Teachers can learn from other teachers who work with ELLs in either a general education class or small ESL learning group. They can create supportive learning and working environments when they know the various ranges of activities that have worked successfully for ELLs. They get excited about adapting activities when it can help their ELLs become more proficient readers and decoders. They learn collaborative strategies by collaboration. The key is to put the teacher as the learner.

My first and second grade ELLs enjoy oral work that focuses on sound and meaning when it is combines in a variety of playful contexts such as rhymes, songs, jazz chants and poetry, but I have found that they sometimes they don’t get the deeper meaning and this frustrates me. What’s this word? What does it mean? Back to thinking different strategies on my own…not again.

During my first year of teaching struggling elementary ELLs, I worked closely with a mentor and ten other teachers. The focus of our workshop was learning what worked from other teachers, so we could bridge some of literacy gaps. The facilitator had us engage in learning journals using guided subjects for reflection. We began by writing our concerns and questions, and then we reflected on the lessons using guiding questions. Our facilitator then responded to our journals and extracted various entries, which were then categorized under various subjects. Some of the other reflections revealed a totally different approach to teaching ELLs. Some of the teachers had plenty of practical activities and thoughts while others raised more thoughtful questions and concerns. Reading their responses helped me get into the mind of a first grade ELL – what a great experience!

After this, I realized that there were plenty of issues I needed to be aware of before expecting ELLs to read. The challenge with using the teachers’ responses as a guide for planning lessons was being prepared in knowing that some activities wouldn’t work for my particular struggling ELLs. They couldn’t acquire meaning without doing lots of decoding exercises and so there was not much they were able to do without a lot of oral help and support. In addition, they needed a lot of support in other areas as well. The most important thing a teacher of ELLs can do is to is to take a pre-assessment of their abilities and interests and create a student profile. Then, a teacher can customize instruction by providing successful activities based on what is available to the teacher and what the ELL can do. If teachers want ELLs to succeed just like their native English speaking peers, they need to be prepared a wide variety of learning options.

With other general education and ESL teachers, I tried to recreate a productive collaboration mode whereby teachers were able to learn from each other. I encouraged general education teachers to reflect on how successful they were able to teach a balanced mode of reading using components of oral and reading instruction. Then I asked teachers to reflect on the challenges using a series of lead-in questions and subjects for reflection we could investigate. Then we categorized the responses and as a collaborative group, we came up with a wide range of possibilities for teaching struggling ELLs in both educational and ESL learning contexts. The ELLs from both groups were then challenged using the wide range of activities we were able to pool together.

Creating the need to collaborate between general education and ESL teachers is a lot harder than it looks. General education teachers need encouragement, guidance and support to see the benefits of collaborating with ESL teachers and vis-versa. But teachers are actually benefiting when teachers successfully collaborate, not simply for the sake of acquiring additional teaching ideas but how to use those ideas more strategically to support their struggling ELLs. Students continued to struggle, but at least, teachers felt that the dialogue experience gave them more confidence builder strategies and tips to fully cater to the needs of their ELLs and they created lessons with more thought and engagement than before.

Reflective thinking is one process that I have used successfully, but there are strategies for encouraging reflective thinking as well. Reflective practice and professional development encourages educators to incorporate reflecting thinking in their daily practice as a prerequisite for collaboration. In our book proposal on Collaborative Teaching between ESL and General Education Teachers, Grades K-2: What Educators Need to Know, we wrote: “The critical need to successfully teach struggling ELLs in primary grades makes collaboration not only beneficial, but necessary. But before teachers can truly collaborate, they need to understand their ELLs and the areas in which they struggle. They will also want to consider how they have grouped their students. Teachers take this information as input when they meet with other teachers to work on practical solutions. Teachers face constraints of time, curriculum, and district procedures. They can suggest collaborative models to their administrators and colleagues to be part of the solution. The ultimate goal is to create a supportive learning environment for teachers and students.”

I think this sums up the goals of the collaborative teaching experience in a nutshell.

Make Your Teaching Sparkle. Teach for Success. Make a difference in the classroom. Subscribe to receive your FREE e-zine and e-book, “Taking Charge in the Classroom” when you visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteachersignup.com. Purchase your ebook of classroom tested tips – “Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving in the Classroom,” at: http://www.MakeYourTeachingSparkle.com and you’ll receive a FREE ebooklet, “Yes! You Can Teach K-12 English language learners Successfully!”

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, speaker, educator and founder of the New Teacher Resource Center.

