Be Open to New Teaching Strategies:)

Trying new approaches in delivering instruction is exciting for both the teachers and the students.  Changes in everything from seating to activities to assignments and more energize students.  Their curiosity is peaked when they are actively engaged in the learning process.  If teachers tap students' strengths to highlight key components of lessons, they will see students exhibit enthusiasm in completing just about any assigned task because they are being encouraged to solve problems as a team.  This approach is what they will face in college and in the real world.

So how do teachers empower students to become independent learners?  Well since it necessitates incorporating new learning styles, teachers may want to honestly reflect on how they learned when they were in school.  Further, there are other factors which may have influenced academic success--having parents with degrees,  being in a learning environment which assumed every student would go to and graduate from college, having strong academic skills already in place, coming from a home with native speakers of English, etc.  What worked for many teachers will not work for many of today's students.  Teachers must expand their teacher tool kits to accommodate the many needs of today's classrooms.  NEW METHODS OF INSTRUCTIONAL DELIVERY  

Here are two examples of classrooms using new approaches to engage all learners through team work, clear directions, student accountability, clear directions and learning objectives.  The teachers assume nothing in delivering their lessons.  Teachers use table talk, visuals, models, team work, modeling, checks for understanding, active student engagement, and much more to fully engage each class.  Gone are the days where the teacher would lecture, students would read the text and answer questions, and give straight multiple choice tests.  Though the teacher is the expert obviously, s/he does not wear the "sage on the stage' role any longer.  HOW TO DELIVER HIGH QUALITY INSTRUCTION  (video within article).

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS

FREE TOOLS TO FACILITATE THE REVIEW PROCESS FOR STUDENTS STUDYING BIOLOGY

With English language learners (ELLs) in every content class nowadays, teachers are employing a variety of tactics to provide access to content to not only the native speakers but also the struggling learners who are often times ELLs of varying English proficiency levels.  Since textbooks are language dense, teachers often times employ out-of-the-box approaches in an attempt to motivate and educate their students thinking that is enough.  For ELLs, however, no matter what the content chosen, content teachers will still need to address language development.  This turns every teacher into a language teacher and that is a role that brings on quite a bit of anxiety for classroom instructors. 

With powerful content videos, language and content can be easily addressed.  Provide students with two note-taking graphic organizers.  One is geared to native speakers of English in that its format does not provide language frames and word banks though key ideas for students to take notes on are listed.  The other one for ELLs might contain sentence frames to build sophisticated sentences, word banks to provide practice in working with content vocabulary, paragraph frames to guide short paragraph writing, etc. 

Below are some educational videos on biology.  For a video to be a successful instructional support tool, it should be short, highly visual, include closed captioning (translations are sometimes an option also), contain specific details related to the topic, be free and easily accessed by any student via computers or smartphones. 

The first video offers a simple but also powerful description of cells.  This would be an excellent warm-up or pre-lecture video to use in a biology class.  It would spark interest and provide motivation to learn more.  Teachers could refer back to it as they went through the material.  For ELLs, this video would build a basic content foundation to follow the lesson. AN INTRODUCTION TO CELLS

The second video needs little in the way of an introduction since Khan Academy is world famous.  Due to its success in all levels of mathematics, it has branched out into other disciplines including biology.  His materials could be used in a flipped classroom where students would study at home through completing various assignments.  Assignment results would be accessed by the teacher in class where s/he would address problems students had in doing the assignments.  ELLs benefit here since they may take time processing material at home and not risk embarrassment at not knowing the answer if called on.  At home or in the school library, they interact with computers taking all the time they need to work out the problems assigned.  Have ALL students use the closed captioning feature to enable them to focus on use of key concept words presented in context.  Though this would immensely help ELLs, native speakers would benefit as well. KHAN ACADEMY ON THE CELL   


POWERS OF MINUS TEN BIOLOGY The third video is a definite crowd pleaser.  It could be offered at the end of lesson to have students do a quick write on or a build a classroom discussion around.  Every student should be able to either write about the main idea or draw pictures of key concepts or act out what they learned.  The more ways students can interact with material or be fully engaged in the learning process, the more likely they will remember what was taught AND enjoy the process:)


Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS