What About Remedial Students and ELLs?

It is reasonable to expect that a certain portion or percentage of students will perform far below their peers at any point in the year. Students who lack the foundation of skills necessary for learning in upper elementary and higher grades can quickly fall farther behind in all content areas. There’s supposed to be a certain mesh or blending of skills that keep students on a clear path for advancing their learning. A lack of adequate reading and writing skills will almost always hold a student back from making adequate progress.

So how does a student without that adequate foundation of skills catch up?

How can an educator successfully teach the widest range of skill levels.

This is not an easy task. I have a few ideas that I would like to toss out for discussion. If you see a point that you would like to address, disagree with, expand on, or maybe you have even more ideas to add to the list, please write a comment below and I will keep the conversation going. While these are numbered, they are not in any order of importance. Rather, they make it easy for us to target in reply.

  1. Classroom and other teachers can revisit the most basic skills on a daily basis. You know that kids forget to use upper and lower cases correctly. Reteach everyone briefly so as to review and revisit without targeting certain skills. All of the foundation skills bear repeating.
  2. Find time for short sessions and work with small groups on targeted learning.

I am mulling developing some ideas on how I can offer some of my time as a retired educator to volunteer in areas I feel I can make a difference.I have lots of training and a passion for teaching ELL students. In fact, when our ELL teacher left in the middle of the year, I was asked to self-train and administer the ACCESS testing for students in our elementary school. I quickly agreed without realizing what a big chunk of time was going to be needed in order to feel I was doing a very good job. That was my goal – to do a very good job.

In the end, I administered the test successfully and then sat back, waiting for the results. Well, those results came 5 months later. As I had expected, the students did best in the speaking part of the test. What I found remarkable was the poor performance in writing. ALL of the students did poorly in that area both students who are low performers as well as high performers.

That was revealing and struck me as an obvious area for targeting instruction. It is valuable information for all teachers who work with the students. How easy is it to tell the students’ teachers this news so they can pay special attention.

I would also be interested in hearing how the testing compared with the district writing assessments. Did the same students perform poorly or are they stronger in their daily work? Are there classroom charts and visuals or other organizational tools that guide them, provide basic supports, and are part of their daily writing routines? I know the ACCESS does not allow students to use any supports. It all has to be cemented in their heads.

volunteerSo, getting back to an area for my volunteer work, I would like to focus on ELL writing. First, I need to see how the ELL students in my area performed on the last ACCESS. If the results are similar to my old school, I would like to help the students develop stronger foundational skills.

I would like to gather small groups of ELL students for 20 minute sessions in developing their organization for writing and for developing a writer’s voice. I would start each session with a mini-lesson and a presentation of someone’s work from a recent class. We would use our oral skills for retelling, commenting on the good things, and offering suggestions for simple improvements. Then I would move on to teaching another tool or strategy that we would practice aloud. We would then move on to writing something using a prompt. The prompt will first be addressed orally so the ideas are there even if the writing isn’t. I can help then with the actual writing.

So there’s the plan. I am looking forward to possibly making a difference in my blue-collar community.

 

 

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