The interesting thing about my inquiry project is that I didn’t need to use it too much when I actually went into my pre-internship Of the two classes I taught, only one of the students would be classified as an EAL student. So, it made it very difficult to use these strategies in a big way, but I did use the strategies to try and teach as broad a spectrum of students as I could.
The thing I tried to remind myself as I was teaching was that just because I was teaching primarily native English speakers, this does not mean that they are necessarily “proficient” in English. This is particularly true because I was teaching students Romeo and Juliet, and it is usually said that Shakespeare can be another language to teenagers.
One of the things that made me the happiest about how my coop was teaching the play was that she decided to use a graphic novel version of the play on alternating days. This was a great joy for me, as I was able to give students who simply needed that visual stimuli of a graphic novel an outlet for their need. Also, I knew that the one EAL student in my class consistently used the graphic novel, so I knew that student was using a format they enjoyed. As well, we also watched the film version of the play once a week. This was another way of giving students a way to get a visual of the play. In addition to playing the movie, my coop and I made sure the subtitles were playing so students could be able to follow along with the language if they were having trouble following the speech.
One of the suggestions I was not able to use was giving students a summary of the Act before we read it. This was because students had to fill out scene summary sheets as they were going through the play, and I thought giving them summaries of scenes before reading the play would defeat the purpose of my coop’s activity. However, I made sure to try and summarize what we read everyday, both to make sure my EAL student was at and where the class at large was at with the play. As well, whenever we would do word activities in the class, I would use words that had come up in the play the day before.
Though I may not have had a large EAL population in my classroom, but it was nice to try and use some of the strategies I have learned through this project. It was important for me to remember that making changes for an EAL population is just not good for the group of students, but it is good for the class at large.
Jordan Halkyard's Portfolio 