Week 7 readings

Mohr, Gibbons, Avalos: These readings are really helpful for teachers who have no experience working with ELLS. As was said in the readings, a growing amount of our students will at least be bilingual. I want to compare these readings with my LLT class that I took last semester. This class (though I found it kind of boring) was pretty beneficial after I look back on it. Without this class, I wouldn't know the first thing about teaching an ELL. The reading touched on a lot of the same basic stuff; that we need to adjust some of our teaching approaches to help our ELL students. I think that the most beneficial thing that we can do that I learned from my LLT class as well as these readings are to have the students discuss! In the Gibbons book, it mentions IRE responses and how they don't improve English: "When teacher interactions lead only to single-word or single-clause responses, there is little opportunity for the learner's language to be stretched, for students to focus on how they are saying something, or for giving them practice in using the language for themselves." One of the first things that the Mohr article suggests is "increasing student talk time." The article basically says that we shouldn't let our student slide under the radar and have them engaging in discussions throughout the entire day with groups, partners and teacher-student interaction.
But obviously, we want our students to be able to do more than just communicate; we want them to also read and write with proficiency. The Mohr article tells us to have the student practice reading and then afterward, discuss what they just read. Other ideas that I learned in my LLT class is to have the students read, the write about what they just read, and then have them share what they wrote with a partner. This encompasses all aspects.

Holliman: In the Montessori classroom, they do something similar to centers but it's not quite the same. There are rugs placed sporadically around the room and the students are to fulfill certain tasks at those rugs such as math problems, vocabulary, drawings etc. Throughout the entire morning they choose the tasks they want to do that day (but they have a certain amount that they have to finish by the end of the week). Like the article suggests, they have place to mark of the tasks that they accomplished that day. The article also says that the teacher should be floating around the room helping the students. For the most part, you will always see my CT as well as her teaching assistant, walking around helping groups, partners and individual students. The morning is always busy and has that exact "BUZZ" that the article describes. Even though it's not considered "centers" in the Montessori, I think they are very similar in structure. As far as if they work, I don't know. It seems to be working but how can one really tell? But I think it's great that the kids are in an environment where they feel they are making their own choices as far as what they want to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it.