Professional+Development

Michelle Lapointe English Language Learners: The Essential Guide by Freeman and Freeman (2007) Reflection

In chapterfour it opens up with an example of a teacher who uses the EnglishLanguage Learners first language throughout the lesson. She breaks the students up into groups based on their native language and allows them to converse in that language. She has them talk about a picture book that she showed. Some students were able to talk about the pictures in their native language from experiences they had. They showed great connections. She knew students had limited vocabulary but they still understood because they had the opportunities to talk in their native tongue.

In Millstone River, my teacher did a read aloud book that was about a different culture’s holiday. I learned that day that a number of the students that I observe do not celebrate Christmas or holidays that I normally expect. My mind started racing with questions because the majority in this classroom is the minority in many classrooms around the nation. I had originally thought that it was so students could understand a minority’s culture, and it was, but I had to understand that the minority was not the group I had assumed. This actually turned out in the end to be more effective than I thought because the children were supplying different stories for this holiday. It turned into a lesson that each student may celebrate the same holiday but there is more then one way to celebrate it.

Another section of the book talked about the library you set up in the classroom. (Freeman, 101) When my teacher read the book about the Indian holiday the students in my class that are catholic were exposed to the different language and learned a few new words. Students who already celebrate the holiday in the class learned about other ways to say the words depending on where you were from. This book came from the classroom library. It is important to add books to a library that celebrates the languages other students use. An English speaking student maybe come very interested in learning another language when they have an English Language Learner in their classroom. It will help those students communicate with the ELL student in their classroom. It is important to me to have books in my classroom celebrating other cultures and incorporating different languages. This book also offers a website call the International Children’s Digital Library where students can read books in any language (Freeman, 101). This would be important to incorporate because when I am teaching comprehension, reading in English is not necessary only being able to understand the content. In that situation you only need to be able to extract details and information from the text, and even though it is in a different language the content is still the same.

A reoccurring theme throughout the book is to use thematic units. This seems like a normal idea because you normally teach students in units however, ELL suggests supplementing the units with a large amount of books. Some of the books are picture books that ELL students can understand, others have pictures with English so students can make the connection, and some are in their native language. In the example of the Plants and Seeds unit, you find on page 123 a bibliography for teachers to use. The book not only teaches you effective ways to teach ELL students it also gives you a jumping off point. It walks you through an effective teaching method and lists the books they used that are appropriate. This is great for a beginner teacher like myself that is does not have vast knowledge on books yet. With time teachers becomes exposed to many books and they keep a mental note of them, as a beginner teacher my list is much shorter. A list helping me is a great tool to help make teaching ELL easier for me and learning for my ELL student more effective.

It is unfair to expect students to learn English as soon as they enter an English speaking school. Freeman and Freeman make note that teachers need to understand there needs to be a gradual release of responsibility. At first teachers can do the reading for the students if they are unable to read in English yet, then the teachers can move to a read aloud and engage the students in a discussion with the rest of the class. Then you can do shared reading with large letters so students can gain letter sound correspondences, fluency, and English syntactic patterns and semantic knowledge (Freeman, 136). As a teacher it is important that ELL students are going to need more attention in the beginning when learning English. Teachers need to plan for the extra time they will need to spend with their ELL students. In my very first observation of a fifth grade class there was a new student who spoke French. Luckily for her the teacher spoke a few things in French, and she had an aid with her for about half the day. She was allowed to frequent the French-English Dictionary. Unfortunately no one translated anything for her before hand so we had to spend large amounts of time drawing things and using our hands to try to explain what she didn’t understand. It was a valuable experience there that I need to spend time before planning and modifying instruction for those students. I would also love to incorporate the rest of the class with the learning of an ELL student.

The overall picture of the book wants to foster both languages. Throughout each chapter we see that it is important to incorporate each language. It is common in the United States that a second language is either never learned or it is quickly forgotten when English becomes the primary language. Greene also proved that students who are taught using at least some of their primary language perform significantly better on standardized tests (Freeman, 91). My favorite part of the book is the fact that we are not trying to get students make English their new language, we are trying to get it incorporated into their existing language. A girl in my Millstone River class right now takes Hebrew lessons and she incorporates it in her life by speaking it at home. She has a great balance between English and her second language.