Entry 3: Interview with Mentor Teacher
Hi, welcome to my entry 3 where I interview my mentor teacher about his experience in teaching ELLs. You can find the link to my video and reflection below, thank you for visiting.
Click here for my interview video
Mr. Vigil recalls how ELLs range widely in learning capabilities, with a small minority of students able to just absorb information. Students like these are able to learn from a natural approach, while others needed various strategies that suited their learning styles. Though, a common problem among ELLs in the math classroom was semantics. The solution process is the same despite the different cultures, but misunderstandings in semantics cause difficulties when solving word problems. Mr. Vigil provides the example of the word “coaster” having multiple meanings which leads to students to confuse context in the problem. Wright recommends that “teachers can use their understanding of semantics to develop vocabulary lessons that are based on lists of semantically related words” (2010, pg. 29), but this list would be adopted to be appropriate for the math classroom.
Wright summarizes this challenge well in the quote “The math test becomes instead a test of English reading comprehension - not the construct the math test was designed to measure” (2010, pg. 118). This translates over to Mr. Vigil’s experience in assessing students. In his experience, he does not differentiate the lesson much, but he does tweak how he assesses ELLs. The ELLs are not graded as strictly to the rubric, but rather to their own capabilities. He seems to adopt some of Vygotsky’s theories by assessing according to ELLs individual zone of proximal development.
Mr. Vigil shows a lot of reflection in his teaching, and acknowledge that his support of ELLs could be improved. He provided real world insight to teaching ELLs and advises to be mindful of instruction with the best intentions for them.
Wright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing.
Click here for my interview video
Reflection
The interviewee is my mentor teacher Leopoldo Vigil, a 7th grade Math teacher with 18 years of experience in teaching. He has experienced first hand the diversity of ELLs, their learning capacities and styles. Some of Mr. Vigil’s obstacles in the classroom are reflected in Wright’s notes.Mr. Vigil recalls how ELLs range widely in learning capabilities, with a small minority of students able to just absorb information. Students like these are able to learn from a natural approach, while others needed various strategies that suited their learning styles. Though, a common problem among ELLs in the math classroom was semantics. The solution process is the same despite the different cultures, but misunderstandings in semantics cause difficulties when solving word problems. Mr. Vigil provides the example of the word “coaster” having multiple meanings which leads to students to confuse context in the problem. Wright recommends that “teachers can use their understanding of semantics to develop vocabulary lessons that are based on lists of semantically related words” (2010, pg. 29), but this list would be adopted to be appropriate for the math classroom.
Wright summarizes this challenge well in the quote “The math test becomes instead a test of English reading comprehension - not the construct the math test was designed to measure” (2010, pg. 118). This translates over to Mr. Vigil’s experience in assessing students. In his experience, he does not differentiate the lesson much, but he does tweak how he assesses ELLs. The ELLs are not graded as strictly to the rubric, but rather to their own capabilities. He seems to adopt some of Vygotsky’s theories by assessing according to ELLs individual zone of proximal development.
Mr. Vigil shows a lot of reflection in his teaching, and acknowledge that his support of ELLs could be improved. He provided real world insight to teaching ELLs and advises to be mindful of instruction with the best intentions for them.
Wright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing.
Hello, Franklin!
ReplyDeleteYour mentor teacher has been teaching for a really long time so some of the things he mentioned are really helpful. I will definitely take them into consideration. I liked that you were able to keep a smooth flow by asking him follow-up questions. I was so surprised when he said that teachers don’t necessarily have to differentiate content, but focus more on how much students understand. College courses put a big emphasis on differentiating instruction, however. I feel like students can always use some differentiation in content, such as more visuals. I understand that teachers won’t have time to differentiate when there are so many students at different levels. I do really appreciate that he uses students’ zone of proximal development to differentiate. This is where “children can reach a higher level of knowledge with the support of an adult” (Wright, 2015, p. 67). I think this is an important part in student’s development because that’s where teachers understand what their students need help on to optimize their learnings. If teachers fail to address this, students might not move onto Masters and falls back into Frustration level.
Wright, W.E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English Language Learners: research, theory, policy, and practice. (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Calson
Hey Mia, it was surprising that Mr. Vigil does not incorporate much differentiation. This conflicts with what we are taught in the college of education, but Mr. Vigil is a more traditional teacher and had a different experience from ours in his teaching education. He is also very mindful of his own teaching and admits there are areas where he could improve. One strategy that my mentor teacher could adopt to assist ELLs is content-based instruction where “the content area provides a meaningful context for authentic communication” (Wright, 2010, p. 46). This would help students solve math word problems as well as their own english comprehension.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteWhat really stuck out to me was when you were talking about in the interview how the math test becomes more like a reading comprehension test. Just recently we had a student in my class who had to take a math test but who was very low in reading. In her plan she did not have anything that would allow us to read the test to her. In the end she ended up scoring very badly on the test. After the test when we went over it with her we found that she actually would have been able to get many of the answers correct had she known fully what all the words meant. I think that students who are ELL and have a hard time in math should have the opportunity to take the math test in another way. I agree with Wright (2015) when he talks about math not being assessed correctly when they do not understand all of the words they are reading (pg. 118).
