In this reflection I will talk about the importance of
language objectives, particularly key concepts, in the day-to-day learning to
help the long term education of your student; this taking into account what we
saw in class about the SIOP Model, GANAG, and the importance of bridges to
support ELLs. In many topics of many
different subjects, there are some few key concepts that are paramount in the
understanding of a certain topic, that are in turn connected to other
subsequent topics; teachers should be conscious of their importance and use
different techniques to make sure students are understanding these key
concepts.
Using the SIOP Model checklist, particularly the
language objectives and how to achieve them, we can make sure these key concepts
are being understood; we can also use the scaffolding technique to begin with
less difficult to understand related concepts, and once we get deeper into the
topic we can address these key concepts. These key concepts will give students
the opportunity to, in the future, remember and be able to summarize a topic
just through the understanding and handling they achieved of them and of their
classifications.
The first thing for teachers to do would be to
recognize those key concepts which understanding in our students would ensure
they are getting the deep meaning of the topic and they will be able to
transfer what they are learning to different contexts. Then, teachers should
use different language objectives throughout the lessons, that connected to the
content objectives, would ensure students are understanding and will help them
contextualize those concepts; this could be achieved through different
activities in which they will use and get familiarized with these words through
the four skills, reading, writing, speaking, and listening, combined with the
use of connected supplementary materials.
Another important part of this process is that
students recognize the importance of understanding and handling these concepts
for their education and their day-to-day life; to achieve this we can connect
these concepts to their previous knowledge and experiences, and also use bridges
to give them different opportunities to use and practice those concepts:
compare, contrast, define, explain, classify, summarize, and evaluate. Finally, we as teachers can use different
techniques from the SIOP Model and GANAG to check for their understanding of
those key concepts and see if they will be able to use them in the transfer
task (in other contexts).
I will give an example of a key concept in the social
studies subject, which understanding is very important for students in their
academic and life environment and should be included in the language objectives
of various lessons through different means. This concept is cultural legacy, knowing
its true and deep meaning will help them appreciate different cultures from a
different time and space, as well as let them gain consciousness of their own
purposes in life, for example in their school community. To understand the
scope of cultural legacies students must first understand other key related
concepts like historical cycles, and connect its meaning to their own life, family,
school community, country, world, etc. Cultural legacies can help them
understand the purpose of studying social studies, and of related topics as
coexistence and values.
No comments:
Post a Comment