Читать книгу EL Excellence Every Day - Tonya Ward Singer - Страница 21

This cycle represents good teaching for all students, not just ELs. This emphasis is intentional because effective teaching for all students is the foundation of effective teaching with ELs. In addition to good teaching, ELs need teachers who understand the assets multilingual students bring to their learning and who can build on ELs’ linguistic, cultural, and academic strengths. ELs need core teachers who understand the linguistic demands of the texts and tasks they teach and who can use scaffolds and conversation structures to effectively teach content and academic language in tandem.

This book emphasizes these EL-specific essentials in the context of the reflective teaching cycle for three important reasons:

1 It’s effective—High expectations, active student engagement, and data-driven reflective teaching are consistently highlighted in research as essential for instructional improvement (Carrasquillo & Rodríguez, 2002; Darling-Hammond & Schon, 1996; Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968). EL strategies used without a data-driven reflective teaching process can actually hinder ELs by watering down expectations or creating dependent learners.

2 It’s connected—Core literacy teachers, first and foremost, teach all students core literacy. Whether a teacher has one EL or many, the most useful EL strategies are those that directly align with what teachers teach every day. Sections I–III of this book introduces core strategies, and Section IV helps you apply them to specific literacy goals.

3 It’s practical—The flow of this go-to guide fits naturally with the planning and instructional flow reflective teachers use every day. You can find what you want, when you want it, to both strengthen your reflective teaching for all students and meet the needs of ELs.