Planning for English Language Learners (Teach-now Module 2: Week 4: Activity 3)

Almost every class I have taught in Korea has had students with a wide range of English speaking, reading, and comprehension ability. They are students who seems to excel at all aspects of learning English. This student will consistently speak up and want to answer questions. Some students are almost the exact opposite and will rarely pay attention and have consistent trouble doing the basics in the class. Then there are students who excel at some parts of the class and not with others. While some students may be comfortable speaking to answer questions but has trouble with syntax and grammar, others may excel at book work and reading comprehension be have difficulty speaking aloud and pronunciation.

                

            The text book that I currently use with one of my classes in focused on reading but also has a science or social studies section that relates to each story. The section in the current chapter is about storms and how to measure them. Covering these sections can be a challenge because some of the concepts can be beyond some of my students (they are 6) but usually they enjoy it.

For this lesson we will be reading through the three pages discussing the topics covered in the three pages and then hopefully if we have time the students can talk about their experiences in storms or other kinds of extreme weather.

              

            First off with the reading we usually take turns reading a sentence or two at a time. Different students will be at different levels of reading ability. While some fan fly through the sentences with ease others will have to sound out each syllable. I’m lucky to have a small class so I can spend a bit of time individually to help them if need be. After each student reads a sentence I usually ask another student a specific question about what was just read. The complexity of the sentence will depend of the level of the student. Using flash cards or pictures on the board can help a lot with students who have trouble with comprehension. I can use multiple ways of describing or explaining a concept or word to the student. If all else fails I will use Korean to make sure they get it before moving on to another student.  For the students who already have a good grasp of the topic or works I will try and talk about the topic in a context outside of the story. In this case the topic is storms so I could asks them when storms happen, if there is a storm in the winter how is it different from a summer storm, etc. A fancy way of explaining this would be teaching metacognition or authentic assessment but basically I want the students to think about what they are reading while learning how to read rather than just learning the sounds that go with the letters.

          

             For students that have trouble with getting the concepts of a story or reading, I often try to incorporate something that the students are already interested or would be familiar with. For my students I could use the lightening that a power ranger character can shoot, or even an amazing real-life video that shows and insane storm. Korean lays claim to creating one of the first rain gauges and some students may be familiar with that.