Standard1.a.LanguageasaSystem.

Candidatesdemonstrateunderstandingoflanguageasasystem,
includingphonology,morphology,syntax,semantics,pragmatics,discoursevarieties,aspectsofsocial
andacademiclanguage,rhetoricalregisters,andwritingconventions.Teachersusetheirknowledgeof
theseinterrelatedaspectsoflanguagetohelpELLsacquireEnglishlanguageandliteracytoachievein
contentareas.

My first artifact for Standard 1.a: Language as a System has

been selected from Linguistics for TESOL Bilingual Teachers ESC 757. In
this assignment I have demonstrated my understanding of the study of
meaning, classifying, and examining changes in meaning and
procedure. In combination with each of the selections in this semantic
assignment, I reinforced my knowledge of semantics concepts. This
assignment overall helped me gain insight on how to shape instruction
for ELL students to help them learn the English language.

Semantic Relationship

For the first selection for this assignment I provided the semantic
relationships between homonym, homophone, homograph, and
heteronyms pairs. As I completed this assignment I saw the challenges
I was faced with and challenges that ELL students might encounter.
Therefore, I created an activity with the section I thought would be the
most difficult from the four semantic relationships.
In this activity I selected homophones as a semantic concept to
discuss as a teaching activity I would create for a group of ELL

students. In this activity I focused on how two words can have the
same sound/s but have different spelling and meaning. I created a
matching game where students had visuals (pictures) of each word
included in the game, each word was written on a separate index card
and a sentence that matched each word in the correct form or students
in a different tier would create their own sentence.

Planning an Activity

In the process of planning this activity the target learning

objectives for students were, 1) students will be able to identify the
correct homophone for pictures, and 2) students will be able to identify
or create a sentence using homophones. As I designed this activity, I
knew that my most powerful tool for this game would be visuals, which
in this case were the pictures. I made sure to use real objects for each
word. Including pictures in this activity helps ELL students who have no
relation with the vocabulary chosen to connect to the newly acquire
words in a way where they are most likely to remember and make a
personal connection.
As I thought about the process of implementing this activity, I
considered all three tiers I would have for differentiation purposes.
Therefore, tier 1 students would only have pictures and words to match
this would help these students have an opportunity to connect to the
words using pictures and words. I would have their 2 students use
pictures and words in combination with sentences. This will challenge

this group of students to not only match the picture to the word but
also look at how the word is used in a sentence structure. Lastly, my
tier 3 students will have visuals if needed, but they will concentrate on
words and create their own sentence using each homophone. This will
help further their language learning and use of homophones. These
differentiation modifications will overall enhance the activity by
creating an attainable goal for all students.
The last activity in this artifact was to create an activity for ELLs
using word hierarchies. I designed an activity for ages 8-10. The
learning objectives for this activity are, 1) students will able to organize
vocabulary words according to their hierarchy, and 2) students will
create sentences to describe the hierarchy process for three given
words. This activity will help students understand semantic mapping
and how to identify word hierarchies as they play a game. This activity
requires students to have the opportunity to use accountable talk with
one another. It also promotes the opportunity for students to work
together in writing.

Impacting Students and Teacher Learning

This artifact impacts students and their learning because it

promotes ELL students with the opportunity to challenge their own
level of learning and provides a level they can master. It also promotes
opportunities for students to socialize and talk to one another and
therefore learn from each other.

This artifact also enriched my professional understanding of

semantic relationships, the difficulty of understanding such
relationships, and the importance of creating activities that will help
ELLs to be proficient in acquiring skills to learn them. As I reflected on
this artifact, my awareness of how important it is to differentiate
activity for ELLs became extremely important. It can be very
overwhelming for ELL students to try to complete a task in where they
dont understand the language and feel like the task is not guided for
their needs. I would target homonyms, homophones, homographs, and
heteronyms groups of linguistic words as a lesson unit, providing
hands-on activities that will help ELL students learn and expand on
English vocabulary words.