Wrapping up the Inquiry

Looking back on when I began my quest of researching engaging EAL students, I can see how misguided I really was. At the beginning of this inquiry project, I believed that EAL students could be a major obstacle for teachers. They can barley speak English, if at all, so how am I supposed to teach them in an English class? I mean, how can I expect someone to write an essay about Macbeth when they can barley say a sentence about play? Now that I am at the end of this project, I can see that EAL students are no more obstacle than any other student in a classroom. Like with any other student, it takes a strong relationship to break down that obstacle and find an opportunity.

The biggest resource I have been enlightened to for both teachers and students is the EAL resource teacher that can be found in most public high schools in Regina. For additional information click here, but to keep it short most of the schools in the City offers supports to EAL students in the form an EAL support teacher in the school. This teacher will usually run an EAL tutorial class, and help the students become adjusted to the City. For teachers, these supports can help provide resources that can help EAL students in particular. In many cases, EAL support teachers have an extensive background working in this area, usually carrying a Masters in EAL, and will have a wealth of resources that one can use in the classroom. These include books an English teacher can use that still reflect the mature themes we want to teach our students, but use simplified language. As well, these teachers will have the best idea of where your students are at and what kind of supports they will need. The EAL support teacher has usually spent a good deal of time with your student and will know what this student may need in the classroom.

For the student, the EAL support teacher can help to create a sense of community in the school. One thing I never thought of before doing this project was how diverse the EAL population of a school is. The EAL support teacher I spoke with illustrated this to me. She said in her classes she has had everything from homestay students, whose families pay for them to study in Canada, to refugees, who may have never held a pencil before. So, it is understandable that students may feel uncomfortable here. A student may have had no say in coming to Regina, and may have no interest in being here. But, it can be the EAL support teacher can be the most important thing in the students time in the City. It can be this teacher that can help to create a sense of community around that student, because the EAL support teacher has students that are all in a unique situation. It is this teacher who has a class that is full of students who have come from diverse places to this country, and they may feel like outsiders here. It is in the EAL support class that these potential outsiders can create a safe place all their own. They can find a place where they can relate to students that are in a similar place to them, and it may make their experience in Regina all the better.

Though the EAL classroom is important, it is also important to learn about techniques I can use in the classroom. One of the great resources I used in the inquiry project was “Words, words words: Reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners” by Christina Porter (2009). The article was a great resource to get me thinking about how I could engage EAL learners in Shakespeare because, as an English teacher, I will probably be teaching Shakespeare for most of my career. It was in this article that I began to see how important words are in English. It sounds silly but I really never thought about it before. As a native speaker of English, I always took my ability to speak this language for granted. For this reason, I never thought too much about how my students could simply struggle with words while they were working with me.

The two big ideas I took from Porter was to provide vocabulary words for your students at the beginning of class and to provide scene summaries at the beginning of scenes for your students. With the vocabulary words, Porter spoke about writing out two or three words from the Scene you are reading that day, and have students find these words in the Scene and then have students define the words and talk about how they were important to the Scene. As well, students could define the words before reading the Scene, and then make predictions about what the importance of the words. For the scene summaries, Porter suggested that a teacher provide summaries of a scene for students before they read a Scene. This way, a student can read about the Scene in a language that they can understand and they can prepare themselves for what is going to happen in the upcoming scene.

As well, it was suggested to use multiple forms of Shakespearean texts, and not only the original texts. This includes using a parallel text version of the play, which has a translated version of the text, and graphic novel versions of the text. Many schools have both of these forms of Shakespeare, and they are already used in classes by all students. This because many students like to have a more visual interpretation of the text, that can be found in the graphic novel, or the modern translation of the text, that can be found in the parallel text version of the play.

It was at this point in the inquiry project that it hit me, making adjustments for EAL students is probably good for every student in your class. For all we know, every student in our class may be struggling with Shakespearean Englih, so what harm could it do to provide a summary to your students before you started to read again? Wouldn’t it just set your students up to be better prepared for a Scene if they knew what was going to happen in it beforehand? This was a major shift in thinking for me, as a no longer viewed EAL students as a strange group within the class, but simply as other students in the class.

As I began to go through the other resources I used for this project I began to see links through them all. With the book I used and the two videos I watched, the idea of knowing your students really stood out to me. This seems like something that should be obvious to teachers, but for some reason this stood out to me. You cannot group your students by their language skills if you do not know who can work well together in groups. As well, we need to be able to work in smaller groups with our students so we can know how are students are progressing individually. Also, we have to be willing to build those relationships with our students to know what supports they need. We may know that their is a student in our class that is EAL, but what does that mean? What level of English is that student at? What experience with school did they have before? It is our job to find out about this.

