Chapter 8: A Guide for Teaching English Language Learners
"#1 – “In recent years, the ELL school population has the highest increase among all student groups.” (Li, Nan. A Book for Every Teacher : Teaching English Language Learners. Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2015.) And I don’t see it getting any better through our immigration system. However, all children have the right to an education and that being said, I am going to discuss the Pull-Out program. This is a program for English Language Learners that offers advantages like dedicated, focused English language instruction in a smaller setting with fewer distractions, providing a personalized setting aimed at learning, and tailored for how the student learns the best. However, it has disadvantages including potential missed content from the regular classroom, potential social isolation, and potential disruption to the flow of learning by constantly switching between classes. I was one of those “pull out” learners not from ELL but from comprehension and having an IEP. I am not a fan of “pull-out” due to being labeled “different”, but overall - being in a smaller classroom setting and in fact potentially one on one the fear of getting it wrong or not knowing the answer lessens the anxiety. Anxiety is a big deal in school, and I am for giving the student the best scenario for success.
#2 – I prefer Formative assessment from all we read about sincethe teacher can close the gaps of lost instruction before it grows too deep. As I have already discussed, I would prefer pull-out for an ELL program and if I did that, I would develop a rubric put together with the student to measure their progress. We discuss the learning targets/goals, and they can say what they feel is an acceptable goal and work target to demonstrate they are learning the material. This way the student stays on task by seeing the end goal and how to get there."