Essay: Effective teaching strategy for English Language Learners

For this research brief, the teacher looked at many articles to try to get more insight on how to answer her inquiry question. The first article that she found talks about the usage of drawing instead of writing for English Language Learners. Drawing is an effective teaching strategy, especially for English Language Learners. Sometimes, English Language Learners do not have the required vocabulary to express what they want to say. In the study that is being described in the article mentions how English Language Learners in the beginning stages can use drawing to express what they want to communicate instead of using writing to express their thoughts. “The study reported in this article confirms these assertions and finds that drawing before writing is beneficial for English language learners. Specifically, the study found that drawing can be an effective preparation for writing the informational genres of explanations and procedures. The results of this study support the proposition that drawing be included routinely in English language learning classes throughout primary school.” (Adoniou, 2013, p.274). This is an important teaching strategy for English Language Learners to use in the classroom especially in elementary school.
The second article mentioned how physical activity prior to a lesson would help students be more engaged in the lesson. In this article, it is mentioned a program that has been established in the Southwestern United States to promote physical activity in the classroom before a lesson would help students academic performance a lot. In the study that they did in the article shows that physical activity in the classroom helped students be more engaged in the lesson and be more on task. The program is called “TAKE 10! consists of a variety of 10-minute activities that include an exercise integrated with academic subjects, cool down a project, and a series of questions related to health and nutrition” (Goh, 2017, p.178). This is a very effective strategy to help those students get better academically, be more engaged in the lesson, and complete the tasks successfully.
This teacher has decided to choose two books for her research brief. The first book she used it was a book used during seminar this year. In this book mentioned some teacher language that teachers should use during their lessons to make them more effective. The teacher language that teachers should use is redirecting, reminding, and reinforcing the language. Redirecting language is when “a student’s behavior has clearly gone off track and needs to be stopped immediately. The teacher calmly and clearly tells the child to stop and explains exactly what the child needs to do instead. Redirecting language is always given as a statement, never a question” (Brady, Forton, & Porter, 2015, p.65). Reminding language is when the teacher “prompts children to remember established expectations and to make decisions about their actions based on those expectations. It communicates a teacher’s trust in students’ good intentions. Reminders can be either a question or a statement” (Brady, Forton, & Porter, 2015, p. 63). The last type of language is reinforcing the language. Reinforcing language is when the teacher “affirms children’s positive behaviors. Recognizing that children build on their strengths, teachers use reinforcing language to help children know exactly what they are doing well and to help them grow academically and socially” (Brady, Forton, & Porter, 2015, p. 58). These are the three types of language that would help her lessons be more effective. In the second book that this teacher has read for the research brief is about how to introduce effective teaching techniques while teaching a lesson. The effective teaching techniques that are mentioned in the book is for when teachers are teaching a lesson during the launch part of the lesson. They should have activities that engage the students in the lesson. Another technique is to connect what they are learning to their own lives or past experiences, reviewing the lesson from the day before and explaining what students will be learning in that day’s lesson. The explore part of the lesson is the most important part of the lesson. In this part of the lesson, students would be given time to do activities related to that day’s lesson. Some of the instructional strategies that can be used during this part of the lesson are: “lectures, questions, practice, group, and discussion methods, and inquiry and discovery approaches” (Burden & Byrd, 2019, p.106). One effective teaching strategy is to have a variety of instructional strategies during a lesson to help students be more engaged in the lesson. The goal of this part of the lesson is for students to be successful in accomplishing the content objectives of the lesson. Finally, during the summarize part of the lesson two of the effective teaching strategies is to stop the explore part of the lesson a few minutes before the class finishes in order to have time to review what students have learned in the lesson, and to give to the teacher any papers or put away materials or supplies used during the lesson. These are some of the effective teaching techniques for that teachers can use.