Monolingual vs. Bilingual
Danielle Poteshman & Stephanie Bleichman
The sun glistened as you inhaled the beautiful graduation morning. The birds were chirping and you wore that cap as if it had been permanently attached to your head your entire undergraduate experience. You could barely sustain yourself from grabbing your diploma and barging into the first school in site and immediately applying for the first teaching position available. Imagine yourself as this new enthusiastic teacher, blessed with so many opportunities for success ahead of you. As any newly trained professional would, you wish to jump right into the job market just dying to teach the youth of America. As you are job searching you come across various different job opportunities. Throughout the job search you are eager to find a job, which will best reflect your teaching philosophy. Having grown up in a fairly rural area, you have come accustomed to learning with a diverse group of individuals. Through the influences of this educational background you have developed a strong belief in fair education for all students, where each student is able to succeed to the best of their ability. Despite your diverse educational experiences, you have very little experience learning or working with individuals that speak different languages. When applying for jobs you run into some troubling circumstances. You start to notice that half of the teaching jobs available, include classrooms that are largely populated by bilingual students. Applying job after job you finally receive an offer from a school asking you to teach in a 3rd grade bilingual classroom where the majority of your students speak little to no English.
Creating a Comfortable Classroom
Fortunately there are some basic guidelines that are helpful should you find yourself, a monolingual English speaker, in front of a classroom of bilingual or multicultural students. According to Margo DelliCarpini in Success with ELL’s the most effective teaching strategy for teaching English language learners is to create a comfortable classroom for students to learn in. To set up such as a classroom, begin by arranging the chairs in an inviting arrangement, like a circle. Having students sit in a circle fully engages them in class discussions because they are physically able to see their peers while participating in class wide conversations. Adding to this, creating a comfortable classroom includes making a conscious effort to reach out to each individual smile, to pat student’s shoulders gently, to purposefully group students to promote their educational success, and to refer to each student by their name when speaking to them. An activity that DelliCarpini suggests involves encouraging ELL students to share their prior cultural experiences in the classroom (DelliCarpini, M. (2009). For example, students can create a scrapbook with different pictures of their families and traditions they have been raised to participate in. Another thought provoking activity has students to bring in different cultural recipes that have been used within their families. In doing so, the students will gain insight on one another, developing an understanding of their peer’s cultural backgrounds. An example activity can be something as simple as showing the classroom of a students two different pictures representing two different school atmospheres.
“creating a comfortable classroom includes making a conscious effort to reach out to each individual smile, to pat student’s shoulders gently, to purposefully group students to promote their educational success, and to refer to each student by their name when speaking to them”
One of the pictures could be a picture of a suburban school and another picture could be a picture of an inner city school. When asking the students to view the pictures, one can ask them to reflect on how the students in the pictures look similar, how they look different, and reasons as to why they feel this way. When reflecting on this activity as a class the teacher can emphasize to the class that students come in all different shapes and sizes and speak a variety of different languages, and that this should not be a barrier in the classroom. Additionally, making use of all available resources is also crucial to creating an effective classroom community for bilingual students (Whitmore, Crowell 2005). Giving students the opportunity to use different types of learning materials, such as books iPad, computers, or videos, engages students in what they are learning, and enables students to better connect with the information they are learning. Just because these students may be learning English, this does not mean they would not benefit from exposure to challenging books and literacy technologies. In fact it is entirely the opposite. These resources may naturally deepen and enhance their proficiency in both languages if used strategically (The Access Center 2007).
Strategies for ELL Students
In a bilingual classroom, it is important to have a variety of tools so all students will have an equal and fair opportunity to learn. The idea of think, pair, share (TPS) according to Goldsmith (2013), helps ELL students communicate ideas with students who speak different languages. The journal gives out basic information about how to start the conversation between two partners and who will say what and when. More specifically, TPS is conducted by having “the teacher pose a question, having students pause to think of their response, turn to pair with their designated partner, and then finally share have the students their responses to the question with their partner” (Goldsmith 2013). Goldsmith also talks about the issues that come along with using this teaching method, including having an ELL student that is more out spoken pronounced than the other. In this situation, he suggests to pair the reluctant students with the more outgoing students. This partnership helps the more reserved students do some listening first, giving them more time to think about the question they are being asked.
