Ms. Garcia is not new to working with ELL students inside her classroom. With her previous years of teaching, she has gained more knowledge and practice/experience working with ELL students. She stated that she has a variety of ELL students ranging from early emergent readers to fluent readers and some in between those. Ms. Garica expressed that challenges arise when working with ELL students, but she finds solutions to those challenges. Some challenges she faces are getting the students to make personal connections to the classroom and curriculum. Another challenge is working with their native language and comparing words or phrases to English. She takes into consideration if the student(s) are only speaking in their native language at home, or if they are speaking and learning English at home as well, this can cause challenges because they might not be as advanced and requires extra in-class support. Wright states, "teachers must get to know their students by obtaining information about their sociocultural background. This information will help teachers make the best possible decisions for providing effective instruction for their ELLs" (2019, p.26).
Inside her classroom, Ms.Garcia uses a variety of approaches for her ELL students. Ms.Garcia shared that since she can be a fast talker, one approach she takes with her ELLs students is to slow her speech down and be very articulated. She also uses their native language and finds commonalities between their native language and English to help them find those pathways and make connections. She uses a lot of visual representations like pictures, sentence stems, and models. Wright stated, "teachers need to find ways to make their instruction comprehensible for ELLs, and they need to provide ample opportunities for meaningful interactions in the classroom" (2019, p.66)
Interviewing Ms.Garcia was such a wonderful thing to do, and I'm thankful I got the experience to do it. I was able to learn and gain insight from an experienced teacher. I left this interview with knowledge on some techniques I can use inside my classroom one day to help support my Ells. My biggest takeaway from this interview was learning about the approaches she uses to ensure her ells are getting the support they need to be successful not only in her class but in their everyday life. She is focused on using their background to help build those personal connections to the lesson or content.
References:
Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (3rd ed.). Caslon Publishing
