Breanne Pratt ELD 308 Dr.

McKool Professional Development The goal of all school administrators, curriculum specialists, and classroom teachers is to enable every student to succeed academically. However, there are many struggling students. English language learners, as an example, have a very difficult time becoming successful academically because English is not their first language. The number of these students in the classrooms is increasing dramatically with time. In 2004, one in every ten students was an English language learner (Freeman, 4). This statistic is not very recent, and the numbers have most likely increased since then. English language learners struggle in the classroom, and they need help in order to be successful. National statistics show that ELLs are three times as likely as native English speakers to be low academic achievers (Freeman, 5). These are the struggling students that need help in our classrooms. Being placed in a general education classroom can be very hard for them. Imagine not being able to communicate your needs or even comprehend what you are reading, and how frustrating that would be. However, as the statistics are increasing there are many programs, strategies, and methods that are being used to help them. These English language learners are becoming more successful. There are many programs that are now offered for English language learners. One program offered is a transitional program. This includes two or three years of first language support. These students will receive instruction in different content areas in their native language while they are learning English. As a result they are able to keep up in the other content areas as they learn English. Once they learn and understand English, the first

language instruction will stop and they will move or transition into an all-English program. Next, there is a maintenance bilingual program, which is usually for five or six years. Students will be given instruction in their first language even after they learn and understand English. This will allow them to learn English at the same time as they are developing their first language enough, which will allow them to read, write, and speak two languages well. The last and most recent program being used is the two-way immersion program. Here all students learn to languages. Native English speakers learn another language while English language learners receive instruction in two languages. This will happen up until elementary school, but sometimes it occurs in middle and high school (Freeman, 7). These types of programs are very helpful for English language learners, and these students benefit from them from them as well. Despite all these efforts that are being made through programs, more needs to be done. Another aspect to consider is the training of teachers in these classrooms. They should have a specialized training in order to be able to teach English language learners (Freeman, 15). They need to be knowledgeable in second language acquisition theory as well as the best practices that meet the needs of their students. Without any sort of training, their students may struggle. Perhaps the greatest challenge is to offer students academically challenging curriculum while, at the same time, helping them catch up with both English and content learning, (Freeman, 15). Specialized training will help these teachers with educating their English language-learning students, and I think this is a very important concept that was discussed. Once a teacher has some form of specialized training, they can use many different tactics and strategies that they learned about. One method that I believe is very helpful for

English language-learning students would be organizing the curriculum around big question themes. For example, if the big question is, How do animals and people change as they grow? the students will know the topic for each of the content area lessons (Freeman, 70). Having knowledge about the subject topic is a great jump-start for English language learners, therefore, allowing them to be more fully engaged in the classroom. There are many reasons why this would be a beneficial method to implement in a classroom not only for ELLs, but also for typical learners as well. For one, the different content areas, such as math, science, social studies, and language arts, will all be interrelated. Second, vocabulary is repeated naturally as it appears differently in each of the subjects. Teachers will also be able t differentiate instruction accordingly to the needs of their students. Finally, through themes, teachers can connect curriculum to students lives and backgrounds (Freeman, 70). There are many strategies that can be taught to teachers, such as this, that would be beneficial for English language learners. It would also be helpful for English language learners to have some background knowledge to comprehend English texts. This background knowledge can be drawn on through the use of books that are relevant to the students culture. This way the student can use what they know as they build reading proficiency in English (Freeman, 125). For example, a fifth-grade student will have trouble reading a grade level science book if her science background is very limited. By building background knowledge, English language learners will become proficient readers because the learning will become easier. Background knowledge can be built, for example, through text sets. These are groups of books organized around a particular topic, all at different levels of difficulty. This organization is also helpful when using big question themes, and it assures that all students

will have access to books at their level (Freeman, 126). Building background knowledge is one strategy teachers can implement that is very beneficial for student success. Through this professional development experience, I learned and really benefited from the discussions in my group. Our group discussions were on English Language Learners by David and Yvonne Freeman. Each week we would read a few chapters from the book, and then we would meet up to discuss what we read in class. I found this to be very helpful because it cleared up any confusion I had. Also, we were able to discuss methods, strategies, and tactics that we read about. We talked about what we thought would be successful in the classroom as well as how we would implement these in our future classrooms. Also, we discussed the important and main points from the text. I thought the professional development group was very helpful as we discussed many great ideas within these groups after reading.