Hart
& Risley
1. What was the chapter about?
This article reported the results of a research project which compared the amount of words to which babies and toddlers are exposed, based on the economic level of their families. Students with low SES are exposed to about one-third the words of their high SES peers by age 3.
2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Students in poorer areas may not be struggling because they don't care; they may be struggling because they simply don't know the language that you are using with them.
3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
Yes -- slow down, explain new terms (especially grammar terms) in more depth and repeat them more, and be conscious of each students' background.
Fitzgerald & Graves
1. What was the chapter about?This article discusses ways to support ELL students in a regular classroom with scaffolding. 2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?Some students -- especially ELLs, but even native English speakers -- need extra help to read texts. This is normal, and even desirable when the teacher wants to increase their reading level. I'm in Dr. Brown's add-on ESL licensure cohort, and I found it interesting that this article didn't explicitly state that the same techniques which help ELLs also help struggling (and highly achieving!) native English speakers. With scaffolding, prereading, and postreading, there really is no way to hurt your students.
3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
I'm going to need this all the time. No matter what I teach -- Latin or ESL -- my students will be learning about a new language and culture, in a language not their own. I will need to give my students context for their reading and make sure that they understand what they're being exposed to.
Daniels & Zemelman (D&Z) Ch 7
1. What was the chapter about?
This chapter advocates building a community of learners -- teaching students to work together to help each other learn -- so that students are more motivated, more cooperative, more comfortable, and ultimately more successful.
2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Students can often teach each other more effectively than you can teach them. Appeal to students' interests to get them to learn -- and be excited about learning! Meet with students individually to address specific concerns and to prevent students shutting down from embarrassment, lack of knowledge, or insecurity.
3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
Most of this chapter will work in Latin. Some of the "appeal to students' interests" advice would be more difficult to work in, since Latin doesn't have many of the modern conveniences which students now take for granted, but I can find analogies for most things. I know I have two athletes in my Latin I class, and Rome had sports...though not the ones which my students are familiar with.
I found the Hart & Risley piece to be somewhat discouraging, once I sat down and thought about it some. Early interventions are temporary fixes, at best, and the progress will fade within a year or so. It seems that more lasting effects would mean that these programs should be expanded to include the parents of the child, but there are huge logistical challenges to that, in addition to the ancient (and well-known) problem of finding money to spend on it. Also, you identified something I know I'll have to work on: Giving benefits of the doubt when someone isn't following me.
ReplyDeleteThe ELL article was fairly common-sensical in my opinion. Although I would not have thought about bringing in native speakers, as suggested by the authors. I did not think to make the connection between ELL's and struggling native speakers, so thanks for making that point obvious for me.
The D&Z article got me wondering about piquing student interest in our commonly-viewed musty old field. Appeals to better understanding western history/civilization may work with some, but probably not most students. But where there's a will, there is probably a way.
And on a semi-related note, I was exceedingly pleased to see my favored educational theory (SCT) lauded through out the chapter.