I'm researching effective teaching strategies when working with English language learners (ELL's) in the science classroom. Although ELL's have some additional needs of learning language and facing cultural barriers in schools, ELL's learn the same way in which all students learn.
In Mary Ann Zehr's blog post The Latest Research on Teaching Science to ELLs, Zehr alludes to the research brief Improving Science Vocabulary Learning of English Language Learners posted by the Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners. The research brief describes two interventions that have been used in the United States.
One of the interventions included pre- and post-vocabulary teaching using visual cards. Although ELL's need to develop science content language, the students first need to understand the concepts. Kolb's learning cycle informs teaching through telling teachers to first start with engagement for students. Students must be intrigued, motivated, and interested before they are going to learn vocabulary words. Additionally, having students actually experience the vocabulary word rather than showing them the card would be more concrete. Developmental learning theory emphasizes that starting with concrete representations helps students more than having them start with abstract representations. See figure 1 from the research brief for an example of one of the vocabulary cards used in the intervention.
Intervention 2 from the research brief highlights that teachers were to provide an engagement for ELL's at the beginning of the lesson. The brief describes the example of letting students watch a tea bag filter into water when learning about osmosis. Although I'm not sure if osmosis is developmentally appropriate for 6th graders, the act of giving students this introduction engagement would benefit not on ELL's but also all students. The engagement is concrete and it draws in student interest. The part that did not seem appropriate to "how science works" was that step-by-step directions were given for the experiment. Not only does the step-by-step process provide students with an inaccurate understanding of what science is and how science is done, but also limits ELL's from orally interacting during the experiment.
I think these are great ideas to use in a science classroom. I hope I can use things like this in my classroom someday. I think concepts similar to these can be used in other subjects too. Maybe not the second one but the first one could be modified a little.
ReplyDeleteI am researching this same topic for another class and the research I have found supports your statements. In NCTM's Principle and Standards document "equity" is an important principle, which states that all students need to have equal opportunity to learn to the best of their ability. In the articles I've read the authors make a point to mention that the strategies are essential to ELL students, but are helpful to all students.
ReplyDeleteVocabulary instruction for ELL's interests me and I think it's really important for classroom teachers to inform themselves on strategies to provide effective instruction. One misconception I came across was that some classroom teachers think they need to use language less to reduce the language load of the ELL students. However, this is not the case. If language is reduced in the classroom, these students don't get enough opportunity to hear and to practice the language. Teachers should be reflective and careful on how they speak but reducing the use of vocabulary does not help these students learn.
I like what you said about some of the things used for ELL students being able to benefit all students. I think that is something that gets looked over a lot. I've noticed that in most of my classes when we learn about different accommodations for students, most of them would benefit all students, not simply the ELL students. Like we have talked about in class, it won't hurt students to learn something they know already.
ReplyDelete