This article Teach Mathematics: Strategies to Reach all Students, goes through 20 tangible ways to teach math to ELL students. These techniques vary from the simple #9 “Explain directions clearly, and repeat key terms” to the more complex ones like #16 “Concretize math concepts with total physical response. The article described these strategies as a grab-bag, designed to give teachers flexibility in using a variation of different techniques in order to get their ELL students to learn. However, a majority of these techniques have some common threads. First, none of these strategies require separate exclusive ELL time. These strategies are meant to be used to teach math, rather than transform the math class into an extension of English class. Second, most of these strategies try and use multiple sensory learning in order to get kids who might not be able to understand with the ears and tongues to be able to understand with their eyes and hands. Third, many of these strategies also try to build connections to their native cultures and math. This way they help to create a welcoming environment where the kids will be feel comfortable than be vulnerable in a new environment.
Even though this article is about math, I found that most of principles and practices mentioned in it could be applied in any classroom. For example #7, Encouraging students to think aloud when solving word problems. Word problems exist in many subject fields, from Science to Social Studies. #3 Applying problems to real-life situations helps with anybody, not just ELL students. #17 Creating word banks would be helpful for any class that depends of key definitions. Therefore, I found this article helpful for any teacher with ELL students.
However, I think the article suffers from some problems because if you craft your lessons so much to the needs of the ELL students, won’t this negatively affect those who don’t need the work as ELL. This assumes that certain ways of teaching that are better than others. For example if you can teach a lesson through inductive simulations, this will be better than just a straight lecture. Thus, if you teach your math with these ELL students in mind doesn’t that come at the expense of the kids who already speak English. I am in particular thinking of the example of using the Abacus to help Chinese students relate to math. This seems like the teacher is planning his/her lesson around the individual ELL learner.
I assume that this will not always be the case, and often times there is no clear single best way of learning, so an ELL strategy could work for the entire class. Also, times the lesson plan could be differentiated so that the learning for the ELL kids will not come at the other’s expense.
No comments:
Post a Comment