ASSESSMENT 2

Emma Davis

Washington State University

Teaching and Learning 301
Paulina Abustan
 ELL, Immigrant, and Refugee Students

Students coming from a different country into an American classroom experience a range

of issues, including emotional, social, and educational problems. Dual language development is

likely the first problem that they will encounter if they come from a country that does not teach

English as a second language in the classroom. Their first language can be kept or lost in the

process of learning English at school. Depending on what happens to their first language, they

will experience either additive bilingualism or subtractive bilingualism. Learning a second

language can be more problematic if they are not learning English during a sensitive period in

their development. Sensitive periods in our lives occur when we take in information best.

Another experience that a student from a foreign country may experience is language

loss. This can be a very sad experience for the student and even more so for their family. The

child’s family likely values their home language as a part of their culture and may fear that the

child is denying their identity. This also depends though on if the child is hearing their heritage

language at home enough or not. Their parents may even experience language loss as they

assimilate into American culture. Students who lose their native language are usually students

born into immigrant families who already live in America. In a study by Portes and Hao, (1998)

it was discovered that of the first and second- generation students living in Miami, Florida, only

16% had retained their heritage language and 72% preferred English anyway (Woolfolk, pg.

181).

When learning English in school, it is important for ELL students to learn to recognize

the difference between academic language and casual language. To give them the best possible

chance in succeeding in school, proper use of academic language is necessary, but for succeeding

in making friends in their new home they will need to learn to use casual or conversational
language. It takes much longer to be able to fully comprehend academic language than it does to

comprehend face-to-face language (Woolfolk, pg. 184). Academic language can contain large

words with complex meanings. Conversational language however, can be understood much

faster as the words are simpler and likely tailored to the knowledge of the two or more people

speaking among each other.

Incompatible culture also will play a large role in a new student’s life. They may not be

able to pick up on social ques right away, and cultural differences are likely to create a social

barrier between the student and the teacher and the student and their peers. An example of this

may be how in Asian countries individualism is not valued, so you will likely see participation

issues when using interactive activities in the classroom or group discussions. This also means

that Asian students respect the teacher above all else. This creates problems because Asian

students believe it is rude to ask questions. This will also not help with the language barrier. A

way to help motivate these students to work better in a US classroom is to support their

autonomy when they speak in group discussions and regard this participation and whatever they

say as a success (Woolfolk, pg. 473). Students from middle eastern countries may also

experience issues when they find that their religion is not compatible with the school’s breakfast

and lunch menu. Proper nutrition must be addressed before any kind of quality learning can take

place in the classroom. Also, many cultures find it rude to look people in the eye, so it is

important to understand this when ELL students are speaking to you. Teacher’s own lack of

cultural responsiveness can lead to many other problems when interacting with ELL, immigrant,

and refugee students. Researching your students’ culture and representing it within the classroom

will help make the room a better place for the new students. It may also be a good idea to invite

parents in to talk about the child.

 Refugee status may also be emotionally plaguing your ELL students. To qualify as a

refugee your home country must be under a considerable amount turmoil or the individual or

family must be in great danger if they stay in their own country. So, when you have students that

may seem as if they are not paying attention or doing below average, you should not label them

immediately as a bad student. Children bring a lot of emotional baggage to school with them.

The expectation that the US used to carry about assimilation by refugees has had a bad impact on

the success of ELL students, as the classrooms that refugee students enter are not fit enough or

built for their needs (Woolfolk, pg. 188). Being sensitive to your students’ needs includes not

bringing politics into the classroom, so that you do not offend any of your students. A teacher’s

job in the classroom does not include sharing and or teaching their political views.

Racism is still alive and well across many nations including our very own United States

of America. This may impact how your ELL, immigrant, and refugee students learn in your

classroom. Teaching tolerance and acceptance within a classroom starts with the teacher making

sure not to racially profile any of his or her students. Also, providing examples of all your

students’ cultures and more will help students to learn what other cultures are really like.

Breaking down stereotypes can happen in classroom when you put aside more than just one day

of curriculum aside to interweave a lesson about another country. When children can see

themselves in the curriculum they are more intrigued to learn and feel more comfortable in the

classroom. This is growing topic in US classrooms regarding authentic tasks (Woolfolk, pg.

472). All your students should be able to relate topics in the classroom to something useful in

their own culture to assist in motivating them.

 Metacognition and Problem Solving

A child’s metacognitive skills consist of their ability to elaborate, be attentive, rehearse,

organize, and imagine (Woolfolk, pg. 328). Metacognitive knowledge is broken into three

categories of declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and self- regulatory knowledge

(Bruner, 2011). We use these metacognitive processes every day, but not necessarily all the time.

We have things that we have learned to do routinely, and metacognition is therefore not required.

Learning the different parts of metacognition is how children learn to problem solve.

As is already well known, people are different and none of us think in the same way.

Differences in individuals’ metacognitive skills determine how we all handle problems.

Metacognition is described by William James described as thinking about thinking, and as kids

get older, they can start thinking about whether or not they understand what is told to them

(Woolfolk, pg. 328, 329). However, not all children will reach the same levels of metacognition

at the same time because metacognition is not directly linked to how old someone is. Our

genetics and classroom experiences, nature and nurture, provide the setup for how a child’s mind

will develop.

Learning strategies to improve metacognitive development includes being engaged, being

focused, putting in effort, thinking deeply, and keeping track of what information you are

retaining and what information you are not. Being engaged is the first step to truly learning

something and not just memorizing it. That is why it is important for teachers to try and grab

their students’ attention. From there, the student must have some kind of motivation to put in the

effort to learn whatever content is being presented. Without motivation, children find no value in

what teachers have to say. Once children take in the information for the first time, they must go

back to organize and analyze what they have just learned. This helps to teach them to evaluate
what they have learned, so that they may assess how this information can be used to solve

problems or answer questions in the future. Teachers can also assist in teaching children to track

and monitor their learning. Asking children to summarize what they learned or asking

comprehensive questions throughout a lesson can help teach them to assess if they are really

engaged and invested in the learning process. Metacognition involves understanding your brain,

and that includes what is happening to it when a student is learning.

Knowing how to do something requires that a student have learning strategies in their

repertoire to utilize when confronted with a problem. A key problem in many elementary and

middle schools is that learning strategies are not taught until they are much older, unfortunately.

Finding age appropriate tasks to make learning easier is a large part of how teachers can assist in

developing a students’ mind and creating lifelong learners. Next, it important for a teacher to

encourage their students to care about learning. Helping your students to set short term and long

term goals can help create good habits for the rest of their lives. Learning to set goals is a part of

learning to monitor your own learning. Effort is also important to solving problems, but the

students must find that the results are worth as much as they are putting in.

The problem-solving process starts with learning to identify and isolate the problem and

the desired goal. From there, the brain creates a series of steps to reach that goal. The largest

issues in education arise when there are multiple ways to solve a problem, and some are better

than others. Kids can get confused when trying to follow a complex set of steps that does not

make sense to them. It is important for teachers to provide as many pathways as possible to

account for the different learning styles in the classroom population. Kids can get lost in all the

details of a problem as well, so teaching students to pull out only the necessary information is a

key part of creating good problem-solvers. Lastly, students should be taught to analyze their
work once the problem is solved. Checking you work and possibly trying again is the best way to

ensure the students are producing quality solutions.

 Bibliography
Woolfolk, A. (2016). Educational Psychology (13th ed.). Harlow: Pearson.