ELL Students in the Mainstream Classroom
- ajlaahmetovic
- Mar 8, 2019
- 4 min read
Student Learning Outcome: 4- Sense of Praxis
Description of Artifact: Observing and experiencing ELL students in the classroom.
Artifact Alignment: Making sure that our experiences are enriching and well rounded is the key to being a successful teacher in the future. Being able to share experiences with our peers and professors can only help them and yourselves grow as educators.
Future Goal: To be prepared as a teacher in education is an impossible goal. The career field of education is always changing and growing. As educators, we may never be 100% fully prepared for everything our classroom will bring to us. However, the experiences we go through and lessons we learn before we are teachers will strength our ability to be the best version of educators to those children. I hope that my experiences through university and being in schools prior to teaching will solidify my strengths as a teacher and in turn make me a better teacher for my students.
Sense of Praxis Reflection: The experiences that I have has as a student teacher will forever shape the way I teach in my own future classroom. Incorporating technology to better enrich the lives of my students has been something that we have perfected in 2020 with the Covid-19 Pandemic. Sharing our experiences and reflecting on our growth is the most important aspect to becoming a better educator.
On Friday March 8th, I had the pleasure of going back to my first grade classroom and observe for the whole day. It has been about 14 years since I have been in first grade with Heather Reed, so going back and remembering what it was like was a great feeling. Today specifically, I focused on the English Language Learners that were in the classroom. The Mehlville School District had about 1,600 ELL students, and 8 of them were in my classroom that day, two students shy of being a classroom where half the students are English Language Learners.
As the day began, I spoke to the ELL teacher that is here at Forder, also my former fifth grade teacher. She stated, “We are in high demand for ELL teachers, so get certified to be one. You will love it and be amazing at it since you yourself speak two languages”. The rate of ELL students, specifically in the Mehlville School District continues to grow. Forder has started to transition from the more traditional way of pulling out, to now pushing into the classrooms for accommodations. Today I focused my attention on a young Bosnian girl named Adna.
Heather states that Adna has come a long way from the beginning of the school year in August. When Adna first started the first grade, she was reading at a level A when she was suppose to be at a level D. Although Forder is focusing on pushing in, their pull out strategies still work. They have switched to a 3:1 pull out program, where one teacher works with 3 students. This has given Adna the focus and attention she needs in order to work on her reading skills and move up to where the other students are at. Adna was pulled out with two other kids, and with a reading specialist/ELL teacher, she worked on her reading skills for half an hour. Once she was done with her independent reading, she would join the rest of her class in reading. While the students read independently for an hour, Heather brings 4-5 students to a table and they work on reading skills. Adna was brought up to the table with a few other students. After all working together, the others left and Adna stayed. She read the whole book out loud to the teacher, as the teacher marked her missed words, and understand of the text. After Adna read, she answered questions about genre, theme, setting, and plot.
Adna continues to work hard on her reading, vocabulary, and comprehension of stories. Looking back at where she was 8 months ago, she has made such strong gains. She is quiet and to herself, and works hard to focus on getting her work done. She has a personality that strongly reminded of me at that age. She loved being the helper of the classroom which helps with the daily schedule, being the messenger, sending the lunch list down, and helping clean up the classroom. This gives the child a sense of belonging within the classroom, and even though she leaves the classroom a few times, she now feels like her role in the classroom is important.
I have learned a lot from what I observed with Heather and Adna. The way the teachers interact with their ELL students amazes me. For some reason, I expect teachers to treat them differently because of their abilities, but Heather did nothing along those lines. She treated her just as she would the other students, but was always there when she needed that extra push in her English abilities. She worked hard as a teacher to push Adna to do better and not let her fall behind. Adna also played a strong role in her progression. She stayed focused and tried hard to bring herself back up to the reading level that her classmates were at. She practiced reading each night and working on her vocabulary in order to come to class better than the day before. I hope to one day be able to push my students and be that support system that Heather was to Adna.
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