Colorin Colorado : Not just for ELLs

Even though I don't currently have an ELLs in my classroom, I do have one student bilingual in Dutch and English, and becoming literate in both. I thought it was interesting to consider some of my learning in terms of her development, and also for the potential future ELLs I may one day teach.

In the article called Bilingual Education by Fred Genesee, Genesee seems to speak directly of my bilingual student and her experience. I heard a bell ring when Genesee states "Bilingual children may have somewhat different patterns of development in certain aspects of language in the short term. Vocabulary is one of those areas. Sometimes, young bilingual children know fewer words in one or both of their languages in comparison with monolingual children of the same age. This is probably because all young children have limited memory capacities, and bilingual children must store words from two languages, not just one. As well, because bilingual children learn words in each language from different people, they sometimes know certain words in one language but not in the other" (Genesee, 2006, Colorin Colorado). I have definitely noticed this slight delay with my bilingual student, but am happy that Genesee backs up what I already assumed, which is that this student is right on schedule with her vocabulary development if you consider her entire word bank in both languages.

All in all, I thought this was a useful article for teachers and parents of bilingual children to understand what is going on in a bilingual child's development. I am happy for this expert opinion that my student in question is progressing just fine, despite some outward appearances of delay.

Another article I thought might be useful for me in my classroom context is Learning About Your Students' Backgrounds by Colorin Colorado. I felt like I could apply this article to ALL of my learners, like when Colorado says "The more you learn about where your students come from, the easier your job will become. This includes learning more about their language, culture, values, family, and home environment. This knowledge will help you to better support your students in the classroom and to receive more support from home" (Colorado, 2007, Colorin Colorado). I believe this wisdom holds true for all students, not just ELLs. When she speaks about culture and the importance of the educator informing his or herself, I couldn't agree more, however my understanding of culture spans beyond just those with differing languages and countries. As we have been learning about from our fellow cohorts in this class, we each carry around different pieces that make up our cultures, and a teacher will benefit from knowing as much as he or she can about these cultures. When she advises teachers to "Invite students and/or family members for show-and-tell, story-telling, food tasting, dancing, etc. Doing this will likely raise the self-esteem of ELL students and generate greater respect from their peers" (Colorado, 2007), I believe this invitation could be extended to all students and maintain the same benefits.

I suppose my major takeaway from exploring these articles is that strategies used to reach ELLs are not exclusively useful for that purpose. All students can benefit from a teacher who works to understand the cultural context from which students come, and who works to welcome that culture into the class for learning.