Hello Vanessa, I’m teaching English, so I didn’t really realize the struggles ELL students faced with assessments. One of the things Wright said that ELL student must be able to know how t oread math problems in order to solve them, and that certain vocabulary words may unknown to them. In order to solve this obstacle math teachers should do hands on/ role playing in order for them to understand Word problems. Eventually, students “will be able to answer other Word problems without hands-on manipulatives and role playing” (Wright, 2015, p 274).
DeleteWright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (Second ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Caslon.
Yes, although vocabulary is important teachers talking less is also very important. Wright (2015) talks about this in chapter 7 when he discusses how students should talk more and the teacher should talk less (pg. 156). This will encourage the students to all practice speaking and communicating better. I really liked his quote from the US comedian Gallagher that said "They send us to school to learn to communicate, but all day they tell us to shut up!" I see this to often in my school were the teacher does 95% of the talking and the students are just supposed to take it in. I think this can be especially harmful to ELL students who need to practice speaking the language. I agree that it should be more student talking and less teacher.
DeleteHey Vanessa, I appreciate your input from your experience. Those are the real challenges that we have to face as teachers. Wright recommends two kinds of accommodations that would provide the most support: “testing students in their native language (L1) and simplifying the language used in the test” (2010, p. 121). This may also be a reason why reading to her was not on the plan. For the future, these accommodations may prove useful to include in her plan or alter the form of assessment that is more appropriate.
DeleteAnd hey Lam, I think using hands-on manipulatives and role playing could definitely help in the classroom. Since you are in ELA, I am also curious what interdisciplinary practices could be done between English and Mathematics to help ELLs. Wright details ELLs having difficulty with vocabulary because “words such as divisor, denominator, and quotient are rarely used outside of math, and many common words, such as table column, and face, have specific meanings in math contexts” (2010, p. 246). This makes remedying ELLs vocabulary problem much more complicated.
DeleteHi Franklin! Your interview was great. After watching your interview and reading your reflection, I saw that Mr.Vigil adjusts his assessments for ELL students. I read that he does not grade ELL students as strictly as his other students. This is a great strategy. In our textbook, Wright discusses many different forms of assessments. Wright (2015) also mentions "providing ELLs with effective instruction requires the appropriate use of assessments" (p.148). Not all methods of assessments are effective for ELL students. I have seen that many teachers use observations or less formal methods to have an accurate measure of their knowledge of a specific topic.
ReplyDeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015, Print. Second Edition
Hello Almira, you are right. My mentor teacher gathers much more information from the day to day interactions and observations rather than student assessment results. He uses the information gathered through formative assessment for differentiation the same way Wright observes. Mr. Vigil knows his “students, and by using authentic formative assessments can continually determine their language and academic needs relative to the instruction goals” (2010, p. 240). All this gathered information directly influences differentiation in instruction and assessment.
DeleteDear Franklin!
ReplyDeleteAfter watching your video I came up with an idea that may help your teacher. But before I get to that, I want to tell you that your teacher teaching the many definitions of the word "coaster" was a great strategy for students. That way when they come along that word again, they can try figure out which definition of "coaster" the sentence is using according to context clues around the word. Wright (2015) states "homonyms are words that have two or more than different meanings" (pg. 33). The word "coaster" has 4 different meanings;
1) a small tray or mat placed under a bottle or glass to protect the table underneath.
2) a ship used to carry cargo along the coast.
3) a person who inhabits a specified coast.
"a West coaster"
4.) a toboggan.
short for roller coaster.
What I thought could help your teacher help your students out is to make a word wall with all the words the students are learning. Each word can have a picture and short description of the word. Wright (2015) states "The world wall should be built through out the year. As words are added, students and the teacher should discuss their meaning...to help with their writing" (pg. 33-34). If your teacher does this, the students will be using more strategies and visuals to help them learn.
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015, Print. Second Edition
Hi Angelica, I appreciate your ideas and insight. These are things that I will definitely consider in my own teaching toolkit. Your word wall idea gave me some inspiration to expand on that concept. Wright reckons “other computer software programs in [the core content areas] that are not necessarily designed for ELLs are nonetheless appropriate for ELL students” (2010, p. 291). Then I would expand the word wall to an online interactive word wall with a software program like Popplet. This way students can freely build upon a class or individual word wall, adding multimedia for context, and access from anywhere.
DeleteHello Franklin. The problem you stated you had with semantics seems like a widespread issue in math. We as well have the same problem in our math classroom. The students are having more trouble reading and understanding the word problems on the test than with the actual skill at hand. I have seem this problem multiple times and I believe teachers everywhere can agree as well with you. However, I do remember in my college Math class we learned that one way to avoid a Math test becoming a reading comprehension test, we can try to make sure the language is comprehensible for all students. I do know that in the district I work in, we are in fact allowed to read all students the questions and answers. However, if this is not allowed as is the case in many different districts, we can try to prepare our students in advance by introducing similar language in our classroom.
DeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.