From this project about EAL learners, I have learner how important the relationships we have with students are. We have to build relationships with our students so we can know what kind of supports we can provide for our students to make the classroom experience better for these students. As well, this project has let me see how a change we can make for an EAL student would not be beneficial for the entire class. Why wouldn’t students enjoy reading a graphic novel version of Romeo and Juliet alongside the traditional text? If it can help at least one student in the class it can probably help even more. Because, as has been stated in class many times, if it is good for one student, it is more than likely good for many students.

Inquiry post 5

Today, instead of reading an article on the topic of engaging EAL students I watched a video on the topic. The video, Teachers TV: Engaging EAL Learners, focuses on one teacher in England and her science class, which includes a large group of EAL students. As the teacher goes through her lesson, she is watched and coached by an EAL ‘expert’ in a study. Additionally, the expert commentates on how the teacher is teaching and what she is doing well.

Many of the techniques the teacher in the video used were ones I had read about before, but seeing them in use in the classroom was very gratifying. The first big thing the teacher in the video did was repeat words that were key to the lesson. In the first portion of her lesson, she repeated words like “particle”  or “atom” many time so her students would be able to pick up on them. Also, as she said these words she spoke slowly and clearly so her students could understand what she was saying. Will saying the words to the students continuously is good, it may also be useful to write the vocabulary words on the board so that these words can read the words throughout the lesson. This may, students will not have to guess what the vocabulary words for the day are, they can just read them off the board and begin the lesson.

As well, another important thing the teacher in the video did was use her students as a resource. When a student came late to the class, the teacher had another student explain the lesson to them. Then commentator believed that doing this gave the student the opportunity to take some control of the class, and be able to use their native tongue if they can. The commentator said that a student may be able to use their native language to explain the lesson to another student, and a teacher may even bring a student to the front of the class to explain the lesson to their classmates in their native language.

The final big thing that the teacher did here was not having the students write much, but giving them other ways of getting to the lesson. In this lesson, the students were first creating compounds with manipulatives, and then having them draw the compounds they created on whiteboards. In a subject like science, the language can intimidating to any student, and they could fear improper use of these new words. Letting students draw a compound instead of writing about it, takes some of the pressure off students who not feel completely comfortable with the language yet.

The other video I watched dealt with using literacy skills in a History classroom. The video, found here, shows the viewer how a British history teacher and an EAL support teacher run a History class with a sizeable EAL population. Once again, it is the use of words that is vital to the class. At the beginning of the lesson, students have to think up words that they believe relate to first a hero and then a villain. Students then write their answers on a mini whiteboard and hold it over their head for the teacher to read. Then, the teachers complied a list of words that the students believed matched the two original words. The words were then used again, as students had to find words that they believed were either positive or negative. These skills are vital for EAL students, as it allows them to expand their English vocabulary, and, once again, it allows the teacher to use the students in their class as a resource. It is the students who are generating the words, so this can also be a valuable assessment tool.

The teachers in the video also used different literacy skills when the students were given their activity. Students were assigned to do a paired reading of an article, then decide if it was a primary or secondary source, and then students had to explain their thinking about why it was a primary or secondary source. I find the important part here to be the paired reading and group work. Here, a teacher could use groups based on their students language backgrounds. Then, theoretically, students could work with students who have a similar language background to them so they can make the work more manageable. Once again, the teacher can let their students become a resource for each other as one student who has stronger could translate for another, and possibly support the other student with their English.

What I found from both of these videos is that students can be a valuable resource in the classroom. If you have students who can speak more than one language, try to find a way to use that in the class if possible. If you are in a class that has multiple speakers of, lets say Mandarin, maybe allow for times for your Mandarin speaking students to work together. The only major problem this could bring up is the possible alienation of this students from native English speakers. This is why though teachers should allow students of similar language backgrounds to work together, it is also important to have all students, regardless of background work together. This way one can build a more cohesive classroom.

Using my inquiry project in the classroom

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.

Inquiry post 3

As I have gone through the journey of learning about how to engage EAL students in the literature classroom, I have goen through many books that present many similar ideas. If there is one thing that all of these ideas have in common, it is that to properly teach EAL students you need to have a good relationship with your students. While this is not exclusive to teaching EAL students (it should be true when we are teaching anyone), but there are certain applications that can be used with EAL students.

One of the ideas came from Nancy Commins and Oflen Miramontes Linguistic Diversity and Teaching (2005). The book attempts to give advice to teachers about ways that they can engage EAL students in any class, not only English. The  idea I am writing about in this post deals with grouping students based on their language capabilities. Commins and Miramontes point to three groupings that teachers can use, which are groups of native speakers, heterogeneous groups of first and second language learners, and groups of only second language learners. Each of these groups have certain necessities, but  can also bring problems as well.

