Sunday, February 15, 2009
BICS/CALP
There are so many ways to support our ELL students and the acquisition of BICS and CALP. Whats more, the ways we support our ELL students is beneficial to all of our students. Using visuals, hands on experiences, verbal cues, gestures, the inclusion of a child's home language and culture are all integral to our students learning. In a class a took last semester we discussed these strategies in detail, along with the tendancy for ESL programs in schools to ignore best practice with regards to our ELL students. Many schools pull students out of the classroom and away from experiences that enhance their learning. Many of our classes were devoted to the idea that push in support, along with the aforementioned strategies were the best way to help our students reach their learning potential, without sacrificing thier own home language or culture.
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I'm right there with ya! The ESL teacher in my school last year used to take my ESL students 4 days a week. I always wondered (and talked to my colleagues about) why she wouldn't take them 2 days a week outside the class and then stay with them 2 days a week in my class? Sometimes it was like singling them out even more when the ESL teacher would pull them out, when I really felt as though they were missing valuable time interacting with their peers. I was very encouraging of my ESL students speaking Spanish in my classroom and had always wished that the ESL teacher (who spoke no Spanish!) could have come into my classroom and created activities that included other languages. Wishful thinking :)
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