ELL Students and Writing Tips in the Classroom

In my Tuesday Experience classroom, there is a young girl who recently joined the Bugbee 1st grade community in late November from China with no background knowledge or understanding of any English. When I asked my Tuesday Experience teacher, Mrs. DiPietro, if having this student in the classroom was somewhat of a challenge she replied with a quick and simple “no, not at all!” Mrs. DiPietro has really integrated "T"'and her culture within the classroom so the other students are able to familiarize themselves with "T" and where she comes from. Mrs. DiPietro said, “by involving the other students in her culture, the other kids are able to learn to respect "T" more and really see where she came from and why she can only speak minimal English.” To help "T" more in class, Mrs. DiPietro designated one of the higher-level children in class to be a mentor to "T". This student helps "T" with instruction and the activities done in class. Mrs. DiPietro said this is really effective and can tell "T" is learning a lot more.

On page 16 in Tompkins, the importance of meeting needs of English Learners is talked about in great depth. Tompkins gives ideas to teachers on how they can support English Learners’ Language Development. Many of those ideas Mrs. DiPietro displays in her classroom and it’s really interesting to see the connection with what Mrs. DiPietro does along with what Tompkins says to do. Tompkins says for teachers to:

• create a stress-free environment
• show genuine interest in children
• their language and their culture
• build students’ background knowledge using artifacts, videos, photos, maps and picture books
• read aloud to students everyday
• avoid forcing students to speak
• don’t lower your expectations for any group of students
• have students work together with partners and in cooperative groups
• expand the two- and three- word sentences that students produce.

During class time, the children often do a ton of writing to strengthen their vocabulary and sentence structure among many other things. One great thing I observed within the classroom is how Mrs. DiPietro really encourages "T" and her writing.

On page 251, Tompkins has an entire section on how teachers can meet the needs of English Learners in the writing area. Again, I saw and made connections to what Mrs. DiPietro does and what Tompkins says to do. Tompkins states “English learners use talk as a learning took in all four patterns of practice.” Tompkins says to:

• involve students in hands-on, active learning opportunities
• have students work with classmates in small groups
• clarify meaning with objects, photos, and demonstrations
• demonstrate how to ask and answer higher-level questions
• involve students in making small-group projects to demonstrate their learning.

I focused this post around "T" and what Tompkins had to say because sometimes teachers are unaware and nervous as to how to handle ELL students. I hope these tips help! If anybody as anymore comments or ideas, please let me no! It'll be interesting to see everyone's views. What do you feel about ELL students? Some schools do not have an ESL program, do you think that is a good thing?

Assesments of Student Writing: What's Important?

Before our discussion on writing characteristics, I always thought that a good writer would have neat handwriting and NO mis-spelled words. From our last two classes on assesments of student writing, I found out that I was in fact very very wrong. I feel that my bias' lead me to think what I did because of what I was taught throughout my school career. I can clearly remember my teachers' main focuses being neat handwriting and correctly spelled words. Sadly, that bias followed me until now.

When assesing student writing, I have learned that you can not judge writing only on neatness but to look at the bigger picture.

• When going through a students writing, it is important to note whether or not the story has a focus and is organized.


• Does the story have a beginning, middle and an end?


• Is there a squence of ideas?


• Does the writer elaborate and support those ideas?


• Do the words vary throughout the writing?


• Does the story have sentence variety? (Example: compound, complex, and/or simple sentences)


• Does the writer use appropriate capitalization, punctuation, and spelling?


• How is the writers word usage?


• Does the writer space their words?

In class, we did just focus on writing characteristics, but we also looked at how to asses a students spelling to tell which stage they are in as a writer. Those stages included:

• Precommunicative


• Semiphonestic or prephonetic


• Phonestic


• Transitional Stage


• Conventional or Correct Spelling

From our class, my entire view on what to look for in a good writer has changed drasticlly. When our class first began the lesson on student assesment in writing, Regina had passed out 3 smaples of student writing. Quickly going through them, I spotted Chelsea's work and assumed hers was the best because it was the neatest and had very few mis-spelled words. I looked at Scott's next and again assumed his wasn't the best because of his neatness and mis-spelled words. After assesing the three writing samples, I found that Scott was actually a stronger writer then Chelsea when it came to many different categories.

I learned that it is extremly important for students to vary their writing styles. For example; A student shouldn't just have simple, declarative writing. We, as future teachers, can help students gain knowledge in writing by looking at the weaknesses of the child(ren) and doing certain activities/lessons to help them better understand writing style. In class we talked about different ways to help the children understand. Some of those ideas were: going over different types of sentences, go over what a beginning, middle, and end of a story consists of, and how to make a writing read friendly.

All of these ways helped me so very much and from this lesson, I will be able to now look for what really makes a good writer.

Technology in the Classroom

Unfortunatly, the classroom I am in at Bugbee does not offer much use in the technology area. Luckily my classroom teacher, Mrs. DiPietro, is supposed to be getting a smart board very soon! I am hoping that I will be there when the smart board arrives to get a better understanding and gain knowledge of the technology. Besides a smart board, the children are able to use other types of technology throughout the day. During their free time, the children are able to use the computer (their favorite being Microsoft Paint), use the CD player and are sometimes shown videos based on their unit of study. Once a week, the students go to Library for an hour where they spend half of the time on the computer searching through and for various things and the other half of the time they are able to read books and follow instructions from the librarian.

Tompkins talks a lot about incorporating technology into daily lessons, not only with computers but with the use of video tapes, CD-ROMS, DVD's etc. I agree with Tompkins and am really for the different uses of technology within the classroom. I feel like since the world is surrounded by the use of computers and different types of technology, its important to be up to date on everything and broaden our knowledge of the world around us.