I found the readings for this week to be extremely helpful and applicable for me because of my current placements. Because I am about to start my ESL placement next week for my TE 494 course, I found the Lenski article to be helpful. I think it is important to consider alternate assessments for ELLs because they provide more of a complete picture of student progress in a more natural setting. Also I thought the idea of modifying teacher written tests for ELLs and not modifying achievement tests was important to remember because sometimes it can be challenging to determine how much extra help with assessments ELLs should receive. As a teacher you want your students to have the best chance for success, but you do not want to hurt them in the long run for providing too much assistance.
Furthermore, I found the ideas in the Fleming article (and also some in the Delpit article) to directly relate to my other placement. My 401/402 placement is in a 4th grade classroom at Wainwright Elementary in the Lansing Public School District. I found the statistic that "only 16& of low income 4th graders were considered proficient readers" to be staggering. This is a very low percentage and it is clear from the time I have spent in my classroom that this seems to be true. In the Fleming article the lack of resources and effect of poverty on literacy learning were very interesting. In my particular 4th grade classroom there are at least three students that live in homeless shelters and others that I am sure do not get enough to eat at home or have a very rough home life. This has a great effect on their performance in school and because a lot of them may not have access to literature at home it can be difficult to progress at grade level in literacy. The lack of resources is also a problem at my school. They have a math textbook and social studies textbook, but no other textbooks to work with. When I taught my science lesson I had to find all of my own resources and materials because there were none available for our class. The article also discusses the challenges of working with a wide range of readers. This is definitely seen in my classroom, and while some are at or above grade level in their reading ability others struggle with basic sight words that should have been mastered in 2nd grade. I have worked one one one with several of the students in the class with reading and it is shocking to see the range of different levels the students are at. This is a huge challenge for teachers to be able to address each level of ability and can be extremely time consuming. Overall these readings brought up great points and I found them to be informative and helpful in regards to my placements.
I really liked the Fleming and the Lenski articles for this week. I thought they presented a problem and came up with several different solutions to those problems that were not only fundamentally correct but were seemingly easy to enact. I thought the Delpit article was tantamount to racial propaganda, but, I digress and say that I like how you can see the readings being enacted out in your classrooms. While I no doubt believe the issues that Delpit posits in her writing, I have issues with the way she presents her material, the arguments she makes and the bogus "Abraham, Martin and John" feel-good ending she spins on the vitriol she spent 17 previous pages spewing.
ReplyDeleteAhh, Nathan! Enough about Delpit! Anyway, I like that you have these issues in your classroom directly. They are ever-present and obvious. Some of the issues that are talked about in the Fleming article, for instance, aren't always easy to point out. Sometimes horrific things are happening in the lives of the students in your classroom but you may not know about it. Their struggles are easily hidden. In the case of ELL students, their main inherent struggle is much easier to grasp. However, if they are compounded by other social issues like family abuse, low-income, etc...then their status as ELL becomes that much more sensitized.