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In a collaborative context, teachers realize the benefits of working together. Collaboration saves time and maximizes curriculum. Further, teachers spend less time working in isolation. Since school districts do not provide teachers with specific guidelines on how to collaborate, teachers

need to develop their own guidelines for collaboration which reflect their experience and goals. As part of our collaborative plan, we started out creating a working definition of our struggling ELLs. We wanted to create a possible model for implementing collaboration techniques. Of course, teachers will also need to monitor themselves on implementing the guidelines. They will also need to document the progress of their students and then plan as a whole to ensure ongoing success.

When teachers successfully develop a plan for their own collaboration, they ensure that their instructional goals and objectives will be met. It makes sense then to learn what works for other teachers so they can meet the needs of their own struggling ELLs.

We started our journey as two teachers, one general education and one ESL, who each knew very little about how the other classroom was structured. We also knew that there was a common “thread” that linked our work as teachers instructing struggling ELLs in our classrooms. In Tracie’s general education class there were several ELLs. Meeting the diverse needs of her ELLs meant constantly finding interesting and successful ways to keep them on task. In Dorit’s ESL class the emphasis was on learning the language. Dorit needed to ensure that her struggling ELLs were also acquiring word-text based skills.

One of the assumed goals of collaboration is that teachers can work together to better meet the needs of their students, particularly struggling ELLs. Dorit comments to Tracie on the issue of meeting student needs.

I’ve noticed that throughout our conversations, you ask me to clarify how the needs of struggling ELLs fit into the general education classroom. Many general education teachers face the reality that there is no obvious relationship or connection between ESL and general education teachers. By asking questions, it is becoming clearer to you how a needs analysis of struggling ELLs has a direct implication on collaborative strategies between general education and ESL teachers. – Dorit

The Benefits of Using Collaboration to Support Struggling ELLs

Collaboration at the critical level of K-2 serves a purpose when teachers are able to support their ELLs’ decoding with deeper understanding. Many general education teachers realize that their struggling ELLs need more than just reading support. A focus only on reading support can cause them to struggle and become at risk. These students may not acquire the decoding, fluency, and other reading skills they will need to succeed in subsequent grades. At the critical stages of K-2 instruction, teachers need to make sure that struggling ELLs can make connections between oral and written forms of words. Before addressing the details, however, teachers will need to consider a collaborative plan.

Creating a Supportive Learning Environment (moved this from a later section)

Collaboration creates a supportive learning environment for teachers and for students. When teachers collaborate frequently and consistently, they are able to optimize the learning environments. They can provide more scaffolding strategies to meet all levels of struggling ELLs in both ESL and general education groups. Collaboration helps relieve stress. Effective collaboration is built on common goals and expectations. Teachers can be more organized and structured in their lesson planning, conducting and evaluating learning activities, and assessing student progress. Such structure is necessary for struggling ELLs because they often get lost in following directions, cues, and prompts. Knowing what to teach and how to use procedures help with the overall flow and classroom organization.

As we conducted our research, we learned that schools use a variety of configurations for ESL and ELL/general education classrooms. Regardless of how ESL and general education classes are set up, collaboration can result in a supportive learning environment for teachers as well as students.

Initially, the relationship between ESL and general education teachers may not lend itself to support and collaboration. For instance, the ESL teacher might come into the general education classroom to help, but may be made to feel like a teacher’s aide. Or, the ELLs students might be

separate in another classroom where they may or may not be learning the same curriculum as their native peers. J. Pierce shared her experience. “When I taught we had an in class model where the ELL aides came in and supported my kids in any way I needed. We gave out monthly vocabulary lists ahead of time to help them know what kinds of lessons were coming up. Each teacher used the aide time as they saw fit.”

One possible model for implementing collaboration within the local school setting is shown in Issues to be decided between ELL General Education teachers and ESL teachers. This chart presents the ideal collaborative efforts on classroom issues that should be decided between ELL general education teachers and ESL teachers for each student including those in question for being at-risk before the onset of reading instruction begins. Teachers will need resources and support from administration and colleagues to successfully use such collaborative models to create supportive environments for struggling ELLs.

Make Your Teaching Sparkle. Teach for Success. Make a difference in the classroom.

Subscribe to receive your FREE e-zine and e-book, “Taking Charge in the Classroom” when you visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteachersignup.com.

Purchase your ebook of classroom tested tips – “Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving in the Classroom,” at: http://www.MakeYourTeachingSparkle.com and you’ll receive a FREE ebooklet, “Yes! You Can Teach K-12 English language learners Successfully!”

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, speaker, educator and founder of the New Teacher Resource Center.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dorit_Sasson