Maia's exploration of ESL topics

Knowledge	Want to know?	Learned
Thematic approach: I know that connecting content and skills to thematic units create connected learning that relates to student interest and building cultural background knowledge in order to develop speaking, listening, reading and writing language skills in academic content areas. A teacher using thematic units helps create long term memory of the skills and make it easier to recall.click link	How can we build interdisciplinary units in the middle school when we do not have teaming? Can we get 1050 students or may be grade level thematic units? Who has done this? How do you get everyone involved?	Develop themes across all disciplines: One example was using many topics from the Caribbean and Central America. Another school uses global literacy across all disciplines. Teachers can link cross-culture commonalities and differences to political,  ecological, economic, technological systems, and apply concepts locally through community service projects. Thematic units do not have to be interdisciplinary.
Culture is important in math and science to help students build connections to what they know and what they are going to learn. Relating to students culture or funds of knowledge will help increase engagement, interest, and inquiry.	What are some culture activities that help build class culture?	Ovando & Combs (2012) describe “ ‘Ehnomathematics’ and ‘ethnoscience’ enable us to see mathematical and scientific systems within their rich cultural contexts.”  Teachers can use these cultural references to build a positive multicultural classroom environment for ELLs and non-ELLs. The class is taught to accept differences and embrace diversity respectfully. Some of the cultural contexts can refer to the history of numbers like pi (π) and the different cultural references: Babylonians, Greeks, Bible, Chinese, etc. click picture for link
Applying multiple approaches in teaching social studies allows students to connect with the material through different learning modalities. These learning styles help students build procedural and critical thinking skills through multiple intelligence.	If there are so many different learning styles in the classroom, do we really need to keep track? As long as we are using different modalities throughout a unit, all students will have opportunities to learn. Besides students should be developing the multiple intelligence they are not strong in?	Social Studies curriculum has low context-concepts, a large amount of vocabulary that is difficult to visualize and explain, complex sentence structure, and high language demands. Teachers need to actively engage students in the content using role play or language experience. These concrete strategies bring the content to the cognitive and linguistic level of the students to gain content understanding. Critical thinking skills need to be incorporated to prepare students for high school and college or career ready.click link.
There are different methods for teaching bilingual learners with special needs in content areas.  All tasks can be scaffolded to meet the cognitive demands and the language proficiency of students. Some strategies that can be used to help all students have access to high standards is to differentiate the input or the process or the output, using cooperative groups, and cultural connections. Specific strategies I have used in the past are sentence starters, illustrations, multimedia representations, modeling, gradual release, cooperative learning, building cultural background, hands on materials, use of surveys, Project base learning, and Portfolios.	How can I get the students to work as hard as me in the classroom? How can I reduce the amount of grading I do? How can I get the students to be self-directed learner.	Thematic units engage special needs ELLs in content area material. These units engage students in critical thinking with multicultural and global perspective. Graphic organizers can support the development of concepts and reduce the linguistic demands. Explicitly teaching the concepts of chronology, compare/contrast, cause and effect, problem-solution, description, and enumeration. Instruction of special needs ELLs take extra care to scaffold and differentiate material to ensure comprehensible input and zone of proximal development.

Resources:

Colorincolorado. (n.d.). Special education and English language learners. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/special_education/

Fredricks, A. (2007). Much more social studies through children's literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=opol8i8XragC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Makofsky, S. (n.d.) Free ESL lesson plans. Retrieved from http://www.mastersinesl.org/teaching-esl/free-esl-lesson-plans/

Ovando, C. J., & Combs, M. C. (2012). Bilingual and ESL classrooms: Teaching in multicultural contexts (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Radical Math. (n.d.). Browse resources for 'ethnomathematics'. Retrieved from  http://www.radicalmath.org/browse_socialjustice.php?t=ethnomathematics