Native Speakers: This group is described as the the “easiest and most comfortable instructional setting” (151) for teachers to work in. This is because in this setting both teachers and students are fluent in the language of instruction (151). Now, it is important to point out here that when “native speakers”  are spoken about, the authors are not necessarily speaking about English. They are talking about students being ale to learn in their native language. So, if a student’s native tongue is Hausa (a widely spoken language in Nigeria), the student would be able to spend some of their day learning in that language.

Obviously, this sounds fantastic in theory, but has limitations. At this point your grouping is limited to the languages in your classroom and your school. It is completely feasible that there would only be one speaker of a certain language in your classroom. What do you do then? How can you make sure that this student is getting time to learn in their native language? At this time, teachers move into the second group, the very common heterogeneous groupings of native and second language speakers.

Heterogeneous groupings: The grouping of heterogeneous groups provides the biggest challenges for teachers. At this point, are trying to balance the needs of their native speaking students with the needs of their second language learners (152). Also, in this style of group additional language learners may be much less vocal than native English speakers, as native English speakers may out compete others in whole group question and answer sessions (152). This could potentially make additional language learners feel that they are a lesser part of the class and not wish to participate further in the class.

However, this group also provides opportunity for EAL students. The opportunities come from EAL students getting “authentic opportunities to communicate in English not available in other settings” (152). This is very important if students wish to become fluent in English. It is easy to understand that a good way to learn a language is to have authentic conversation with people that are fluent in that tongue. However, EAL students need additional time to practice vocabulary and grammar specific to English. At this time, teachers can utilize second language learner groups.

Second Language Learner groups:  These types of groups are where teachers are only working with EAL students in the language the students are wishing to learn, in this case English. It is important to note, “students might not understand all of their instruction and … teachers will … need to use strategies to make instruction more understandable” (152). Though teachers will have to use different strategies, in these groups students “can focus on their English language learning without having to complete with students who are already proficient in English” (152).

This strategy has an obvious advantage to both the students and the teacher. In these groups, teachers can see where their EAL students are at, and provide them supports in a smaller setting. Students may feel more comfortable sharing their struggles with English in such a setting, as they will be able to talk to their teacher one on one about their struggles. This type of teaching is most likely to be found in something like an EAL tutorial class.

The interesting part I have found about going through some of the different strategies for teaching EAL students is that it is exactly the same as someone teaching any language course. I think, at times, English teachers forget that we are lanugage teachers. We get lost in the literature that we are teaching, or how we are teaching students to write stories, and we forget that some of our students still need supports to learn the language. It is at this time that we need to us techniques that are used in a Spanish or French class. We may need to slow our speech so students can digest the language more clearly. As well, we may need to provide more visuals in the class as we are speaking so students can understand our lessons. It is for this reason, that it may be useful for those of us who wish to become English teachers to try and reach out to other language teachers to see what they are using in their classroom.

Commins, Nancy L., and Ofelia B. Miramontes. Linguistic Diversity and Teaching. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Print.

The book can be found on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Linguistic-Diversity-Reflective-Conditions-Schooling/dp/0805827366

Inquiry 2- Actually meeting an EAL support teacher

On Friday, I had the pleasure of going to Sheldon-Williams Collegiate to meet with Kyla McIntyre. McIntyre is the teacher in charge of that school’s English as an Additional Language Program, which means she is Sheldon’s teacher who is responsible for both EAL students in  a tutorial setting and for being a support for teachers to know how they can help EAL students. Meeting with Kyla was a very eye-opening experience for me, as when I was in high school there was no such thing as an EAL support program in high schools. However, I have learned that know almost every high school in Regina (Scott is the only school without an EAL support program) has a teacher who specializes in EAL to be a support for both students and teachers.

The first thing I noticed was the set up of the classroom. There were no desks, instead there were only tables. I was told the class was set in this way so that students have to speak to one another, and they are not just put into their own worlds. For anyone to learn a language, they have to be able to speak to other people in that language. I can kind of relate this to my experience taking German classes earlier in my university career. In that class we sat at tables and would do speaking exercises with the other people at our tables. At the time I didn’t think about how sitting at tables can allow for people to better practice a new language, but McIntyre made a good case for why to use this method.

As for resources to use to get EAL students engaged, once again it appeared that the changes you would make for EAL students would be beneficial for all students. McIntyre told me about how many teachers use parallel text editions when studying Shakespeare. These are versions of the Bard’s plays that feature both modern English and the original text. This allows students, both EAL and native speakers, to see both the language of Shakespeare’s time and language the students are familiar with. As well, McIntyre explained to me how many classes are using graphic novels and more visual texts so that students can clearly see what is going on in a text without being lost in words they may or may not understand.

