ESOL

Teaching Students Who Are Learning English as Another Language

I have always worked with diverse student populations who come to school with varying levels of English language proficiency. I am a native English speaker, as a matter of fact, I was born in England to an English mother and I speak only English. I had to learn how to teach students who come to school with limited English. It was the process of learning that led to effective teaching and I have become highly effective at leading students to achievement in all content areas. My area of expertise is mathematics instruction for both students and teachers. I have supported mathematics instruction as a teacher, a math coach and math consultant with very positive outcomes.

It is probably my deeply held belief that all students deserve the best opportunities for access to mathematics that drives me to continue to create ways to ensure we prepare students for higher levels of math. Sometimes, our students who come to us with limited English are automatically remediated because we don’t assess mathematics before placing students. Other times our students who are English language learners (ELL) are just pushed into math classes and provided little to no scaffolds that would support their learning and no learning occurs. I work with schools and teachers to address these issues and make structural and instructional changes that benefit student learning and support teachers instruction.

I have been trained in SIOP and 7 Steps to a Language Rich Classroom. I was only trained this year in the "7 Steps", however, it is as if someone wrote a book about all of the strategies I already use in my classroom as engagements strategies for all students. The strategies of TPR, random selection, and the use of visuals and explicit vocabulary instruction have been the staples of my instruction.

Although my path has led me to specializing on math instruction, the instructional strategies that have benefitted my students in learning mathematics have been the ones that I learned through my training to become a teacher of students who are English language learners.

I have even supported other teachers/school in the use of sheltered instruction in my math support roles. Take a look at one of the math lessons I wrote for my grade 7/8 ESL Math class:

k vs. m (comparing the 7th grade constant of proportionality to the 8th grade slope)