9/22

I really found the article on Sheltered-Instruction to be interesting. In the section labeled background, it states that LEP students have a higher tendency to receive lower grades, get judged by their teachers to have lower academic abilities, and also to score lower on standardized tests. This section, hit home for me, because in much of the observation that I have done in classrooms, as well as just from observing teachers actions at my high school, I have realized how much teachers do judge LEP students to have lower academic abilities. In my high school, there was many LEP students who could not understand the teacher very well. I would help some of them to get the material, but it was almost as though the teacher would ignore them. I feel bad for these students because it is unfair to them. The teacher's know that they have limited English, but does not try to differentiate their instruction to better fit their needs. The article and research state that it takes 4-10 years for the students to develop a proficient level of Academic English. This time span however is not met, because teachers do not wait until the students are proficient in the language before they enter them into regular classes in which the subject matter is taught in English, but more importantly it is an Academic English in which the students need to be able to write persuasively, express analysis, draw conclusions, make hypothesis and conclusions, and other activities that require a high level of English proficiency. How can students accomplish this list of activities required in almost all of their classes, if they have had such a limited amount of exposure to the English language? What many teachers do not understand, is how second language is acquired. "Ideally, all content teachers would be trained in areas such as second language acquisition and ESL methodology although often that is not the case" (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 9). I am not saying that all teachers need to become masters in the subject as we are studying to be, but I am saying that they should really have an understanding of the diversity that there can be among their students. Many teachers do not realize how diverse their classroom is in terms of language and culture. This can have an effect on the classroom because there are many differences in the students lives such as their educational backgrounds, their expectations of school, their socioeconomic status, the language that they speak, and their social customs. Therefore is one student is from another country and they do not understand the classroom expectations of participation, turn-tasking and established routines, then they are going to struggle significantly in the class. Sheltered Instruction is an amazing way to reduce such problems. Even if a school does not implement such program, teachers should keep in mind that some students have limited proficiency and need a differentiation of instruction to help guide them through. Something as simple as giving them a sheet of a list of vocabulary words that they may not know could help them significantly. Just today, in doing clinical hours, I helped a student who had LEP. She was doing her science homework and explained to me that she did not understand more than half of the words on her worksheet. I then took a look at the work sheet and realized that she was required to read a paragraph and answer the following questions. I must admit that there was many science specific words and large words in the sentences that I could understand why they would be difficult for her. It took us the whole hour for her to complete the worksheet because I had to explain each sentence by using simple language that could be comprehended by her.