SIOP Chapter 1&2

        How can teachers disregard English learners when close to five million school-age children were identified as limited English proficient in 2004-2005?  It is said that almost all candidatess in teacher education programs will have linguistically and culturally diverse students in their classes during their teaching careers.  A burning question that I wish to ask to current teachers who are not using the SIOP model is if they have ever looked at all the benefits from English learners in their classroom.  This is also another question that I think prospective teachers, such like ourselves, should take into consideration.

        At Illinois State, as a Bilingual ed major, I have no doubt in my mind that I will ever disregard English learners.  The fact is reality.  There are more and more immigrants coming to the US than ever before.  ISU has prepared me to create content objectives and language objectives, together.  First we get out our Illinois State learning standards, and then we get out our WIDA standards when creating a lesson plan.  It is not fair for our students to only go by the content objectives because that huge population of English learners are missing out on their education which will potentially cause them academic failure, drop out, etc, as you have seen before.  Thus, stating the obvious; Are kids dropping out because they don't like school, or are kids dropping out because their teachers are not considering them?

        It is important to look at the SIOP model.  Chapter 2 was on lesson preparation.  First you create content objectives, then language objectives.  From there you appropraite content concepts, use various materials, adapt to the content through meaningful activities.  These feautures of the SIOP model was like a review to me because there has not been one day in any one of my classes that we did not incorporate these features when we talk about lessons.  I found it so surprising that Mrs. Hargoves (one of the scenarios presented in the chapter) did not even create languages objectives when 30% of the student population at her elementary school are English learners.  If Mrs. Hargoves could not even create language objectives, how was she suppose to supply materials for her students to adapt to the content of all student proficiency?

        All in all, I believe that our preparation at ISU has us all in shock when we read such scenarios as the one I stated above.  Am I right?

Progress Report

1. Meeting with Kasia on September 30 at 10:30 AM at the ELI.

Tentative Plans....

2.  Observe in the ELI classrooms twice
3. Create an observation report including the 1st level (student interactions, teacher response), and the 2nd level (teacher insight about the class)
4. 3 workshops
     a. introduction/lecturing
     b. teaching (topic X)
     c. teaching (topic Y)

Toward a postmethod pedagogy

In Kuma's article, "Toward a postmethod pedagogy", he uses the term pedagogy in a broad sense.  He includes pedagogy as classroom strategies, instructional materials, curricular objectives, and evaluation measures.  The most interesting part of the article was actualizing this postmethod pedagogy by including the lead players: the postmethod learner and the postmethod teacher.

         The postmethod learner is an autonomous learner.  They take charge of their learning and how they think, something that I never did when I was in elementary school.  Learners do this by evaluating their learning outcomes by monitoring their language learning progress through personal journals.  Learners use academic autonomy in this way.  On the other hand, learners use their social autonomy by collaborating with other learners to pool information on a specific project they are working on. Therefore, academic autonomy encourages them to be effective learners whereas social autonomy empowers them to be collaborative partners. 

        The postmethod teacher is just like the postmethod learner.  To learn more about my students, I would take Kuma's suggestion about learning about the context of my classroom.  I could use questionnaires, surveys, and interviews to gather information such as the contexts of, family life, learning styles, attitudes towards learning, etc.  To help them become a postmethod learner, I could also develop strategies to observe, analyze, and evaluate their own teaching acts. This was very interesting to me because this is only one little part of a postmethod pedagogy.  But, in reality, it is going above and beyond the "method" that will help create prospective teacher's pedagogy. 

We cannot really teach a language...

"We cannot really teach a language; we can only create conditions under which it will develop in the mind in its own way."
                               -Von Humboldt, 1836, as paraphrased in Noam Chomsky, 1965, p.51


        To be honest, I really did not understand the Communicative Language approach up until I read the quote stated above.  This quote also summed up the article by Stephen Bax, "The end of the CLT: a context approach to language teaching."  The traditional view of language teaching is the Communicative Language approach.  This view suggests that speaking is the most important skill involved in learning a language and that language is used for communication. Context is ignored. The article provides examples of teachers in various countries that believe any other approach is "backwards."  In my opinion, I think they believe any other approach is "backwards" because the CLT has been the tradition since the late 1970's and what is the point of changing it now?  The problem is that students are not being taught communication through context.  Rather, they are being taught by methodology (CLT is seen to be about 'the way we should teach.')
         The context approach, however, looks at the context; at students' attitudes, at parents' wishes, etc.  Some key aspects of contexts are understanding students and their learning needs, wants, styles, and strategies. From there, the teacher can find an approach and language focus that will meet varied learners needs.  As is said in the article,  for a recap, "teachers will develop analytical tools for analyzing and understanding the learning context.  Then, teacher will analyze the context carefully and systematically as far as possible such as, individuals personal differences, learning styles, learning strategies, etc."  In conclusion, every learner is different.  As teachers, we have to take context into consideration because that is the only way 'under which language will develop in the mind in its own way.'

Chapter 1 & Chapter 2 & Kuma Article POWERPOINT

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The Roles of Teachers

Chapter one was called "Conceptualizing Teaching Acts."  I never really thought about roles of teachers in the sense of technical terms.  I only thought as teachers as artists, scientists, managers, facilitators, etc.  This chapter really interested me because the concept of teacher role has developed over the years and has shaped teachers today.  The first role of the teacher is called a Passive Technician.  Basically theorists come up with this knowledge and teachers are trained to understand and implement these theories. Their primary goal of teaching is maximizing content knowledge through activities which is anchored in discipline.   As years passed, the next role was developed, called teachers as reflective practitioners.  Their primary goal of teaching is maximizing learning potential through problem-solving activities while using the integrated approach.  The third role is teachers as transformative intellectuals.  Their primary goal is maximizing sociopolitical awareness through problem-posing activities while using the holistic approach.  The question I ask myself is what role am I going to be as a teacher?  I hope to be a transformative intellectual because it consists of all of the roles and include all the players in the teaching process; teachers, learners, experts, and the community.  I believe with all of these players working together, the school will not only be a place for learning, but also another family.

Language Approaches

      I am a native speaker of English and the first time I was engaged with another language was in my 6th grade Spanish class.  I have experienced a lot of language approaches that my teacher used with us, but the one that I recall the most was the grammar-translation method where students were conscious of the grammatical rules of the target language.  I learned the best with this method because of the deductive way of teaching.  First,  my teacher gave me the grammar rules, I memorized them, and then finally,  translated them from English to Spanish.  I also did this with all of the vocabulary I learned.  Every week the students would pair up and go over the Spanish words on index cards and have the English word written on the back. Although this learning approach had a lot to do with memorizing, I successfully learned the material. In all, vocabulary and grammar were emphasized the most.  There was not a lot of attention on reading and writing up until high school.

       In high school, I was accepted to AP Spanish grammar.  The beginning of class, my teacher reviewed the grammar rules with our class and by the end of that lesson, we were learning vocabulary through literature.  Moreover, the method that my teacher used with us was called the audio-lingual method.  This is where language cannot be separated from culture.  We slowly stepped away from the literature and started translating pictures with no words while speaking Spanish to help with our communicative skills as well as our pronunciation.

      The most comfortable approach would have to be the grammar-translation method because that is how I got started on learning the language, actually successfully learning Spanish.  I like this idea because it uses the idea of both the L1 and the L2, one dimension of Stern's framework; that the L1-L2 is a connection, concerning the first language in learning the second.  This method worked for me.  But, I am not saying that it will work for every one of my students.  All students learn differently, maybe even by ten different approaches. It all depends on the student.  Therefore, I do not believe there is one best method that fits for all of my students.