lastly, parents of the different students are a rich source of information and can provide the class with a deeper understanding that although we may be from different parts of the world we share the commonality of human needs and emotions. Great chapter!

The author stated that some approach teaching Els from a deficit perspective. I see it as a chance for all, myself included, to learn about another culture and to understand the world through the EL’s eyes.
When you look at the classroom look fors, these should be used in every classroom, not just EL classrooms. Students learn better when they feel they are understood, cared for, and the teacher is interested in their life. Learning how to say comment conversational statements help the student feel welcomed. It also shows respect.
Despite what your political background and beliefs, as a teacher you need to show empathy and understanding to the inner turmoil many of our ELs are facing. Going that extra step to provide food/clothing/compassion/whatever that student may need, is what will help ease the student and allow him to focus on your lesson rather than the situation at home, at least for a little while.

Having culturally responsive texts in the classroom is what resonated with me the most. Students need to be able to connect to what they are learning, and if they can’t see themselves in that, then they lose the purpose of learning! As a white female, I always took for granted that I was able to read stories that had amazing female characters that looked like me, lived like me, and were relatable. I want to make sure my students can see themselves in what we study and truly invest in their own learning!

While reading Chapter Two “Using a Culturally Responsive Framework to Meet the Needs of ELS,” I got very excited about the possibilities for drawing on students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences to make connections to content in my 9th grade English classroom. For example, I always play music to help students transition into a learning space. While I’m taking attendance or distributing materials, I’ll play jazz, classical or meditative music. After reading this chapter, I added the music of popular musicians from my students home countries and they really appreciated this very small gesture. Additionally, as I build my class library I intend to include texts in other languages. I am currently on the hunt for magazines, books, and comics written in languages other than English.
My students have just completed reading a graphic novel and I’ve modified my Creative Group Project to enable a small group of Spanish speaking students the opportunity to present their work in Spanish. Since we’ve ben studying the Civil Rights Movememt and it’s leaders, I think it would be really beneficial if they were to incorporate leaders from their home countries who were instrumental in obtaining civil and/or human rights for all people.
I was hired in February after moving from Tennessee from Florida so I’m only beginning to decorate my classroom. In order to represent the many beautiful cultures of which my students represent, I would like to find posters, signs, etc. written in English, Spanish, French, Portugese, etc. I am so excited about the possibility of reaching students who I was concerned I would be unable to engage!

I have taught Science in MNPS for most of my career and this part of the chapter really resonated with me. When you do not teach Math or English it is often hard to get help in how to support your students who receive EL services. But I have been lucky to work with some amazing coaches and people who have helped make the daunting task of teaching not only Science concept, but very difficult Science vocabulary to my students who just now learning English. Scaffolds that have worked for me are common Graphic Organizer (Thinking Maps specifically) I can’t tell you how much using the same type of map helps my kids ALL of my kids organize their thoughts. In addition I have found sentence STEMS to be of great use, especially if you do a group write before you turn the student lose to write on their own.
I would like to try more home language materials mainly because I think that this also involves the parents or family members so that we can build stronger partnership with parents in their students education.

One of the best scaffolds I have used with ELLs are paragraph frames and sentence stems. I learned about these types of assessments at WIDA training when we were working with MPIs. I took a crack at making a three leveled writing assessment on Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I created three different assessments: one with a complete paragraph frame, one with a semi-paragraph frame and the last one with just sentence stems. I found that it really helped my students access and truly use their critical thinking skills.

Scaffolding has the potential to utilize various concepts; however, I really appreciated the succinct definition given for scaffolding: "A scaffold is a temporary support a teacher provides to a student that enables the student to perform a task he or she would not be able to perform alone (Gibbons, 2015) p 60. At last defined area is clear to explore as teachers. When a teacher executes scaffolding it is paramount that collaboration takes place within the teaching community of any singular ESL students. Before an ESL teacher can begin the selection of materials, teaching approaches, and student grouping s/he must gather information about each of the students in the class. By collaboration with all the teachers who are part of the instructive community of the student, the ESL teacher can better know the student. Speaking with fellow instructors can give the ESL teacher a clearer understanding in order to analyzed the language demands of the student as this understanding relates to the demands of the curriculum. From that point the ESL teacher can plan the lesson by creating the focus and learning achievement expectations. The fun part is the selection and development of appropriate materials. The individuality and the creativity of the teacher can really shine!By use of fun graphic designs, role playing, authentic materials from the student’s culture, visual aids, word walls, and picture dictionaries, the marvelous world of learning comes to life. Regular teachers can use the ESL teacher to better understand how they can differentiate their instructional approaches to meet the needs of the ESL students who attend their classes. The more information internalized about the personality and learning style of an ESL students, the better each teacher can use the common activities of any particular subject instruction. These activities are generally categorized as listening, speaking, reading and writing. From my personal experience of learning a language later in life, I can attest that reading and listening comes first to a more mature learner; language production (writing and speaking) follows depending on how quickly the ESL student can assimilate the target language. Children who are less than 8 years old really have no opportunity to learn their language through listening and speaking! Reading and writing comes after the younger student learns those skills. Summarizing, each ESL student should celebrate the opportunity to collaborate with subject teacher, and vice-versa. The goal is to provide a united and nurturing atmosphere to provide the ESL with a successful learning experience in their new language. Teaching is a calling – We are blessed to have the opportunity to influence and better the lives of our students who are providentially given to us to instruct.

When reading the assigned chapters I started to think, many of these suggestions are great practices of good teaching and should be automatically included; however, as I dug deeper I started to feel overwhelmed by all of steps that one may need to consider. In my current teaching placement I feel like an outsider looking in, but as I develop my engagement and recruitment of ELs I know that these are elements that will be mandatory in creating a successful learning environment. Additionally, as I collaborate with teachers I need to become more mindful of scaffolding for speaking, reading, listening, and writing. All that to say, when partnering with content teachers I will be mindful of the three stages of learning by have the charts in front of me until the intentional supports become more automatic. When collaborating, it is important for me to know the content the teacher is implementing and have a great understanding of how he or she will develop the learning. The load can be divided by offer suggestions through developing guiding questions in English and home language, produce sentence stems, alter test or assignments based on the individualized needs, and model graphic organizers or Thinking Maps.

I really like the idea of glossaries for students. Because precise language is so important in math and so highlighted in the new standards, I think this would be a great resource for all students. I’m hoping to create consistency for next year with these – by making a big one as a class and then each student having one in their folders.