April 2008 — Features
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ELL Spoken Here
Rush's school is attended by 130 mildly to moderately developmentally challenged students from ages 6 to 22. About 20 percent of them are Hispanic, and for many, no English is spoken in the home. Rush herself has become a valuable resource for other ELL instructors who need support.
"A lot of teachers go into the classroom and close the door," she says. "Technology opens it up-it's your school, it's your community."
In addition to participating in the Discovery Educator Network, Rush regularly visits a host of websites-some for teachers in general, others that specifically target ELL teachers. She downloads videos from TeacherTube. She chooses flash cards from ESL Flashcards. She prints out worksheets from Childtopia. She gets ideas for games from ESL-Kids. She uses ELL activities from Kindersay.
She also receives an e-mail alert whenever Larry Ferlazzo updates his edublog. Ferlazzo is an English and social studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, CA, where the student population is predominately ELL. In his blog, Ferlazzo links to activities appropriate for English language learners.
"A lot of teachers go into the classroom and close the door. Technology opens it up."Linda Rush, Notre Dame School
"Just today there was something that came through and I thought, oh my god, this is absolutely awesome," Rush says. "It was a site where I could download sight words. [The activity] was called Sight Words Buddy, at Quiz-tree.com. I had been there before, but I had never found this."
Rush herself has a page on Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site popular with educators, where she passes along resources and ideas for teachers of English language learning, as well as for teachers of other subjects.
"Teaching is not about making things only for yourself-it's about sharing," she says. "I create and then I share. And then somebody else creates and then they share."
Another online gathering hole for ELL teachers is Teachers Network, where Tobey Bassoff has a page dedicated to adjusting classrooms to meet the needs of English language learners. Bassoff is in charge of the ELL program at Angevine Middle School in Lafayette, CO, where she is also the vice principal. She joined Teachers Network as a "web mentor," which has provided her with the opportunity to share her knowledge with other educators while engaging in dialogue about best practices for ELL instruction. A recent heading on her page was titled, "How-to: Adjust Your Teaching Styles for English Language Learners (ELL) in ESL/Bilingual Classrooms." Scan the screen, and you'll find articles, lesson plans, and other resources, and even "Daily Classroom Specials" such as homework assignments.
Bassoff says that, through her web page, she hears from ELL instructors from all over the world and tries to link them together. "Research-based information is great, but it takes years to get it translated to how it works in a classroom," she says.
"In the US, there has been an explosion of English language learners. The need for the information is outpacing the publication of research and books to assist the educators, so we are finding that the most useful tips and strategies come from our global network of colleagues. Technology provides an incredibly fast and effective forum to communicate and share those ideas."
She offers the example of an elementary school teacher from Milwaukee who was trying to find a language assessment tool for her classroom. Bassoff put the woman in touch with a teacher in Colorado who had just developed one. "People are hungry for knowledge about best practice regarding ELLs," she says.