Besides pairing students together, classroom wide discussions can also help enable students to speak up and voice their own opinions. You can also assess students understanding about the topic they are discussing when hearing their responses to the questions, which are being discussed. According to Goldsmith (2013) “When you exclusively use a raise-your-hand system, participation in class discussions becomes optional, which we can’t allow, especially for ELL students. They need plenty of opportunities to practice using English” (p.51). A classroom management method that could easily replace this one is putting students names on individual note cards, and choosing the note cards at random, to decide which student will participate when. It is important to get students into the lesson which you are teaching so students, who are English Language Learners, are able to understand the lesson, get involved, and be able to better their ability to speak English more fluently. To do this teachers can use manipulatives to visually model math or science problems, use “think alouds” to model the processes students must go through to complete certain assignments, display information through diagrams and graphs to make information more visibly appealing, and use clarity checks to assess the student’s understanding of tasks at hand.
“It is important to get students into the lesson which you are teaching so students, who are English Language Learners, are able to understand the lesson, get involved, and be able to better their ability to speak English more fluently”
Meetings also help ELL students gain confidence in the way they are speaking. Goldsmith (2013) states, “If it was a piece of writing, they practiced reading it with either a partner or with me before reading it aloud to the class. This ensured that when it came time for sharing, ELL students were confident about the ideas they wanted to express”(p.52). Therefore it is important for students to share their opinions because they will gain more of a confidence boost as well as gaining understanding of how to speak English. As shown below, it is also very beneficial for ELL students for their teachers to label objects in various languages all around the classroom. Having pictures next to these labels can also help ELL students visualize what the word Is, and use the picture as a memory cue to recall the definition of the word.
Practical Everyday Activities
With ELL students it is important to discuss the everyday essentials in the classroom. Such as what goes in your backpack when bringing it to and from school and when and where to wait for the school bus if some students use it as their form of transportation. Throughout your time teaching ELL students it is imperative that you discuss everyday activities so they can feel more comfortable in the classroom. Providing the students with everyday information will help to foster a better community and make the students able to participate more because they understand more of the information, which is being presented. Giving students the tools, such as an educational website, will help students complete practical activities, for example, brushing teeth, telling time, learning how to read maps, bus schedules, and recognizing everyday objects. This website is useful to help facilitate the learning and understanding of these activities which we are trying to teach our students. The website www.gcflearnfree.org/everydaylife/edlall helps people gain the confidence to go out and take risks. Doing this with ELL students will foster their learning and encourage them to keep up the hard work because it will eventually pay off.
Benefits of Bilingual Education
This generation of students in growing up in a society where bilingualism (a person having the capability of speaking two or more languages) is becoming more and more common this day in age. According to Boyle in Berbart Big Government, “sixty-two million people in the United States speak a language other than English (Boyle2014). It is often argued that Bilingual education is quite costly. It is said that educating minority-language students in bilingual classrooms costs much more than running language programs with solely one language spoken in each classroom. While this may be true, this method of teaching has been proven to be the most effective way of teaching English to ELL students. It is actually in fact. a requirement to learn another language in order to graduate high school. Adding on to this, Bilingual education preserves student’s sense of pride in their native language. It allows them the opportunity to learn English while still staying fully connected to their linguistic heritage. Additionally, a large part of a student’s education is figuring out whom they choose to identify themselves as. Learning in a bilingual classroom shows admiration for native languages, and embraces student’s primary languages enough to allow them to use their previous literacy skills to strengthen their English speaking abilities. Bilingual education programs “ also provide integrated, inclusive, and unifying education experiences for their students”(Wayne, Collier 2003). The learning atmosphere of a bilingual classroom allows students to be exposed to diverse groups of learners at a young age, eliminating any minority stereotypes they may develop, as they grow older.
