The first article I read, "Scaffolding Language and Learning" from the Gibbons text was very informative and brought up a lot of points I might not have initially thought about in approaching ELL students. I think keeping in mind that every situation has a cultural context as well as a situational context is imperative to remember when dealing with ELL students because this is something that differs among cultures. As I was reading about the different views of learning I wondered whether the "banking/empty vessel" or the "progressive" approach was more effective and thinking about instances when I had teachers that used these methods. Do you think one method is more effective than the other? Would you choose to use one method over the other in a particular situation or while teaching a specific subject?
The second article I read was "Assessing English-language learners in mainstream classrooms" which brought up a lot of unfair aspects of testing students that are learning English as a second language. One of the statements from the article said that "an overwhelming majority of assessment tools are in English only," which will obviously not gauge a students progress if they cannot understand the questions. It is important for teachers to administer a fair assessment that is multidimensional to provide authentic assessment.
The third article I read was "Opening Quality Lines of Communication: Seeing my Students Through the Eyes of Their Parents." This article was very interesting to me because it demonstrated a way to connect with parents while at the same time gaining invaluable information about students. Something I found that was of significance while reading a reflection that teacher Joellen Maples had after the parent essays were returned. She stated, "We don't teach students. We teach human beings...children...someone's "treasure" or "blessing." We are entrusted on a daily basis to provide them the best possible education we can and to see them as they really are-not who we think they are or what the stereotype tells us." This comment just stood out to me as something we must keep in mind about students as future teachers. I also saw the students being used as funds of knowledge through the information provided in the letters which is something that may not have been able to take place without the essays.
The final article I read was, "Codeswitching: Tools of Language and Culture Transform the Dialectally Diverse Classroom." I really liked the way this article approached English language differences and cleared up misconceptions about students who speak in vernacular in the classroom. Although students in the classroom speaking in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) may be seen as academically inferior or with poor grammar skills it is important to remember that they are speaking correctly in regards to the language of their culture or community. There is an ongoing debate about whether structural and semantic differences between AAVE and other dialects is the primary cause of reading failure. There is no solid evidence to prove this even though they appear to be correlated. Do you think the use of AAVE could affect students in the failure of reading because there is such great difference in the structure, verb use, etc. between languages? How would you approach a student using AAVE in reading/writing exercises without discouraging him/her?
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