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=**English Language Learners Annotated Bibliography**=

Alexa: ** Freeman, Yvonne, and David Freeman. “Research on Effective Practices for Older English Learners.” //Closing the Achievement Gap: How to Reach Limited-Formal-Schooling and Long-Term English Learners.// Heinemann, 2002. ** Freeman and Freeman note the different challenges teachers encounter for teaching older ESL students. They then use their research and that of others to note four key strategies for implementing research based practices which have been shown to be helpful in teaching ESL students. These include: 1) engaging students in challenging, theme-based curriculum to develop academic concepts, 2) drawing on student's background-- their experiences, cultures, and languages, 3) organizing collaborative activities and scaffolding Instruction and, 4) creating confident students who value school and themselves as learners. Each key includes several examples of ways of achieving the goals. These goals are helpful to teachers because it gives teachers specific objectives for teaching ELLs. The specific practices listed in the article will help teachers and students successfully reach their objectives and scaffold ELLs in their learning while still using their background and cultural knowledge to teach and engage them. ** Fu, Dangling. "Teahing Beginning ESL Writers." In //An Island of English: Teaching English in Chinatown.// Heinemann, 2003. ** Fu cites specific practices that she used to encourage her Chinese speaking ESL students to develop their English writing skills. Such practices include allowing the students to write in the home language while inserting any English words they knew. Other practices include drawing pictures with accompanying captions in both English and Chinese, developing pattern books, as well as modeling specific types of writing, like writing conclusions and introductions for essays. Fu provides many good examples of practices along with advice on how to implement them and first hand accounts of how they worked in classrooms she's taught in and observed. Teachers will find this article particularly helpful because it emphases specific practices that teachers can use in their classroom. Students will benefit from these practices and develop their writing while their culture and home-language is seen as valuable. ** Gunderson, Lee. //ESL (ELL) Literacy Instruction: A Guide book to Theory and Practice.// Routledge, 2009. ** This book 262 page book provides a wealth of information for teachers of students in all grades. It includes instruction for beginning ESL students and older ELLs who are further along in the process of learning English. There are a myriad of topics covered but the two that caught my eye were the sections devoted solely to teaching acadmic reading and another useful section on specific issues that teachers tend to encounter with focus groups (such as Chinese speakers, Japanese students, and Korean students). It also focuses on whole-language instruction. Specific activities for students, such as assessment measures and SQ3R activities, are given to help students learn English. Activites for teachers are also given to help them keep track of student's progress, such as class records and conference logs. Finally, it addresses teaching several kinds of literary works and literacies. For instance, the book says that drama is useful for teaching about serious issues like racism and bullying. However, it warns that some ESLs may view drama as demeaning or innappropriate for the school setting. It also mentions, though briefly, using wikis. The drawbacks to this book are that it is rather long and somewhat dense, however, Gunderson provides a great deal of information for teachers. Lauren W:  **Herrell, Adrienne L., and Michael Jordan. //Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners//. 3rd ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 2007.**

