September 2011 – Volume 15, Number 2
Fifty Strategies For Teaching English Language Learners |
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| Author: | Adrienne L. Herrell &Michael Jordan (3rd Edition) (2008) |  |
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| Publisher: | Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ | ||
| Pages | ISBN | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pp. vii + 314 | 978-0-13-1992665 | $39.99 USD | |
In the third edition of Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners, Adrienne Herrell and Michael Jordan present a practical book of strategies to enhance student instruction for English language learners. All strategies in this text are aligned with ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students published by TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). The TESOL standards are divided into three grade level groupings: Pre-K-3, 4-8, and 9-12. These standards focus on social language, academic language, and sociocultural knowledge. Students who attain goals based on these standards will become proficient English speakers, writers, and readers. All included strategies have been field-tested in diverse classrooms. The authors included a number of features to support teachers in meeting the challenges in 21st century classrooms.
English learners need to be actively engaged to gain from instruction. They need opportunities to show growth in authentic tasks in a nonstressful environment. Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners was written as a guide for providing this type of classroom. While the learning activities presented in this book are primarily designed for U.S. K-12 teachers of English language learners, most of the activities would be appropriate for any student who is struggling to learn content in a school setting.
The book is divided into five main sections of resources. The TESOL Standard Correlation Chart is printed on the inside back cover and shows the alignment of the fifty strategies with the TESOL standards. A Quick Classroom Reference Guide is located in the inside front cover and shows an alphabetical listing of strategies and their locations within the text.
A DVD, Strategies on Video, accompanies the text. The DVD features four exemplary teachers demonstrating strategies from the book. The featured teachers are from varied grade levels. The Strategies on Video segments include brief introductions of classroom examples along with focused questions to facilitate thought and discussion. Teacher interviews are featured in each video segment giving insight into how the lesson was planned and the teacher’s reasons for choosing the strategy.
Section I includes basic theory, principles, and assessment strategies underlying the effective teaching of students learning English as a second language. This section provides the research and good practices on which the fifty teaching strategies are built. Section I should be read as a prerequisite to the remaining four sections. After reading Section I, readers could skip around focusing on strategies of choice from the four other sections that best fit their classroom needs. Section I would be especially beneficial to beginning teachers or to teachers who are not familiar with the TESOL standards and teaching English language learners.
In Sections II-V, strategies are presented in relatively short chapters. Teachers should find it easy to skim the material and decide whether the strategy presented is relevant to his/her classroom. The strategies easiest to implement are listed first within each category and build in complexity. The chapter layout is user-friendly and easy to read and understand. The national TESOL standards addressed by the strategies are listed at the beginning of each chapter. Following the TESOL standards is a description of the strategy. Next, are step-by-step instructions for implementing the strategy. Following the step-by-step instructions is an application section including two different classroom scenarios demonstrating how the strategy can be adapted for different grade levels and content areas. I personally found these real-world classroom examples very helpful because they provide a detailed synopsis of classroom conversations and events that took place while implementing the strategies. The classroom scenarios acted as a springboard to give me ideas of how I could use each strategy within my own classroom. A conclusion portion follows the applications and examples. Important points are summarized and reasons are reiterated for why the strategy is effective and should be used. Examples of approximation behaviors related to the TESOL standards are also included in the conclusion portion. These behaviors are divided into grade span categories of K-3, 4-8 and 9-12. If there is a corresponding video segment on the DVD for the strategy presented, this is noted in the conclusion section along with a list of questions that could be used to guide discussions. The final portion of each chapter lists references and suggested readings related to the chapter and strategy presented.
Section II, Strategies For Enhancing Instruction Through Planning, includes Chapters 1-10. The teaching strategies presented in Section 2 will guide teachers in providing English learners with the type of instruction and assessment necessary to create successful learning sequences. The strategies range from simple classroom procedures to formats designed to support English learners with classroom participation.
Section III, Strategies For Supporting Student Involvement, includes strategies for actively involving students in learning. This section includes 16 chapters presenting strategies that build heavily on language acquisition research stressing the importance of providing multiple opportunities to interact in nonstressful settings. The strategies in this section require careful observing and monitoring of students in order to adapt lessons to satisfy individual needs.
Section IV presents nine active–involvement strategies for building vocabulary and fluency. The main purpose of this section is to provide ideas to allow teachers to build a rich repertoire of strategies in order to engage students in word study throughout the school day.
Section V, Strategies For Building Comprehension, provides support in actively involving students in making sense of text. The fifteen strategies shared in this section combine the knowledge of language acquisition with the theory and research about reading comprehension. The hope is to inspire teachers to provide daily engaging instruction to build skills in a variety of genres and texts.
Both junior and veteran teachers looking for concrete ideas for helping students understand content materials while developing their speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills in English will benefit from the resource’s step-by-step instructions and classroom scenario examples. In short, The Quick Classroom Reference Guide allows teachers to find a specific strategy to address a particular learning in almost no time at all.
Reviewed by
Amy Beavers
Chatham Public Schools, North Carolina, USA
<abeavers
chatham.k12.nc.us>
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