At the beginning of the school year, I looked at my rosters and immediately noticed something different: most of the names of students in one of my periods had an English Language Learner (ELL) designation. In a matter of seconds I went through a range of emotions I was not expecting. First, I was immediately intrigued and elated; all of the ELL students had Latino last names. Because I teach at a school where I am only one of two Latina teachers, I thought it would be amazing to teach a class with such a large Latino population. But then, just as quickly as the elation came, it was gone. Besides knowing Spanish, what qualifications did I have to teach to this population of students? The panic set in immediately. I tried to convince myself that knowing the language was enough and was more than most were doing.
When school started, I translated a lot. I taught my lessons in both English and Spanish and assumed I was doing what was best for my students. Soon enough it was time for our first summative assessment. I spent four hours translating the test word-for-word (google translate does not translate effectively as it does not understand usage). I didn’t plan on translating everything the entire year, but I figured I would slowly wean/ gradually release my students off of Spanish. I fully anticipated that my hard work would equal student success on their test.
I was wrong. My ELL students scored very poorly on the test. Translating did not help them - not knowing the language was not their greatest challenge. More urgently, they did not possess the skills necessary to close read and think critically about a text. I expected my students to do well simply because I was speaking in their language, yet I failed to teach them the prerequisite skills needed to be successful.
I went back to the drawing board and after a lot of research, determined to implement several strategies in order keep rigor in my classroom, while still meeting my student’s language needs. My main goal was to create intentional grouping that mirrored what San Francisco International High School was doing in order to foster engagement in my classroom. There, they found that students were more willing to “engage with content-- and practice English-- when they work in groups that include speakers of many different first languages.” Following SFIHS’s method, I sat down with our ESL teacher and instructional coach to map out student grouping that made sense for our needs. Students were grouped based on ability, language, motivation level, and behavior. Most groups had at least one student whose primary language was English, one student who was bilingual, and one or two students who were English Language Learners. Then, I began to incorporate PEBC’s Thinking Strategies (monitoring for meaning, building background knowledge, asking questions, drawing inferences, determining the importance, creating sensory images, synthesizing information and problem solving), bilingually to teach students the literacy skills I’d erroneously assumed they knew in their native language.
I continued to translate in my classroom as needed. I made it clear to my students that I would gradually reduce the amount of Spanish I was using in the classroom with the expectation that they request translation only when it was absolutely necessary.
I obtained a baseline assessment of all my students’ close reading skills using the Newsela website, a database of current event articles that teachers can digitally assign to students. I particularly liked that using this website also exposed students to worldwide current events, something most students oftentimes lack. Newsela allowed me to assign texts at the appropriate lexile level, as well as texts that could be read in Spanish. My goal as an English teacher, ultimately, is to foster literacy skills in students. For students whose primary language is Spanish, it seemed to me that the best way to do this was to grow those skills in their primary language first.
Since one of the tenets of the Thinking Strategies is to foster meaningful discourse, I focused on creating curriculum that was engaging and allotted plenty of crafting time for students to discuss with one another. Throughout the school year I taught the Thinking Strategies as tools that students could utilize in all lessons. I modeled my thinking to students and showed them the way in which I used the tools to make meaning of rigorous texts.
With time, these tools became part of the landscape for all of my students. Most importantly, students came to understand that literacy requires work. I continued to monitor the progress students through periodic assessments and found that they were demonstrating growth and I shared it with them.
Too often teachers guard growth as if it’s some magic secret. The challenge was in teaching students that growth in their learning doesn’t immediately make an immense change in their grade. Students wanted to check the gradebook and see that they had gone up one letter grade, instead of looking at how they were improving on a given skill. However, when they could track their growth of a particular skill over an extended period of time, they could see how far they had come and that ultimately inspired them to set greater goals for the future.
One particular student was working diligently for a B in the class. She looked through the student portal at her grade on a daily basis. She finally complained one day when she realized that her grade had only moved up a fraction of a percent. She was ready to quit. What she wasn’t looking at, was that she had made leaps and bounds in one of the standards with her ability to analyze word choice and meaning. For an ELL reader, that was a huge accomplishment and would greatly positively impact her reading comprehension in any class, not just mine. When I helped her to look at the benefits in this way, her outlook drastically changed.
In the end, this has been one of my greatest, but most rewarding, challenges as a teacher. I went into this experience thinking that my ELL students would all master the standards because I spoke their language but it clearly wasn’t enough. The saying goes, ‘feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.’ Only by teaching students the tools needed to attain literacy will we have a more lasting impact in their learning.
