Chapter Four
When I first started reading Chapter Four, I have to admit that I was beginning to get a little bit skeptical about the textbook. The last few chapters seemed to highlight moderately to extremely successful instances with second language learners and I found myself enjoying the experiences being shared in the textbook, but also questioning what I was going to do if (and when) I was presented with a student who was really struggling with acquiring English.
I thought that the way that Cathy handled her ELL students, Gustavo and Erica, was really insightful. It is a great idea to get to know your students on a cultural level (like we discussed last week) and on a more personal level. By getting to know what interests her students, Cathy was able to come up with creative ways to increase their English usage. This strategy can also be used in mainstream classrooms to help increase student participation as a whole. Along with getting to know her students, I think that Cathy actually provided her students with opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations which made it much easier for her students to produce speech acts in a low stress environment. I was also pleasantly surprised when they started discussing the third ELL student, Ophelia. Although, I didn't like that Ophelia wasn't making 100% progress, it was almost comforting to actually read about a teacher who was struggling so much with helping a student acquire English as a Second Language.
It was also kind of a relief to read that Cathy's teaching, as amazing and thorough as it was, was not all that sparked her students' progress in English acquisition. It takes some of the pressure off of us as teachers to realize that not all students will benefit from classroom learning and that we cannot possibly give them all the lessons they need in order to be successful academically. What we can do, however, is give them the tools they need in order to be successful.
Another thing I really enjoyed about this chapter was the interest inventory. I volunteer for a local program called Partners in Reading at the Normal Public Library which helps younger children become better readers. Part of what we do during our first meeting is take an interest inventory of the child we are working with. Although they aren't typically second language learners, they are young children who are still learning the language. I found this strategy to be extremely helpful with the children I am partnered with because it allows me to find books that might interest them more which makes the reading/learning process more fun and exciting!
Chapter Five
This chapter really made me think about how and why I will use textbooks in my future classes. Eventually, I will be teaching high school English, so a lot of my lessons will revolve around novels - not necessarily textbooks. After reading about Karen's classroom, it made me re-evaluate how I create my lesson plans; obviously I am going to have to focus a lot on the novels, but each novel should be treated as a supplementary text to be combined with other media and texts. This approach is transferrable in a class with both ELL and mainstream students because it helps to encourage understanding on multiple levels.
I recently learned about text tours in my Teaching Literature course and I find them to be very helpful when introducing a new topic or novel. She was able to help them understand the chapter (or at least start to!) and implicitly introduce reading and comprehension strategies. I also liked how Karen was able to go with the flow, so to speak, with her students and encouraged them to process the information by making it more personal to them. She actually postponed the lesson because she felt that the personal stories would help her students understand the material better In the end, I think that it made her students more engaged in the text and excited to learn. It was almost like the high school edition of Jeff's Box Sledding introduction - it gave the students a desire to learn about the topic at hand.
I also really liked the handout that Karen gave her students to summarize the chapter. I think that its simple design provides the perfect platform for her students to organize their thoughts and it also provides a great study guide for them to look back on. As a teacher, this could also be used as an informal assessment tool; you may be able to determine what aspects of comprehension and reading you need to focus on more in the classroom to really help your students grasp the key concepts.
Finally, I loved that Karen incorporated humor into her classes every day. I think it takes a lot of guts for a teacher to be able to laugh at him/herself, especially in front of students. By adding humor to the mix, I think Karen did herself and her students a favor and created a more light-hearted learning environment that encourages mistakes as an opportunity to learn! At first, I was a little taken aback by her willingness to joke about her students who confused "grinning" with "grinding", but I saw how she was able to make that a learning experience for her other students who might have been having the same issue and still make the students who made the error feel that it was ok. This just proves how valuable humor can be in the classroom!
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