Category: Uncategorized

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.

 

 

A Bit of Background

image from pixabay.com
image from pixabay.com

I have been blogging since 2007. In that time I have gone from a newbie to an Edublogs Pro. I have created blogs on a number of topics. using a number of different platforms. My favorite platform is Edublogs. The support is outstanding and the learning curve is suited to the individual.

The most important blogging I have done is related to being an educator. I found that my audience for Mrs. Poulin: Reflect and Share was blended, maybe too blended.  I initially thought I could write to a parent audience and at the same time write to my PLN. After a number of years, my opinions got in the way of the plans and ideas of the powers-that-be. Suddenly I found my site was UN-linked from the school site. I suspect the “complaint” was related to my words on the power parents can have over the decisions schools make, oops! The emperor has no clothes, but I was supposed to keep up the farce. No hard feelings though. I had grown out of a blended blog idea anyway. The newly presented challenge was to remove all student images and videos. I did not have parent permission to use them outside of school use and now the blog was private, educational but still not school sanctioned.

So I created a new class blog, and stuck to sharing classroom news and valuable information on how parents can help their kids at home. It was very well received and I found the work meaningful and reflective. I tried to ignore the fact that busy parents didn’t subscribe even though the articles and images were about their child. I emailed them repeatedly but still, little interest. Boy, the things they missed out on. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

The older blog linked above took on a new title and role as my place for reflecting on the state of education and my own place in it. I was talking to my PLN.

Now that I am retired, I want a fresh look at education and I need to be able to speak my mind without going “against policy.” So that brings us up to date. Organic Educator will channel my real passions in education and take the readers down a wholesome path.

Not a grand introduction to this blog but still a bit of background that I’m hopeful will help you see where I am coming from.

Next post –  Just what is an organic educator?  Hint: It’s not about farming, but we will get our hands dirty.

cropped-bulbs2