Teaching ELL students can be a challenge but it is important that teachers remember a few things:
When school started, I translated a lot. I taught my lessons in both English and Spanish and assumed I was doing what was best for my students. Soon enough it was time for our first summative assessment. I spent four hours translating the test word-for-word (google translate does not translate effectively as it does not understand usage). I didn’t plan on translating everything the entire year, but I figured I would slowly wean/ gradually release my students off of Spanish. I fully anticipated that my hard work would equal student success on their test.
I was wrong. My ELL students scored very poorly on the test. Translating did not help them - not knowing the language was not their greatest challenge. More urgently, they did not possess the skills necessary to close read and think critically about a text. I expected my students to do well simply because I was speaking in their language, yet I failed to teach them the prerequisite skills needed to be successful.
I went back to the drawing board and after a lot of research, determined to implement several strategies in order keep rigor in my classroom, while still meeting my student’s language needs. My main goal was to create intentional grouping that mirrored what San Francisco International High School was doing in order to foster engagement in my classroom. There, they found that students were more willing to “engage with content-- and practice English-- when they work in groups that include speakers of many different first languages.” Following SFIHS’s method, I sat down with our ESL teacher and instructional coach to map out student grouping that made sense for our needs. Students were grouped based on ability, language, motivation level, and behavior. Most groups had at least one student whose primary language was English, one student who was bilingual, and one or two students who were English Language Learners. Then, I began to incorporate PEBC’s Thinking Strategies (monitoring for meaning, building background knowledge, asking questions, drawing inferences, determining the importance, creating sensory images, synthesizing information and problem solving), bilingually to teach students the literacy skills I’d erroneously assumed they knew in their native language.
I continued to translate in my classroom as needed. I made it clear to my students that I would gradually reduce the amount of Spanish I was using in the classroom with the expectation that they request translation only when it was absolutely necessary.
I obtained a baseline assessment of all my students’ close reading skills using the Newsela website, a database of current event articles that teachers can digitally assign to students. I particularly liked that using this website also exposed students to worldwide current events, something most students oftentimes lack. Newsela allowed me to assign texts at the appropriate lexile level, as well as texts that could be read in Spanish. My goal as an English teacher, ultimately, is to foster literacy skills in students. For students whose primary language is Spanish, it seemed to me that the best way to do this was to grow those skills in their primary language first.
Since one of the tenets of the Thinking Strategies is to foster meaningful discourse, I focused on creating curriculum that was engaging and allotted plenty of crafting time for students to discuss with one another. Throughout the school year I taught the Thinking Strategies as tools that students could utilize in all lessons. I modeled my thinking to students and showed them the way in which I used the tools to make meaning of rigorous texts.
With time, these tools became part of the landscape for all of my students. Most importantly, students came to understand that literacy requires work. I continued to monitor the progress students through periodic assessments and found that they were demonstrating growth and I shared it with them.
Too often teachers guard growth as if it’s some magic secret. The challenge was in teaching students that growth in their learning doesn’t immediately make an immense change in their grade. Students wanted to check the gradebook and see that they had gone up one letter grade, instead of looking at how they were improving on a given skill. However, when they could track their growth of a particular skill over an extended period of time, they could see how far they had come and that ultimately inspired them to set greater goals for the future.
One particular student was working diligently for a B in the class. She looked through the student portal at her grade on a daily basis. She finally complained one day when she realized that her grade had only moved up a fraction of a percent. She was ready to quit. What she wasn’t looking at, was that she had made leaps and bounds in one of the standards with her ability to analyze word choice and meaning. For an ELL reader, that was a huge accomplishment and would greatly positively impact her reading comprehension in any class, not just mine. When I helped her to look at the benefits in this way, her outlook drastically changed.
In the end, this has been one of my greatest, but most rewarding, challenges as a teacher. I went into this experience thinking that my ELL students would all master the standards because I spoke their language but it clearly wasn’t enough. The saying goes, ‘feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.’ Only by teaching students the tools needed to attain literacy will we have a more lasting impact in their learning.
Teaching ELL students can be a challenge but it is important that teachers remember a few things:
- putting all ELL students in one group might be easier on you but it is a detriment to students.
- Google translate should not be your only go-to source as it fails to recognize usage effectively.
- Work as a team with your ESL teacher and instructional coach--they are not the enemy.
- Allot for plenty of discourse between students and teach them that the struggle is par for the course in learning.
- Lastly, do your best to keep up with best practices; what worked 5, 10 years ago, may not work today.
Vilma Godoy is a high school English teacher in Shelbyville, Ky. Born in Guatemala, raised in California, and transplanted to Kentucky, Vilma has a wide range of experiences that inform her teaching style and philosophy. She is passionate about providing rigorous opportunities for all students to learn and grow.