|
To address the frustrations and concerns expressed by teachers of ELLs, and to better understand and illustrate the learning experiences that ELLs encounter, we, as educators, created an assignment to be used in one of our courses in the Cross-Cultural Language Academic Development (CLAD) certificate program. The CLAD program is situated at the post-baccalaureate level and is designed for both credentialed and pre-service teachers wishing to develop expertise in meeting the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students. The main objective of the course is to introduce key concepts, issues, and terms concerning the teaching of content-area courses to language minority students in seventh to twelfth grade classes. The course consists of a basic introduction to recent research in language learning theories, an overview of teaching approaches and methods, and instructional strategies for helping ELLs.
We wanted to reveal some of the misconceptions teachers have by engaging them in a first-hand experience. These misconceptions became evident through ongoing class discussions. While reading their exams and reflective responses, it became clear to us that the teachers grasped the concepts of language learning theory and practice, but they still lacked an understanding of the ELLs' psychosocial and emotional needs. Therefore, we created an active learning assignment for the teachers in which they would experience a "day in the life" of an ELL. By engaging them in a first-hand experience, we hoped that the teachers would gain empathy and understanding for the psychosocial and emotional needs of ELLs. This project was designed to use television and self-reflection to educate teachers about the strategies and learning processes that ELLs employ daily in classrooms. We wanted teachers to view a foreign-language program that involved human interaction (e.g., soap operas, situation comedies, dramas, etc.) with the intention that they themselves would experience the emotional barriers of being a second-language learner. This would most effectively mirror ELLs' everyday classroom experiences.
Teachers were instructed to select a television program in a foreign language in which they were not fluent; the program could not be a foreign film, a sporting event, news, or a program with English subtitles because these programs would be too easy to figure out and lack human interaction.
Procedure:
- Teachers were asked to watch two cumulative hours of the same program, preferably a 1/2-hour program such as a soap opera, drama, or other program with plots and human interaction.
- They were asked to keep detailed learning journals with the following for each television session:
- a detailed description of the program action;
- an identification of strategies (e.g., verbal, visual, graphic, and behavioral cues) they used for making sense of what was going on in the program, with specific examples from the program;
- a description of reactions, including feelings and emotions, about the experience of watching a non-English program; and
- a description of what they learned from this activity about how they might teach and assist ELLs.
- Teachers were asked to present their findings to the group for peer-evaluation and to submit their journals for instructor-evaluation.
1
2
3
4
References
|