Conclusion
Teaching in a bilingual classroom may be challenging but it is most definitely rewarding. Imagine yourself as first year teacher with no prior background experiences with Bilingual students. Obviously there will be challenges to this type of a classroom, but there are many materials and resources available for a teacher to use in this kind of a setting. Bilingualism is increasingly common in today’s world and it is important that students are exposed to something so current in today’s society. Bilingual children actually have stronger areas of cognitive functioning, in addition to doubling vocabularies (Goldsmith, 2013). Placing students into a classroom that includes bilingual education will enhance their exposure to diverse groups of learning, therefore expanding the way in which they think. As previously stated, establishing a classroom community is the number one way to effectively educate bilingual students. If students to not feel comfortable learning in a classroom, then they will not be able to be successful in that classroom. Providing various different types instruction is the most effective way to educate ELL student. Strategies such as purposeful grouping, providing background knowledge of topics, and facilitating extended classroom discussions caters to the individuals needs of each student within a classroom (Kim, Herman 2010). Grouping individuals by differing abilities allows students who excel in specific subject areas, to assist other students who may struggle in those same areas. Similarly, it is unfair for teachers to assume their students have any knowledge of topics they educate them on, therefore, they must provide background knowledge on these topics to insure that all the students in the classroom have a general understanding of what they are being taught. In addition to this, extended classroom discussion is very necessary to incorporate in a bilingual classroom to engage students in deeper level thinking. Bilingual education overall enhances the learning process of each and every student that is included in this form of education, and it exposes students to a broad spectrum of diverse learners.
You now have a ton of experience under your belt and you are ready to take on more challenging tasks and jobs, anything that is thrown your way, you will be able to succeed. With the new knowledge obtained from teaching in a Bilingual classroom, you can take your experience and bring it to your future classroom. Good luck in applying the useful information stated above and continue to research for many more helpful resources which are available.
References
Boyle, M. (2014, October 1). Report: 62 Million People in US Now Speak Language Other Than English at Home. Retrieved November 10, 2014.
DelliCarpini, M. (2009). Success with ELLs: Authentic Assessment for ELLs in the ELA Classroom. The English Journal, (5). 116.
Free All Activities Tutorial at GCFLearnFree. (1998, January 1). Retrieved from http://www.gcflearnfree.org/everydaylife/edlall
Goldsmith, W. (2013). EnhancingClassroom conversation for all students. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(7), 48–52.
Kim, J., Herman, J. L., & National Center for Research on Evaluation, S. (2010). When to Exit ELL Students: Monitoring Success and Failure in Mainstream Classrooms after ELLs’ Reclassification. CRESST Report 779. National Center For Research On Evaluation, Standards, And Student Testing (CRESST),
Kowal, B. (2005, January 1). English for kids. Play and learn word games, quizzes, songs, printable worksheets, and ESL resources for parents and teachers. Retrieved from http://www.anglomaniacy.pl/topics.htm
Thomas, W., & Collier, V. (2003). The Multiple Benefits of Dual Language. In Educational Leadership (2nd ed., Vol. 61, pp. 61–64). ASDC.
Whitmore, K. F., & Crowell, C. G.(2005). Bilingual education students reflect on their language education: reinventing a classroom 10 years later: creating a classroom ‘community’ can empower English-language learners during elementary school and beyond. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, (4), 270.
Genere Pieces
Fortune-Teller:
How to Make Your Fortuneteller:
1. Fold the paper into fourths
2. Unfold the paper
3. Fold over the four corners, evenly into the middle
4. Fold into fourths again
5. Flip over the paper
6. Fold over the corners on the new side of the paper
7. Fold into fourths one last time
8. Fit you fingers into the slits
9. Open
Once you have created your fortuneteller you should draw four different pictures on the corners of your fortuneteller. These pictures can be any practical activity or hobby you like to participate in. Inside those corners you will number each flap individually with numbers 1–8. Then when you open up each flap, you will write questions to ask your peers to get to know one another. This is an awesome way to practice your English so this entire activity must be done in English! Good luck!
Newsletter:
Email:
