Teaching English Learners

Classrooms across the United States serve multitudes of students who represent various countries around the world. This fact must be taken into account while planning out curriculum for the diverse student body that inhabits the classroom learning space. Each student comes with cultural capital and a linguistic heritage that is an asset to the learning community. There are various ways to not only support English Language Learners in the academic endeavors but also provide opportunities to have the students share their knowledge. 

In my class, I use graphic organizers with a section for vocabulary development which is helpful practice for all students, but is mainly used for academic language acquisition of ELL students.  I also have a word board in my classroom that supports students with essay-writing, by providing example sentence starters as well as transitional and conclusional phrases. I believe it is of extreme importance to honor the linguistic pluralism in the classroom, therefore I have various projects and activities in which the students can begin to think about the role of language in our lives.

In the beginning of the school year, I have the students engage in an activity that pushes them to think metacognitively  about their language through a "Language History Map." In this map, students must think about how they use their language publicly and privately, the language their parents use, and their ancestral language history.  They must investigate if they do not know what their ancestors spoke by researching the linguistic history of the geographical region they are from and must label the language they use in the present, besides "Standard English" (i.e. Spanglish, Black Vernacular, etc.) The students must also reflect on their relationship with speaking "Standard English" and in what context they must be able to employ "Standard English." I model the project for them by sharing my own language history map, as I relate to being an English Language Learner myself, since Spanish is my first language. In my presentation, I share what types of vernaculars I use and when, the language my parents use, and the linguitic heritage of my ancestors. I also share my experience of learning "Standard English." Attached are the instructions for the "Language History Map."