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Language Acquisition

Sometimes English gets complicated enough for someone who has always spoken the language.
I am going to be an English teacher, and sometimes I question if something I have written or said is right.
Now, think of someone coming into this world of pronouns and irregular tenses.
Enough to frustrate anyone, right? I think this is one of these things as a new educator that has fallen into the...
*dreaded* blind spot.
My brain is jumping from task to task that I forget that students out there aren’t just struggling with the words to say,
they are struggling concept of symbolism, on a deeper level
. Deeper than symbolism? They are still grappling with the language on top of these ridiculous things
English teachers ask them to do with their novel.


Colorin Colorado provides a very informative overview of language acquisition:
http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/language-acquisition-overview#h-stages-of-language-acquisition.
If you’ve ever taken a linguistics course, some of this website will be review.
However, I remember from my own linguistics experience that I learned more about the formal aspects of language acquisition -
not how to teach these learners. This website and article provides many different strategies and suggestions for teachers.
Under suggestions for advanced fluency, the article suggests to “demonstrate effective note-taking and provide a template” (Colorin Colorado).


Note-taking - a vital yet boring lifesource for remembering information.
Clare Alsharif stress how important note-taking is to ELL students:
“ELLs need to be aware of North American education strategies and culture, as well as become familiar with different note-taking techniques and graphic organizers”
(Illinois Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages).  
The complete article is found here: https://www.itbe.org/v_newsletters/article_56123695.htm


Connect this information back to Colorin Colorado, who states that
ELL teachers encounter students with a variety of backgrounds and abilities, and until the babel fish comes into existence,
they will need to have flexibility, creativity and skill in order to help ELL students make meaning from the new language and content they are learning” (Colorin Colorado).


The words that stand out to me here are flexibility and creativity. I love when teaching gets creative, but how could I make note-taking creative and flexible?


So I started thinking, would sketchnotes be a valuable tool for ELL students? My mentor teacher uses this technique all the time with her students to have them take notes on their book or key concepts.
Mike Rhodes, creator of Sketchnote Army states,
Friends in the sketchnoting community constantly share how they use sketchnotes to document processes, plan projects, and capture ideas in books, movies, TV shows, and sporting eventts”

So if you are ever lost, wondering,, “How can I make notetaking an adaptable thing for everyone?”
Then consider sketchnotes. I’m not here to sell you a plan or curriculum. I’m just here as a student that can attest that it works. Not hoping for a profit to show. Sketchnotes are a creative yet academic way for our students to retain what we say.

Comments

  1. Madi,

    Thank you so much for your insightful and honest post about reaching ELLs. I am always looking for ideas to incorporate new multimodal learning strategies into my classroom, and I can't wait to try out sketch notes! Thank you so much for sharing about this topic. I'll have to let you know how the sketch notes work in my classroom!

    Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ms. Loomis, thanks for your post! I’m intrigued by sketchnotes, but the URL included in your post doesn’t seem to be working (maybe the site is down?). Check on that, and also check out the formatting of your post … on my screen some of the text is highlighted in white and is scrolling beyond the confines of the post text box, making for more difficult reading. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ms. Loomis, I am intrigued by the idea of sketch notes as a tool to help ELL students. I would love to hear more about how you implement this in the classroom and how effective it is. Good luck on getting the formatting kinks out.

    ReplyDelete

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