Literature/Reading Text Presentation Info

“Learning and Not Learning English” by Guadalupe Valdes
  1. Description: This text goes into detail about English Language Learners and their place within classrooms when it comes to English Language Arts. It is especially important because of language barriers that occur with all classrooms, but when teaching Language Arts as a teacher you have to approach ELL’s with different teaching tactics. “Learning and Not Learning English” uses examples of ELL students and uses their perspectives to explain the complexity of teaching English in diverse classrooms. Not only does this text help teachers teach ELL's but focuses on reaching these students so that they do not get discouraged in learning. English Language Arts classes can be discouraging for ELL’s because of the language barrier, and can push students to lose motivation. This text makes sure that teachers are aware of this problem are gives them ideas on how to solve it. 

  1. Why?: I chose this text because I have taken a few English as a Second Language courses, and I think that teaching to ELL’s is an important topic for all teachers to consider while learning to teach. ELL’s will be in your classes, and we need to make sure that we understand the difficulties that they go through as they learn English in America. Bilingual learners also learn at different paces, and I think that this is something that ELL’s will have to deal with in thinking that they are “behind” in classes. I think this text helps teachers combat this loss of motivation from discouraging events that happen in American schools because of cultural differences. 

  1. Teaching Ideas: 
    1. Assessment: From the beginning of class, I want to access where each student is at, who my ELL are, and how their English learning has progressed and how it should progress. 
    2. Culturally Inclusive Texts and Activities: An important thing to remember with ELL’s in your classroom is considering that their cultural background is going to be much different than students that grew up in the US and are native English speakers. Thinking about this in terms of immigrant students, we as teachers should be considerate of that experience and include diverse texts that can help all students. 
    3. Frequent Check-ins: As well as beginning assessments, I think that it would be beneficial for teachers to check-in with their ELL’s to see how their English has progressed and what they are struggling with the most and see how you can help them further. 
  1. Challenges:The only thing that I can think could be a challenge in using this text in a classroom is that this is not the end all be all text when considering ELL’s. This text only focuses on Latino students in America, and there are so many other diverse ELL’s that also need to be mentioned in this discussion about ELL’s in classrooms. Each language is going to have different challenges, and learning about all of these is important for teachers to learn. 

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