Herrell and Jordan create a perfect tell-all book for any TESOL teacher, or any other educator that may work with English Language Learners. Their paperback book contains a DVD that models all of the strategies and shows teachers how to enact a particular activity in a lesson. Furthermore, the book is broken down into units and then sub-chapters based off of the particular unit of focus. This resource begins with an entire unit on how to plan for ELLs in your classroom, right down to the nitty gritty of what material they need in order to succeed, and what purpose these materials serve. There is also charts, rubrics and other organizers that provide guidance for the teacher in terms of how to plan. With the first unit dealing with how to plan, the remaining chapters focus on what to plan. This book include specific strategies for each unit. These units range in scaffolding, monitoring progress, how to motivate/involve students, building vocabulary and fluency, and comprehension among others. These specific strategies are reinforced with rationale and how to enact the strategies, and these are further reinforced with diagrams/charts and the DVD supplement. These units are aligned with the TESOL standards, and can be broken down by age/grade level. This book references facets of the English language that we take for granted, such as sight and high frequency words, and explains how they can be incorporated into lessons to aid ELL understanding. The only concern I have with this resource is that it does not explicitly say if this is only for TESOL/ELL classrooms, or if they can be infused into everyday classes. I would assume some of these strategies would work, but I do not know if the first unit on planning would be entirely applicable. ** Ferris, Dana R., and Hedgcock, //John S. Teaching ESL Composition//. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. ** Ferris and Hedgcock create a centralized text on tackling how to teach Composition to ESL students at the secondary level. This book is divided into chapters ranging from Theoretical Practice and L2 Acquisition, to Syllabus Design & Text Selection, and Assessment among many others. This book does a great job of displaying the similarities and differences between NS (native speakers) as well as ESL students in terms of their growth, understanding, and assessment. The text tackles everything in a comprehensive manner; with every chapter, readers are asked opening/reflective questions, given explanations and understanding, shown rubrics and activities to aid in the particular chapter's topic, and concluding thoughts, questions, and references. One of the parts I found most useful was how this book explains the "why" and the "how", especially in regards to the acquisition of a second language, which is something most teachers, especially those outside of the English realm, do not have much exposure to, that do play a huge role in the education of our ELLs. The most valuable sections I found were the nitty gritty things; I would have never thought that text selection and syllabus design is contingent upon the students, and in this case, the ELLs in your classroom. It seems every few pages there are rubrics, charts, tips, etc. to further facilitate how to outline your course, select your texts, how to assess your students, etc. The book is relatively dense, and takes a while to go through, but I really believe it is a valuable resource because of all of the practical applications it has in regards to the rubrics and outlines. Although this is centralized on Composition, (which is one of the reasons I love this book), I think this is an applicable text for any type of classroom in one way or another. Students will benefit from this text because there is explicit information/input from student's into this book that are targeted to shape how teachers respond and assess student work. This tell-all book teaches us what to do, what not to do, and why. Lauren: **Callahan, Rebecca M. “Tracking and High School English Language Learners: Limiting Opportunity to Learn.” //American Educational Research Journal.// //American Educational Research Association, 2005.//**

Callahan talks about tracking in high schools and how that affects English Language Learners (ELL). She says that English Language Learners are placed into the lowest track where they receive a “washed down” version of the curriculum. This harms the ELL students because they are not receiving the education they need to pass the English proficiency test or the academic proficiency test, which leaves them stuck in the ELL track, not able to escape. Since they are not learning the curriculum at their grade level, they continue to fall farther behind until they can no longer hope to change their track. Along with harming ELL students, Callahan also talks about how tracking hurts those students in lower tracks who are native English speakers, and that tracks are often divided by race and, many times, have little to do with academic ability. She concludes by saying that low language proficiency can no longer excuse academic performances and that the curriculum should be more rigorous for ELL students to help them stay academically at their grade level and move into a different track. She also states that most ELLs are placed in the non-college preparatory track and very few ever manage to switch tracks to gain challenging curriculum, and that this should change. Pappamihiel and Mihai comment on the rise of English Language Learner (ELL) students into mainstream middle school classrooms. They also note that many teachers feel unprepared to teach these students. To help out those teachers, they created five questions teachers can ask themselves when giving assessments to make sure their ELL students are receiving a fair test. The five questions are: (1) Do I know my students’ English Proficiency levels? (2) Have I designed a test that mirrors classroom objectives, strategies, and activities? (3) Have I made use of all relevant and available visuals and graphics? (4) Have I incorporates true accommodations to level the playing field for my ELLs and (5) Have I created a clear scoring rubric that will allow me to provide culturally sensitive and use feedback. They provide examples of each of the questions that the teachers can implement into regular assessments to make sure that the ELL students are not left behind. In the conclusion they state that while these questions are to help teachers who do not have a lot of experience with ELL students, they should also assess their students on more than formal assessments.
 * Mihai, Florin and Pappamihiel, N. Eleni. “Assessing English Language Learners’ Content Knowledge in Middle School Classrooms.” //Middle School Journal.// National Middle School Association, Vol 38, no.1, 2006.**

