ELL Training Reflection- November 10-11:

The past two days, I have had the opportunity to learn

and grow in my knowledge of ELs and how to help them
grow in the classroom. The ELL training I have participated in
has greatly helped me learn more about ELs in general and
the learning process they go through and how to
accommodate and teach them successfully. These past two
days have been very beneficial, in my growth of ELs and
learning how to make an impact in their learning in my
future classroom and teaching. The concepts and training
that I have invested in the past two days will be reflected in
my future teaching of ELs in my classroom.
To beginning, there are four domains of language:
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Each one of these
domains is crucial to the EL student and is processed
differently. In EL students, language is a process that goes
through five steps: preproduction, early production, speech
emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency.
Every EL student goes through these stages, but the amount
of time they go through each step is dependent on the child.

Learning these two ideas about EL students is awesome

because it makes so much more sense after working with my
EL students at Trace Crossings. I can see the process they
are going through now and it shows me the developmental
time they are in. WIDA is an organization that has been
adopted by the Alabama Department of Education. WIDA
provides teachers, staff, and administrations with list of
proficiency levels to identify a students scale of knowledge
in a list of areas. The level of proficiency is between 1.0 and
6.0. In Alabama, a child is on target at 4.8. All the concepts
mentioned throughout day one of the ELL training were great
because I learned tons of new terms and knowledge to help
and gage an ELs prior knowledge when entering my
classroom.
The second day of ELL training began with a recap of all
the terms and concepts we learned the previous day. Having
a recap was great because it drilled the concepts we were
previously taught. One of the main topics we focused on
today during the ELL training was vocabulary. Vocabulary is
so important for new English learners because it is a great

predictor of future reading comprehension in middle and

secondary grades. The average six year old learns
approximately 8,000 words, so we need to make sure EL
students are learning vocabulary as well. Students need to
learn a word in multiple contexts, so they can learn more
over a span of time. A strategy that the presenter mentioned
today that I felt would be beneficial to an EL student is
sentence frames: targeted language you want the children to
say. Learning components and strategies to make learning
for ELs unique enhances their overall achievement in the
classroom. Graphic organizers, Venn diagrams, gallery walks,
differentiated groups, etc. All these strategies help EL
students enhance learning and learn through different
strategies, which help non-EL students learn. I liked how we
interacted in a gallery walk with our work and talked about
putting post it notes, etc. I think the strategies and advice
Mrs. Valeteria gave us were awesome and would definitely
help an EL student be successful in a general education
classroom.

The ELL training really helped me understand the EL

students and how to enhance their learning. As a future
teacher, who will most likely have an EL or two in my
classroom, it is important to know to gage their proficiency
and were to teach hem from there. I will definitely take the
information and papers I have collected over the past two
days and use them for future lesson and teaching, when an
EL student is involved!