Weekly Reading: October 28th

1. What was the chapter about?

Fitzgerald & Graves talk about how to scaffold and differentiate instruction for ESL students. They suggest several different ways to present instruction, particularly new vocabulary. They strongly suggest breaking activities and readings into different sections so that ESL and struggling students can get at least a small amount of information out of the activity, rather than feeling overwhelmed and giving up.

Bromley points out nine facts about teaching and learning vocabulary. She strongly supports teaching students to recognize parts of words – prefixes, roots, and suffixes – as a way to decode the meaning of new and intimidating words. She also suggests teaching fewer words and practicing them orally, as using oral language is more instinctive than using written language.

2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?

Fitzgerald & Graves point out what I already know from my ESL placement (I’m spending several weeks each in an elementary, middle, and high school ESL classroom to become licensed in ESL): those students need a lot of support which they often do not get in their regular classroom. The same applies to struggling students. The more that you can scaffold and differentiate for those students, the more they will be able to learn.

Bromley suggests several strategies for teaching students. I especially like teaching word roots, as it is something which will help both Latin students and ESL students learn their new langauge.

3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?

Fitzgerald & Graves give good advice at face value, but from my experience in an ESL classroom, I suspect that they have more theoretical than practical knowledge of ESL students. They forget important factors like “few ESL students will be literate in their own language,” “students from nominally the same language background may speak different dialects of that language,” “no one at your school may know their specific language and dialect,” and, most of all, “you are teaching students English, not reinforcing their desire to fall back on their native language.” Once you make allowances for those factors, however, their advice becomes applicable to both ESL students and struggling readers. After all, ESL students can often listen to and speak a language years before they can read or write it at the same level, so they share many of the same characteristics of struggling readers.

Bromley explicitly states what a lot of teachers should know, but may have forgotten (or forgotten to apply). In just one week of working with ESL students, I have seen many of these techniques, so I can vouch for their applicability and importance. This is also important in Latin, because that also teaches a language by teaching vocabulary.