Monday, January 31, 2011

Ch. 4

"The classroom teacher is responsible for presenting the material in an understandable way, arranging for students to participate in learning activities, and then measuring the extent of the student's mastery of the material" (Diaz-Rico, 70). This statement was taken from the performance-based learning.  Teachers tend to teach based off the performance of their students or their students' achievement.  Standards-based teaching is when teachers tend to teach from the standards that were setup by the state.  English-Language Development Standards (ELD) were established to ensure that EL students become proficient in the English language as well as the concepts and skills which are intertwined in the ELA.  The areas that the ELD covers are reading, writing, and listening/speaking.

The identification procedures for EL students start with a home language survey.  This way the school can gain information from the home, observations made by the teachers, as well as any interviews or referrals made by other staff members.When the survey is complete, the bilingual staff will then assess the students for present level of language acquisition.  After the administration of the assessment, the teacher will receive the results with the current levels.  Having such information is suppose to guide the teacher in their teaching.

I currently have a student that has been placed in a mild/moderate special education class.  As I was searching her records, I found that during her initial special education assessment process that the School Psychologist skipped assessing her in her L1. She was tested in English, which are primarily biased tests that are hard for EL students to read, understand, etc. I continue to question if she truly had a disability at that time.


The following article was researched in regards to teacher preparation in classrooms that have more than one language.
Steele, T. (2010). Teachers serving English Learners: Preparation and practice in linguistically diverse classrooms. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 70, Retrieved from EBSCOhost..
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1 comment:

  1. Michelle GrecoJanuary 31, 2011 at 6:48 PM

    Melissa Hale wrote "It's almost as if I physically see him trying to process the information, form it into his second language, and then relay it all back to me". This is very common among EL students, and although I do not have any EL students currently at this level of development in my class, I have seen these types of behaviors and strategies of processing information countless times as I worked as an aide in the schools.

    Amanda Wright wrote, "All too many times there is a lot of pressure to redesignate students as fluent English speakers and leads to failure ultimately". There is a lot of pressure on the EL population in the schools. At the site where I teach, we are focusing more on EL students to raise our test scores and get us out of program improvement. For students that already have a lot of pressure to learn the language it is extremelyu unfair! However, at the same time, these students are now receiving the attention and support they need to unconditionally acquire the language. Although it may have a positive effect, it is sad that the school had to decline in their test scores in order to give these students the supports they need.

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