Running head: Bechara-Week1 Assignment

Week 1- Essay Assignment

Samantha Bechara

UC San Diego Extension CLAD through CTEL

EDUC-31219: Assessment of English Learners

Bechara-Week1 Assignment 1

Question 1: If you were to move to another country and were only able to communicate in
your new language on an interpersonal communication level, what problems do you think
you might have with academic content? What strategies could teachers use to help you
better understand the concepts they are trying to teach? How do you think your new peers
might help you?

I moved to Italy for 6 months in 2011 for a study abroad to study deaf education.

Preparing to go to Italy I was very nervous as I had a very limited expressive Italian skills and

was able to communicate basic phrases. I got around Italy and immersed myself in the city and

town. At school, all my classes were taught in LIS (Italian Sign Language) or American Sign

Language other than my Italian and Italian cultural courses. My Italian teacher was very strict

and instructed the host families to talk to us only in Italian to help us adjust. My teacher utilized

visuals, pictures, gestures, and many exploration/ town based tasks to help improve our

expressive Italian production. Providing regular real-life practice to utilize concepts learned

earlier the week such as ordering, commenting on a horse race, attending a cooking class taught

only in Italian, and art classes taught only in Italian were very beneficial to me personally. I was

very fortunate to have a host family that was very supportive, my host siblings would help me

with my vocabulary, take me out to practice my Italian in town, and used a lot of gestures to help

me understand concepts when I did not. Although they all spoke English very well, their

continued encouragement and patience speaking to me in Italian was what made the experience

memorable. My supportive Italian-speaking environment helped me decode grammatical features

and worked with me to support my individual learning and understanding. I feel this is also

essential for me to do when providing content to young English Language Learners. When I

teach students with a primary language other than English, I feel I naturally include a lot of

pictures, various opportunities to practice their language usage as well as try to replicate real life

application of language skills just as I had learned in Italy.

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In comparison, I have been trying to learn Arabic for ten years, as this is my husbands

first language. This is the language his parents speak to him in, as well as the only language

many of his extended family members speak. Although I hearing Arabic for ten years, my

expressive skills in Arabic are not very good because I am able to reply in English to questions

asked by my in-laws. My husband is guilty of this as well, responding to his parents in English

although they are speaking Arabic. I find the pronunciation of Arabic very difficult to grasp and

when I try to speak Arabic, at times I am mocked. Although I know my husbands family does

not mean to, this discourages me from using expressive Arabic to communicate with his family,

as it is easier to allow someone else to translate for me.

I often keep both of these experiences in mind when I am teaching my young students. I

do not want them to feel continuously corrected, or that their English is not good enough. School

is important, and I want my students to feel school is a safe learning environment Encouraging

students like I was encouraged in Italy is something I feel young preschoolers need and

something I hope to bring into my classroom. I understand the importance of peers in the

environment and have noticed how important peer interactions can be. Children have a unique

way of communicating with one another regardless of an initial language barrier and motivate

one another to learn. In my classroom, I hope to promote a positive safe learning environment

with visuals, practical language opportunities, and peers that help one another learn.
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Question 2: Do you currently have ELLs in the classes you teach? If so, what problems do
they appear to have comprehending and learning the content? What strategies do you use
to make both language and content more accessible to them? How do you encourage other
students in your classes who are more proficient in English to play a role?

I am in a unique situation, where I already know four of the twelve students I will be

starting my school year with. Of my twelve students, six are English Language Learners. Four of

these ELLs were my students in Head Start for six months and primarily speak Spanish at home.

These four students already know each other and enjoy working in groups. All of my students

are identified with language delays in both their primary language as well as English.

I am lucky that my teacher assistant is Spanish speaking, that can model native Spanish

and help me connect concepts and learning to these students. I value the ability to have native

language supports in my classroom as this provides students the opportunity to hear the

vocabulary words of concepts in both English and Spanish. The ability to hearing both language

allows students to make connections between home and school (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short,

2017). In addition, as stated by Echevarria, Vogt, & Short (2017), students lack of experiences

or background knowledge associated with or assumed by a message or text (p.73). The

collaboration between my assistant and myself during the lesson planning process ensures I am

considering students language needs in both languages as well as culture. This collaboration with

my assistant, and speech language pathologist make sure that my lessons help students meet

language and content goals (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017).

As my students are preschoolers ages three to five, many of them have never been in a

school-based environment before and have not had access to the amount of materials and toys

available in the classroom. To support my students language and overall development I set up

my classroom to provide structured learning targeting my specific theme or specific skills

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allowing student to learn through play. Embedding learning in play provides learning in

contexts [that] allow English learners to understand and complete more cognitively demanding

tasks through hands on exploration (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 45).

In addition to my identified students with special needs, I have two peer models in each

of my classes that are proficient in English and model expected behaviors and language for my

students. As stated by Echevarria, Vogt, & Short (2017), students teach each other during play

by pairing their thoughts and sharing ideas about play/ learning. Through play and learning,

students can utilize manipulatives, realia, and multimedia to enhance their learning. The more

exposure students have to academic language and the more time they spend using it, the faster

they will develop language proficiency (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2017, p. 34). This is another

reason I embed the theme throughout all my activities/ interest centers in my classroom to

provide students the academic language and exposure to content in various methods and enhance

their learning regardless of which center they select for exploration.

During structured small group learning opportunities I differentiate my lessons to support

students learning. During my lessons, I aim to differentiate the content, the process which

students learn the material and the product, or way they display their learning. One activity I love

to do with my preschoolers is use KWL charts with student friendly definitions and examples

from their knowledge. As stated by Planned language activities to promote skills learning

centers Echevarria, Vogt, & Short (2017), English learners are more successful when they are

able to make connections between what they know and what they are learning by relating

classroom experiences to their own lives (p. 49).

In addition, I enjoy using puppets to re-tell stories and discuss social skills providing

students the ability to act out their learning as well as add visual supports. I am a firm believer in
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multiple intelligences, and methods to display ones learning therefore I utilize high interest

learning centers to provide students various modalities to display learning of key concepts such

as their ABCs, numbers, counting, name recognition, sequencing, and pre-literacy skills.
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Question 3:In your experiences with assessment as a student yourself; reflect upon the
extent to which you felt the assessment was worthwhile and fair. Be as specific as you can
about the type of evaluation, its intended purposes, and the strategies that were used to
implement it.

To be honest, I hate assessments and tests. I am a very nervous test taker and unless I am

super confident in the content, I often do not always display what I know about the content.

Often, I get tripped up on the verbiage used during assessments and second-guess myself

changing answers when I should not have. In high school, I did not enjoy paper and pencil

assessments however in college and graduate school I was able to display my understanding and

knowledge via presentations, and other visual means. Presentations and visual products of my

learning made all the work and research worthwhile and fair. For example, to display my

knowledge of reading strategies to utilize with bilingual language learners in graduate school, I

had four different assignments which I would teach a lesson involving a read aloud to display

my practical application of each of the reading strategies as well as become comfortable reading

stories aloud to other adults. As a person who is more comfortable reading to children, reading to

adults and preforming my lesson with peers really stretched me out of my comfort zone. As

stated by Echevarria, Vogt, & Short (2017), teachers should provide a range of process-oriented

and performance-oriented activities so that students have a chance to explore, then practice

before demonstrating mastery of an objective (p. 32). This practice provided me the opportunity

to become more comfortable with my own teaching strategies before demonstrating my

competence of these skills during student teaching.

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References:
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2017). Making content comprhensible for english
learners: The SIOP model (5th Edition ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.