Blog 4

Throughout this class, I have learned quite a bit about different teaching practices in regards to English Language Learners. I think it is quite helpful to be taking this class while we are out in the field every day to see some of the strategies mentioned throughout this course. I am the type of person that will not learn strictly by reading the book. I have to see things in front of me or a real-life example. That is why the interview blog was really helpful to me. I realized that the strategies that are mentioned throughout our reading are truly helpful. As I watched many of my classmates’ blogs, I realized that most of our interviewees had similar responses to the questions we asked.

I definitely plan to implement some of the strategies that I learned throughout this semester. As it was mentioned on many of the interviews, many of the strategies used for English Language Learners can be used for English-only students as well. I did not think about this concept prior to this class, but now I can see how some of those techniques, such as sentence stems, vocabulary cards, and icons/pictures, can assist with any student who may be struggling with a certain concept. Prior to being in the field, I did not know exactly what differentiating for English Language Learners looked like in the classroom. Through the required observations for this class, I see that once you get the strategy or technique down, it is actually easier than I thought to apply the strategy for those students. To my surprise, after taking this course, I have decided that I want to work towards getting my English Second Language Certification.

I do think that it might be beneficial for us to focus more on writing a second language. Just based on my experiences and observations this semester, it seems like educators tend to focus more on the oral practice of the second language. As these same students get older and continue to go through the education system, there is an obvious disconnect between the student being capable of speaking the language and writing it correctly. I think it would really help for us to know even more strategies of how to help these students.

As for the use of instructional technology within this course, I had mixed emotions about it. Two of the blogs we did, I found to be interesting. I liked that although this is an online course, we were still able to kind of “meet” some of our classmates through the first blog. I also liked the interview blog because it was interesting to hear from different educators in different school districts about their experiences with English Language Learners. It definitely gave me a realistic representation of how useful some of the techniques and strategies that we learn. As for the second blog, I found it to be a little less helpful. I understand the point of using the blogs, but just based on the amount of time we have along with all of our other assignments, I found them to sometimes be difficult to maintain.