Preparing for ELL students in your classroom

For those of you who have taken EDEL 244 already, which I think everyone raised their hands in class, we have already looked at diversity and what makes cultures different. We analyzed the CLEAR EGG topics individually and at one point my class had to make an IMovie about a topic we were still a little uncomfortable about. For me, that was having ELL students in my classroom. I think my biggest fear about this was I felt like I was unprepared to properly teach students who speak another language. Even though I took Spanish and loved it all throughout high school, would I still be capable of teaching ELL students how to read? That’s what sparked me to research more into this ELL for that project. One of the statistics I found startling was that for every 150 ELL students there was one ELL teacher. As Maria already mentioned, about 85% of the country’s teachers speak English only. How are these teachers going to be prepared in their classrooms? If there isn’t an ELL teacher at your school to assist you, how are you going to be prepared?

The book gave great examples of ways to help ELL students with language and literacy development. Something my English class just discussed were the different types of journals you can incorporate in the classroom. One that the book suggested to use with ELL learners was having the students keep a dialogue journal. In a dialogue journal two students write back and forth to each other about whatever they want. The teacher also reads and responds in the journal while monitoring the student’s progress. I think this is a great way to get students using vocabulary and practicing their reading and writing skills. Our book suggested pairing a student who is proficient in English and has some knowledge of the language spoken by the non-English speaking child with the ELL student.

This website contains additional instructional strategies you can use in the classroom. It gives ideas that the book mentions and some more that you may not have thought about before. Such as, how to adjust your teaching style and motivating/providing background knowledge. I am also attaching a YouTube video of Dylan Garity talking about the struggle with helping ELL students. It is a very powerful video that was presented to me in class last year and really spoke out to me. It discusses how his sister struggles teaching ELL students in Boston, Massachusetts and other issues relevant to ELL. Lastly, I included a map showing the percentage of public school students who are ELL by state. It is for the school year 2011-2012 and the top states are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas.