#10 Homework

     The purpose of homework should have a clear academic purpose, demonstrates student learning, promotes ownership through choice in assignment, instills a sense of competence, is enjoyable or interesting. (Vatterott, 2010)

   Homework should provide students with practicing of skills, previewing knowledge, encourage higher levels of thinking and applying knowledge learned in the classroom.  Students should be able to complete homework independently, and a choice in how they demonstrate their knowledge of the skill.  For example students could choose how to demonstrate knowledge of vocabulary words by writing definitions, writing a story using the words, making a pictorial representation or, creating flashcards to practice. Homework should also be differentiated so that students who have a slower processing time will not become overwhelmed. Parent involvement should be centered more around providing a good study atmosphere and habits not on completing the task.

     It is important for the student to receive feedback, however it does not always need to come from the teacher.  Students can share homework with other students in order to share struggles and successes.  The teacher can provide class discussion time to clarify questions and address needs. Students can have the opportunity to make corrections on homework in order to practice skills correctly.  Students should also have time to reflect upon their work achievement and effort level in order to build the connection between effort and achievement. Occasionally the teacher should provide specific individualized feedback for students.

     Technology can be used to provide specific homework assignments through teacher websites.  Along with assignments listed, teachers could provide additional resources to aid in homework completion and websites for additional practice and project creations. Parents should be familiar and have access to this information in order to be aware of homework expectations and when assignments are due so they can help their child with time management.

9—Fiction and Nonfiction Texts

Fiction and nonfiction texts have very different structures.  If ELLs receive instruction in these different structures, then the structure of the text can help unlock meaning.  For example, if a student knows that a fiction text, usually begins with the setting, then that gives the student a few key things, such as time and place, to look for when reading the beginning of a story. This is especially true for stories that the students may have already read in their native language, such as fairy tales.  Similarly, if students can identify compare and contrast structures, then they can read focusing on what two items do or do not have in common.  By focusing reading, ELLs hop will not feel as bogged down by unfamiliar vocabulary.

            The pictures, graphs and charts in nonfiction texts also help ELLs unlock meaning because they do not rely solely on words.  Often textbooks have good graphic organizers that present the written information in another way that may be easier for an English language learner to understand.  Beginning level fiction books also have strong picture support, but that support diminishes as the difficulty of the text increases.  ELLs may have more trouble creating mental pictures because of figures of speech or unfamiliar vocabulary.

            The vocabulary and sentence structures in nonfiction texts can be especially challenging to ELLs because of the academic way of writing that includes many abstractions (Gibbons 2002).  Many of the definitions also include complex vocabulary so glossaries may not be helpful.  I did not think that the chapter review questions would be that helpful in guiding reading because they do not always focus on the most important information and the wording of questions can confuse many students, no matter their English language ability. 

8—Sheltered Literacy Lesson

I saw the teacher talk a lot.  I became oddly aware of the number of times she said okay, an ineffective way to check for understanding that I sometimes slip into.  While watching the video, I never saw the students show any response to her okays.  I know that we did not see everything but what we did see did not impress me.  The students did not actively participate in the lesson. The teacher seemed to have a very specific idea of the response she wanted and did not initiate much talk with or among the students.

            A couple of students attempted to sing a Spanish birthday song, but it appeared awkward and strained. It seems that the students would have so much to share about different traditions for celebrating birthdays in their families, but I did not see any of that conversation.

            I think that the essential components of a sheltered lesson are the dual objectives—both content and language objectives.  One objective from the lesson we observed was to use inference to predict what may happen, but I did not see a particular language objective.  Another essential component would be including as much language support for the students as possible through, pictures, real objects, demonstrations, total physical response (TPR), gestures, modeling, etc.  I saw very little of this. The pictures that the teacher passed around did not coordinate with her vocabulary instruction. They seemed a disjointed afterthought.  And the vocabulary review only involved her talking. The students had minimal participation, mainly through provided through call and response, which also seems contrary to a sheltered lesson.

            The other key element that seemed missing was student involvement: activities for them to practice the concepts, group work, and opportunities to practice using English in meaningful situations.  Although the students had to create post-it notes which integrated writing and reading, I did not see any integration of speaking. And I did not notice the teacher’s wait time as she asked so few questions, and the same girl, Sarah, answered many of the questions.  I felt quite disappointed with the lesson.

7—Running Record

As we worked on the running records, I realized how much additional information about the child adds to understanding and using the assessment.  Although Amani used visual clues, I am not sure how much he used meaning because I don’t know how much he understood of what he read.  I would love to hear his retell and hear him speak more so that I could get a better understanding of his accent and strengths in English. 

Some of the words that he missed may be because he has only partial understanding of the vocabulary.  My son (3 years old) often says a word close to the one he really wants to use or uses a different form of that word when he is learning new, longer words.  I wonder if Amani did the same thing with office for officer and farm for farmers.  He also said something like docducks for doctors and the way he repeated it made me think that he thought that was the right word or that he was trying to remember the right word.

            Since Amani did not use pictures very often, one teaching point would be to have him practice picture walks or creating pictures to call his attention to the pictures and teach him how to use the pictures to help him construct meaning.   He also seemed unsure of the vocabulary and would benefit from practice with occupation words, perhaps through flashcards or by acting the out the jobs.  He could also match the pictures or actions with the vocabulary words in the book.  Amani understands print concepts, follows the pattern of the story, applies some phonics skills, but needs lots of vocabulary and oral language practice to build up his English skills so that he can understand what he reads.  Maybe after practicing his retell, he then could try it with a peer or talk with peers about the topic of books before he reads them to build up his oral language skills.

Since Donna mentioned that Wendy has strong oral language skills, I wonder if she relied heavily on them while reading.  Some of her miscues such as substituting when I thought for even though, adding cents to $14.75, and her difficulty with put it on (and the text break) could be because she anticipated what might be in the text from the patterns she knows in spoken English.  I might explain that her strength in oral language helps her in reading and then brainstorm how reading and speaking are different as a precursor to teaching the skill of rereading for meaning and accuracy.  She could then chart her accuracy in reading and rereading stories.  I might model think alouds for her too so that she could then practice them with a partner and hopefully become more engaged in constructing meaning while she reads.

She struggled with the –ed ending, so could participate in a word study about –ed words.  Some of her vowels reflected Spanish pronunciation.  She said little with a long I, but seemed to pronounce other words with a short i sound correctly.  (I don’t remember because I marked all the words that I could understand as correct.)  If that is the case, I think that she would benefit more from learning other skills.  From my experiences learning a foreign language, focusing on minor pronunciation issues sometimes made me feel more self-conscious and hesitant to speak. 

I was also curious about the two times when Wendy reversed letters, was for saw in jigsaw and ur (turly) in truly.  I wonder how often she reverses letters and if that is something that significantly impacts her reading.

6B WIDA Standards

Overall, I thought that the document was well organized and seemed easy to use.  There were such specific, easy to implement ideas.   I found the levels 1-6 helpful because sometimes it is hard to know how much a student is capable of doing in a new language.  I find this especially difficult with shy students. I appreciated the first standard, Social and Instructional Language; Formative framework, because that is how the students learn to function in the class.  From studying and teaching in other cultures, I have learned how different classroom expectation can be in a way that is just understood.  A list with such specific activities reminds me to teach instructional language too.  I also loved all the specific ideas about how to differentiate activities for students at the different levels of language acquisition.  A lot of the ideas would work for native speakers too.  In that way, it seems that these ideas would work well in many classrooms. 

I looked at the standards for teaching grades 3-5 (thinking of a 5th grade classroom) and again loved all the detailed ideas.  The chart helps me organize how to tailor the lesson to the specific needs of students and helps me think of other similar strategies for different topics.  I thought the point of view exercises were excellent and liked how they started with the point of view of the student.  After reading any genre, the students could participate in those activities.  Although the level one and two students have lower English language skills, I would still like them to connect to the text in some way.  That concept seems missing in the first two levels and is important to understanding the literary concept of point of view.  Perhaps the student could describe a character with words or actions or pictures or talk about the character in his or her native language, even if I did not understand.  I keep thinking about how ELLs need to learn content too. 

6A—RTI Response

I was most surprised by the contradiction between the reading in Essential Linguistics (Freeman & Freeman, 2004) and the RTI Resources and Strategies by Karen Sabados about teaching and assessing phonics.  Freeman and Freeman (2004) were adamant about the need to teach and assess phonics skills in the context of real words and pieces of writing, yet Sabados suggested using DIBELS and emphasized the importance of assessing nonsense words.  I think as an ELL, it would be more challenging to pronounce the nonsense word in the correct language.  I was just thinking about the word able and how easy it would be to pronounce in either Spanish or English out of context.  For our last course, I also found much research that proves DIBELS does not accurately predict reading success and has a lot of corruption connected to it.

Although it makes a lot of sense now that I think about it, I was surprised at the difficulty in distinguishing between a learning disability and language barrier for ELL students.  It seems like the best way to tell is to assess how that student uses his or her first language.  Given the wide variety of languages that ELLs can speak, that could be challenging and equally challenging to know what proficiency should sound like for a student at a given level. 

What I learned is the importance of working together to help assess ELL students.  Parents need to be included for many reasons, but also because they can be helpful in assessing the students’ first language ability.  The school team also has to work together—ESL teacher, RtI team, classroom teacher and student.  There are so many factors that can influence a ELLs reading ability and all these people provide valuable knowledge to make the assessments and interventions the most effective.