Blog 16: Self-directed Learning using Feedly

The article “Do’s and Don’ts for Teaching English-Language Learners “ by Larry Ferlazzo gives teachers many strategies to use to help ELLs. These strategies include considering the rate in which teachers speak and allowing ELLs sufficient wait time because they are thinking in more than one language. It includes suggesting about modeling, checking for understanding, and giving instructions. All of the recommendations were extremely helpful for teachers that have not had a lot of experience with ELLs.

I found that this article took me back to previous experiences I have had myself. The closing of the article was an “aha” moment for me. It stated that students should not be forbidden to speak their native language because they will not feel like they are in a safe environment to take risks where it would be acceptable to make mistakes. That explains a lot about me because I was an ELL student when I first started school. When I started attending school we were not allowed to speak Spanish especially in my first grade class. Now I understand why I rarely speak out in my classes or public places. The experiences I had personally helped me to be more sensitive to ELLs in my classroom.

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/esl-ell-tips-ferlazzo-sypnieski

Another article that is interesting is “New Teachers: Inspire Your Students to Write, Write, Write” by Rebecca Alber. This article brings up the fact that if students feel too much pressure to write grammatically correct on the first draft then they are freezing up when it comes to writing, and they are definitely not enjoying writing.

The article suggests having students write without worrying about being grammatically correct. One way that this can be done is to provide the students with prompts that allow them to share their opinions and what they know. Another important point brought up was to have the students share their writing and not just have them put their writing away when writing time is over. Giving them options to choose from as far as the audience and structure of their writing. When it comes to grading, Alber recommends giving a credit grade instead of correcting the paper. Students can choose a piece of writing to write formally for the teacher to grade.

When I first started teaching fourth grade I was not fond of writing. Once I started writing alongside my students to walk them through the formal writing process I found it to be therapeutic for my students and myself. All of my students and I bonded because we got to know a lot about each other. I was surprised to find that a lot of these nine and ten year old babies have already lived a difficult lifetime that writing helped them to adjust to their difficult lives.

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teachers-inspiring-your-students-write-write-write-rebecca-alber