Obviously, our school has a high percentage of ESL students, which makes teaching a little challenging at times. Honestly, I do not believe I am doing enough in my class personally to adapt to the high number of ESL students. I do try to make certain modifications, but overall I am not sure I am doing enough. I speak to some of the other teachers and here what they are doing and it makes me wonder if I am doing enough.
However, I will say that the middle school science teacher did give certain ESL students the exact copy of one of the exams, went over the questions and answers with some of these kids and they still failed. Hearing this, I am not sure if more modifications would help the situation. On a similar note, the language of mathematics is rather universal and tranverses languages. I have had a few ESL students who could barely speak English at all and they come into my class and ace an exam mainly because they are smart and they have practiced the problems before.
I have noticed that I must slow my speach down considerably. At times I will catch myself speaking as if I were teaching a group of Indiana students and running syllables together. Teaching at an international school has definitely forced me to be knowledgable about my annunciation.
Aaron
1 comment:
Aaron--I loved your remark about teaching Indiana students! Guess we tend to speak rapidly--I do that myself.
You are right about math--numbers do not have a specific language.
I bet you are doing better than you think.
Dr. C.
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