Last Meeting With ELLs

My last meeting with my ELLs went much better than previous lessons.  I brought in two different articles that dealt with two different regions and their particular problems.  The point of my lesson was to teach how to use a graphic organizer to aid in comprehension and to help organize information in preparation to write an essay.  The students read the first article silently, and I then showed them how to use the graphic organizer to sort information in order to discern the main idea.  The second article was a little more challenging, and this time I had the students read the article aloud.  The graphic organizer we drew up on this article was put together by all three of us.  I was trying to help them understand that not all information in a particular piece of literature is going to be of equal importance.  The graphic organizer was helpful in illustrating this point; however, the students were not totally confident as to how to construct the organizer on their own.

Even though the students were not absolutely confident in constructing the graphic organizer, I do believe that I was able to convey to them the importance of writing down what they are reading to aid comprehension.  Reading a text closely is hard work, and I could definitely tell the students were ready to get away from me at the end; nevertheless, I am convinced that if they worked with me on a regular basis, I could definitely help them improve their reading and comprehension with the use of graphic organizers. 

The most valuable aspect of this ELL experience is the realization that the school experience for these students is much more difficult and precarious than I previously realized.  I don’t see how I would be able to ignore my future ELL students, or allow them to slip through the cracks after this experience.  If anything, my future ELLs may find me really annoying because I won’t let them blend into the background at the back of the class.  As I plan to give my students intense amounts of OTR, my ELLs will get plenty of practice speaking, writing, listening, and creating new and original work, including graphic organizers.  The most important lesson that I have learned from this experience in the block and in working with my ELLs is that, in order to be an effective teacher, I will have to understand and be able to analyze how I learn, how I organize and sort through information to find the relevant and important ideas, and how I organize my thoughts in preparation for writing.  I will have to constantly reflect on my own learning as well as on my teaching and my students’ needs and interests in order to be the most effective teacher I can be.  That’s my goal anyway.

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