David: Can you help me? I don’t get how to do this.
Me: Well I am not supposed to help you because Ms. Billups
wants to see what you can do on your own.
David: Well can you tell me what this means? I don’t get it.
Me: Sure. Let’s read the problem. There are 45 horses on the
farm. Each stable holds 9 horses. How many stables are on the farm?
David: What is a stable?
Me: The barn where horses live. You know, with the big
wooden doors to separate them?
David: Oh! Okay.
**David immediately turns back to his paper and (correctly)
completes the problem without issue.**
David: Okay, what about this one?
Me: Let’s read it again. How much time has elapsed from 8:27
a.m. to 12:20 p.m.?
David: What is ‘elapsed’?
Me: How much time has gone by? If she left at 11:07 and got
there at 3:35 how much time was she on the train?
David: oh!
**David sets off to solve the problem. This time he
experiences some difficulty thinking about the math**
Me: How many minutes in an hour?
**David shrugs**
Me: 60, right?
**David nods and begins subtracting 16 from what he has
already written**
Me: Where did you get 16 from?
**David shrugs**
Me: Why are you subtracting 16 then?
**David shrugs and looks completely confused, clearly not
sure why I am questioning him**
Me: Oh! You thought I said 16, but I said 60. 6-0. 60!
**David completes the problem**
I thought this conversation was interesting during my
placement last week for a couple of reasons. For starters, I have seen on
David’s tests that he does pretty well with multiplication and division;
usually getting B’s on his tests. However, David is an ELL and this entire test
that we were discussing was made up of word problems. Ms. Billups has been
working with the students on their word problems, using problems that
specifically cover content she knows will be on the MEAP, such as elapsed time.
This test was to see what they can do individually so that she can accommodate
future lessons based on what the students get and don’t get. What I found most
interesting about this conversation was that the biggest struggle David had
with the worksheet was interpreting the language on the page. I have worked previously
on tasks with an ELL student in the classroom who has not been in the country
as long as David, but was not able to come up with a word problem that tripped
him up linguistically. With this worksheet David was working on, however, he
found two on one single page. I found it especially interesting that the only
thing holding David back from answering the horse stable question was that he
didn’t know what a stable was. Once I gave him that information, he did not
struggle with the mathematics of the problem at all. Yet on the time problem,
it was an issue of both the linguistics and the mathematics. This leads me to
these three questions:
1. At what level is David actually learning
mathematics?
2. How well does David do mathematics in his home
language?
3. How can I further help David with the
mathematical language needed to be successful in English, and more specifically
on the MEAP?
The first step to answering any of these questions would be
to spend more time watching David do mathematics and talking with him about the
mathematics that he can do. I could also ask Ms. Billups where she has assessed
him at in regards to his level of learning to find that base line. I would need
to translate the problem into his home language and attempt to use the language
correctly enough for David to immediately understand the problem to see what
level he can achieve in his home language. This could be done, but it would
take a lot of studying of the language and culture, and/or some luck on the Internet
at finding a problem sheet that is already written in David’s home language. I
think the best way to help David with his mathematical language skills would be
to introduce him to more terms that are sure to show up on the MEAP so that he
has experience with them beforehand. I would have to do some research on what
terms show up often and what types of things about US culture a student taking
the test would need to know. David has spent a lot of time in school learning
academic and conversational language, but how much time has been spent on
mathematical language and obscure items that show up in word problems, such as
stables? I think helping David with this would also require some reading into
the ways in which teachers have been successful with helping ELL students in a
similar situation. I could also read some articles about mathematical language
to get some ideas about what I need to be covering with David. I think it would
take a lot of one-on-one help to get David to further understand what is on a
page of story problems that Ms. Billups of the MEAP presents to David.
It is very admirable that you are focusing on this challenging aspect of instruction, i.e., the teaching to and learning of ELL students...sadly, this is something that classroom teachers do not spend nearly enough time thinking about, but your focused questions show an excellent disposition for learning about and addressing this dimension of the classroom. Indeed, there are many ways in which you might experiment with classroom structures that support ELL learners. I would make note of those this semester, in preparation for next year, when you will have the autonomy to create these structures in your own classroom.
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