Stephanie:  **Enright, D. Scott and McCloskey, Mary Lou. "Yes, Talking!: Organizing the Classroom to Promote Second Language Acquisition." //TESOL Quarterly//. //Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)//, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1985.** D. Scott Enright and Mary Lou McCloskey explains seven criteria that can be used in organizing communicative ELL classrooms and gives examples of how teachers can organize classroom interaction. The article stresses that language should be a verb, rather than a noun in the classroom and that students learn through communicating in an environment that promotes speaking and is catered to the students' communicative needs. The article states that students need to be able to communicate across a wide range of social situations so that they learn how to speak in different contexts. Enright and McCloskey also go on to say that language should be written as well as orally communicated. Both authors stress that language acquisition is a holistic process and that teachers should help their students learn the L2 through creating an L2 environment that allows them to speak in different contexts. The article provides ways of creating communication in the classroom through the experiences of other teachers and researchers. ** Chun, Christian. "Critical Literacies and Graphic Novels for English-Language Learners: Teaching Maus." //Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.// Vol. 53, No. 2, 2009. ** Christian Chun discusses the importance of implementing graphic novels into ELL classrooms. Graphic Novels provide the dynamic relationship between visual pictures and written word that can be used instead of traditional texts. They can help boost critical literacy in the classroom as well as address the needs of ELL students. Chun mentions that graphic novels can be intellectually substantive such as //Maus// or //Persepolis.// Also, graphic novels such as these promote immigrant otherness and racism that all students, especially ELLs, can relate to. Chun promotes graphic novels as a possible language pedagogy that can be used in the classroom to promote critical reading skills, while at the same time, be a multiliteracy that can be used to address the needs of ELL students. Chun uses //Maus// to support his case for the adoption of graphic novels into the classroom. Samantha: **Nordmeyer, Jon. "Balancing Language and Content: Teaching English Language Learners in the 21st Century". //International school Journal//. Apr 2007.**

Nordmeyer explains that the English language is a tool for learning and that an increasing number of English language learners cannot utilize this tool and don’t have access to the same opportunities in the classroom. He also states that a common mistake teachers make is assuming a student can comprehend the academic language of a classroom just because they have high social English skills. Many schools are trying to reform in order to cater to the needs of English language learners. Nordmeyer says that teachers recognize that all students can benefit from the integration of language and content instruction. He says that culture is an essential role in the classroom, scaffolding strategies can make lessons more comprehensible, and that teachers need to promote development in both social and academic English. Another critical point is to support students’ first language. Teachers should promote English as a second language, not as a replacement language. Nordmeyer stresses the importance of language and content and sees their relationship as interdependent. Certain aspects of this article could be more in depth but it’s still a good resource. One thing I haven’t come across yet is the perspective of an English language learner. This article provides a comment from a middle schooler that I think really expresses the feelings of many English language learners.

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This is a rather short but to the point article. There is a language acquisition chart that can be quite useful to determine what a student is able to do and what a teacher can do to guide them to the next stage. The rest of the article is compromised of tips, suggestions, and points to consider when working with English language learners. One tip that stood out to me is learning to pronounce the student’s name. This seems obvious but in my experience, many teachers have stumbled through names and never gotten them right. This article also suggests that students should do some research. They should learn about the language and culture of the student and encourage them to share their opinions and information about their culture. Teachers should also read aloud, make use of all senses in the classroom, write legibly, teach note-taking, and use drawings, pictures, etc. to visualize the content being taught. Being aware of the effects of culture shock, creating a nurturing environment, and establishing a regular routine for English language learners is also important. This is a quick and easy resource that can be very useful in the classroom. There are brief explanations but very good suggestions.