Bennings Strategies For ELL Students

Speaking in hypotheticals can be confusing at times, though using them to explore one's own morals and understandings of the world around them is both critical and informative. Teachers, for the most part, are not afforded the luxury of time when it comes to dealing with the classroom. The middle grades and high school bring very different things for students, though two constants are: forty-five minute classes, and several different teachers. Time of course possess the biggest problem as teachers struggle to both grab and keep students’ attention on the subject matter. Couple this with how varying teacher styles affect a student’s overall desire to learn. For instance, if a student’s first period teacher is upbeat, active, and very engaging

For the purposes of this narrative, Tomas is an ELL student that recently moved to Florida from Brazil and Bennings takes the role of Tomas’ eleventh grade Chemistry teacher. Today marks the first day of Tomas being in the class, and Bennings being a good teacher, found out beforehand that the new student was from Brazil and that they have been tested and certified as an ELL student. Not wanting Tomas to feel left out or fall behind, Bennings wasted no time in pairing Tomas with another Spanish speaking student in the class, ultimately using one of the main strategies for ELL students which is peer grouping. Though, Bennings is surprised to find that at the end of the class period Tomas has done nothing but put his name and copy a few things from the other student's paper. Spotting this, Bennings calls over the other student before they leave for their next class, asking them why they would just let Tomas copy instead of helping them with the assignment. Though, as Benning is surprised to find out, the grouping of the two students proved unhelpful. As the other student explains, Tomas is Portuguese and thus does not speak Spanish. Confused Bennings asks if the student speaks Spanish, just to ensure he had not made a mistake and gotten the student he choose to pair with Tomas confused with another student who did speak Spanish. To his surprise, the student explains that they do

For this narrative, the importance is on the side of the receiver, the teacher who has recently taken the student into their class. Culture misconceptions of language are easily overlooked, especially in Latin countries as explored above. Immigration to the United States from Latin American countries is commonplace, beyond just language misconceptions there is a belief that students coming to America will have a lack of academic understand. While the students coming from these counties may have learned things a bit different, perhaps due to class size or rigger, the overall institution of education have been model after the U.S.’s. For instance, Puerto Rico’s own education system is very similar to the U.S. being that it is a territory of the U.S. meaning their relations are very close and looking forward to a brighter future (U.S. DoE, 2011). Most South American countries as well have begun greatly benefiting from teaching programs from the U.S. these things need to be in mind when it comes to students in our schools. The students themselves will struggle to overcome the language barrier, which in and of itself presents the largest culture