Mod 11 Mid-Course Reflection and Self-Assessment

Language is not only reading and writing words, it is understanding words. It is understandg that a letter or group of letters represents sound, and putting sounds together creates a word.  Then you understand that words have meaning.

Culture is important to incorporate in your classroom.  Everyone likes to feel welcome, incluced, and wanted.  Providing a culturally diverse environment allows all learners in your classroom to feel welcomed, included, and wanted.  You also must be senitive to the different cultures in your classroom.  Somethng that we may find as typical or okay in our culture, could be taboo and offense in a different culture.

Home language plays a major role in language acquisition and development.  Students whose families only speak their native language at home, will struggle more with certain concepts of the English language than those who may speak both their native language and English at home.  Focusing on linguistic routines and breaking down words into their parts will help ELL students become more successful. Utilizing different activities among all subject areas, which incorporate their home culture and language, will help our language become more meaningful and will expose students to our language more.

It is important to scaffold students.  One size doesn not fit all when it comes to learning and language acquisition.  Every student has different needs.  Not providing enough support, could cause a student to lose thier confidence.  Providing too much support might make the student feel like you think they are incapable.  You need to find the right balance and provide just enough support so the student can be confident and progress at the same time. Structured speaking and listening can be used as a form of scaffolding.  It will keep the class on task and have its focus on the subject matter.  It can be geared towards the needs of specific students and carried out in small group activities.

Developing literacy skills starts with high quality literacy it childhood.  Children are like sponges.  They soak up things quicker than if exposed as adults. The earlier children are exposed to literacy concepts, and they feel confident and progress, the better outcome they will have in fully and successfully obtaining a second language.