Learning & Leading with Technology Article Response #2

Grounded Technology Integration: ESOL Teaching Strategies

            “Teachers working with English language learners can and should help both ELLs and monolingual students meet the same curriculum-based learning goals.”  Never a truer statement, but often times I think it is easier to make the statement than it is to follow through.  This article is about that, the follow through .  It gives a solid no nonsense guild to incorporating a classification of strategies with the corresponding possible educational technologies to assist the teacher in the progression of the students’ language proficiency levels.   In all there are 67 specific ESOL teaching strategies which they organized into eight general recommendations for working with ELLs.  These are; Communicate clearly, Make Content understandable, Check the students’ understanding, Elicit or draw out the students’ responses, Demonstrate and model, Encourage interpersonal communication, Group students to assist their learning, and Promote cross-cultural awareness.  They relate these area’s into categories and sub categories and each of the recommendations come with suggestions to incorporate within a specific lesson, unit, or project.

            I found this article to be focused specifically towards teachers, it did not relay directly to the National Educational Technology Standards for Students.  Although not directed at students in relation to the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers it met the following, Research and Information Fluency, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making, lastly Technology Operations and Concepts,  (Especially in the selecting and the use of applications effectively and productively).  All of these NETS-T standards are represented in the taxonomy overview that was presented in the article.   It meshed well the strategies necessary for the teacher to achieve needed goals with the possible technologies to help reach them.  

            I felt this article a worthwhile read, which had a direct approach to the issues when dealing with incorporating ways to ensure ELLs learn to the same standards as mainstream students.  Furthermore the article spells out nicely the way to go about it, giving a simple rubric to help teachers incorporate technology to meet goals.  It also raised my curiosity enough that I followed the wiki link (http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/)  that is addressed in the article and reviewed the teaching strategies that were provided by The college of William & Mary School of Education on the site.    I found it very informative and the taxonomy goes much more into depth, showing that the article is more of an abstract for what I reviewed  on the William & Mary site.  I definitely think it’s a great source for ESOL teaching strategies.  With that said I also think a lot of it can be adapted for teachers to use in mainstream education.  Such as approaches for promoting cross-cultural awareness, this is relevant in any classroom.  All in all a worthwhile use of my time, and I’ll put the ideas it gives in my tool box for future use. 

Stanfield S. (2012/13). Grounded Technology Integration: ESOL Teaching Strategies. Learning & Leading with Technology. 40(4), 37-39.