Blog Entry for Week 2 (January 19-23)

After completing the readings, it is apparent that each child and each learning situation is unique. There are many ways to support diverse learners in a learning community. First of all, it is important to ensure that the assessment a teacher is giving is right for what the teacher wants to learn. If a teacher wants to check a language learners knowledge of a new language, then the teacher should use a different assessment than if they want to learn what a language learner knows about the content of the material being taught in class. In order to fully understand what the child knows about CONTENT, then the teacher may have to assess the language learn differently than those who speak the native language. This is supported when the first article states, "An overwhelming majority of assessment tools are in English only, presenting a potential threat to the usefulness of assessments when ELL's lack of English prevents them from understanding test items." (Assessing English-Language Learners in mainstream classrooms, Susan Lenski)
Another reading (Opening Quality Lines of Communication: Seeing my students through the eyes of their parents) pointed out how one can learn a great deal about children and their learning styles from their parents. Parents know their children better than any teacher, because they see their children all the time, and have been with them since they were little. When one teacher had the parents write about their children, she learned information about them that would have taken a year to learn, if she had ever learned it at all. Instantly she was able to cater her lessons to what the children liked and were interested in. She also knew which children were experts in what. Finally, she knew more about their personalities, so she was able to structure her lessons to meet their diverse learning styles. It was exciting how parent can be an excellent source when learning what support diverse learners need.
Yet another article (Code switching: Tools of Language and Culture Transform the dialectally Diverse Classroom) points out how teaching English is not only beneficial to English language learners, but to all the children in the class as well. The children in the class will better understand their language, and how languages are similar and different. By making children competent in their own language, they feel competent and confident. They are able to determine what is appropriate at what time, just like they learn what dress is appropriate for different occasions.
All of the articles point out how there is no one way to teach language to children. It is important to learn about students and their thought process when teaching. This may come from checking assessments to ensure that they are checking exactly what a teacher is looking for, asking the parents for help and information, or from observing how all children can benefit from comparing and contrasting two different languages. The last text we read, from the book Scaffolding Language and Learning, points out how teachers can learn about children and their language from talking with them. Specifically, when teachers understand how language is structured, they will be able to identify strengths the children have, and then use these strengths to help children in areas they need improvement.