Although learning about the resources was very good, the biggest thing I took away from meeting with McIntyre was how important these EAL support programs are. The biggest thing these programs provide for students is a community of people who are in similar circumstances to them. EAL students come from as wide a variety of circumstances as mainstream students. Some are here on homestay programs and had their parents pay for them to go to school in Canada. Others had parents decide to come to this country, and the student may not want to be here at all. Others may be refugees and may have no prior experience with a formal education. However, with the help of a good EAL support program students are able to build a community around them of people who are going through similar experiences to them. And if there is one thing I have taken from this semester of university, it is that good teaching cannot happen unless there is a sense of community in a classroom and good relationships between students and educators.

Inquiry Project: How to Engage EAL Students in Literature Studies

When I heard there would be an inquiry project for ECS 350, my thinking went back to ESST 300 last semester. In that class, we were assigned an inquiry project that would deal with an area that applied to Social Studies. For this project, my classmates chose a wide range of topics, from the affect of standardized testing to providing diverse voices into the classroom. When I began to think about what I wanted to do for my inquiry project this semester, at first I went back to the topic I did in ESST, Anti-racism education. As I thought more, I began to want to pick a topic that would have specific implications in English classrooms. This was how I came to the conclusion to look into the topic of ‘how to properly engage English as an Additional Language students in literature classes?’.

The inspiration for this topic began in May. A friend of mine had come back to Regina to visit before he was leaving the country to take a job as an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan. I had just finished my first year in education, and was excited to talk to my friend about how he would be approaching his first formal experiences as a classroom teacher. When we met and began to talk about what his job would look like, I was disappointed to say the least. He explained to me that his job would be, what he described, as a ‘human tape recorder.’ Basically, whenever a student would have trouble answering a word they will go up to him, point at the word in question, and my friend will properly pronounce it to that student. Although my friend sounded very excited to be able to go to Japan, his work appeared to leave a sour taste in his mouth.
Through my experiences this year, I have begun to learn this idea of ‘the human tape recorder’ could easily also be applied to teacher here in Saskatchewan. As our province continues to grow, and non-native English speakers come to the area, I am sure there are many teachers who be be having trouble finding ways to engage these additional language students. I believe this way be particularly difficult for teachers in English literature, where the basis of their course depends on students being able to fluently speak English. So, I have decided to look into ways that English teachers have been able to engage additional language students into their classes. I hope I will be able to take some of the skills I learn about from this inquiry project and be able to apply from in my pre-internship and, eventually, my internship.

Luckily, one of the readings for my ELANG 350 class deals specifically with engaging EAL students. The article “Words, Words, Words: Reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners” by Christina Porter deals with ways the author was able to successfully teach Shakespearean plays to additional language students. The part of the article I found the most interesting was how the types porter has for EAL students can still easily be shifted to native English speakers, especially considering how Shakespearean plays can be very intimidating for high school students.

The first type Porter suggests is to used an abridged version of the play. The author suggests to use plays that are about 30 pages in length and that “while is time consuming, you can edit the play down yourself or search for an abridged version online” (45). Porter also talks about providing students with a short summary of each scene before actually reading the text. I think this strategy would be particularly useful for EAL students, because though they may have a rudimentary knowledge of modern English they would have almost no idea of what Shakespearean English would mean, so the summary could be very useful. This would also be useful for native English speaking students who are struggling to grasp Shakespearean plays, as it puts the plays into something that resembles their own form of speech.

Porter also talks about how students need to be warmed up before stepping into the world of Shakespeare. She talks about how to warm her students up, she would provide a chronological set of lines from the play without providing any idea of what the play is about or what the characters names are. This is done so students “focus on the language and not worry about the characters just yet” (46). Then, from these lines she has students make predictions about what the play will be about from their lines. The students write their predictions down on an index card, and then collects the cards to see what they think the play will be about. The point of this activity is to introduce “students to ‘speaking Shakespeare’ and previews the major action of an act or the entire play depending on the lines chosen” (46). Once again, I believe this is an activity that would work for entire classes, and not just EAL students. It engages students with Shakespearean language and has them attempt to translate that language into predictions about the play. It would also be a great form of diagnostic assessment for teachers, as it allows them to see how comfortable their class is with Shakespearean language.

The entire article is an interesting read, and I will provide a reference for anyone interested. I am exited to see what kind of text I will be able to find about engaging EAL students in the English classroom, and ways that I can apply this knowledge for myself.

Porter, Christian. (2009). Words, Words, Words: Reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners. EJ, 99(1), 44-49.

http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.uregina.ca:2048/stable/40503325?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents.