Reflection 10

This week was my last week at North Central. Upon arriving, I found Sun again looking for some help with another speech. This time, he was working on a debate, the topic of which was minors being tried as adults in murder cases. He told me he had to argue against this situation and that he was in a group of five other students all collaborating on the SMELF protocol. I looked at the instruction sheet which said the debate would last between 20 and 30 minutes total. The instructions also included a sample of the sheet the teacher wanted the students to fill out for their sections of the debate. Sun, who had the ‘S’ of SMELF meaning safety, had a sheet broken into two repeated sections for argument, explanation, evidence, and related value. The directions modeled what the teacher expected these filled out sections to look like, as well as little instructions for what was to fill each section. 

Asking Sun where he wanted to start, he said we should go over to the computers to look up evidence to support his argument. He had not outlined his two arguments yet, so we headed over to the computer dock to do some initial research on the topic of minors being charged like adults in murder cases. Fortunately for us, the internet provided plenty of information on this topic, and Sun easily identified an argument he could use for safety. Our next step was to collect evidence. This reminded me a little of my experience with Ahmeir and Muhammad last week and their predicament of copying and pasting. However, Sun could not do this because the teacher required him to write down his evidence on a separate page. I think this practice was useful because it required Sun to think more critically about the words he was writing and if he did not understand something (which did happen in a few cases) he either asked, or looked up the word.

As we created the two arguments and filled in the sections with the explanation, evidences, and the related value of the argument, I began to consider the challenges of a debate in a second language. I began to think about how long Sun’s response time was when he and I were talking. His response time was medium at best fairly typical for and ENL (Leving and McCloskey and Hill and Flynn). and when I asked him how many other students were second language learners in the class, he replied there were none other than him. This made me a little concerned. Debates often require people to think on their feet in formulating critical responses. I was not sure this would be easy for Sun because he would have the additional constraint of being an ESL student. Although he understood the material, he would have to be able to use the correct language to deliver a piercing argument to his opponent and then combat their counterpoints.

It is my opinion that debates are an underutilized tool in science classrooms. In such a controversial subject area, there is substantial room for holding debates on almost any topic, and the practice of debating shows significant knowledge of being able to synthesize material. I know I would like to incorporate debates into some of my unit end assessments in the future. But after working with Sun, I can see how this practice could present particular problems for ENL students requiring special supports.

I wondered if Sun’s speech teacher would recognize the need for these supports for Sun and how she would provide them. Perhaps a majority of the modifications would occur in amending the structure of the debate to allow for longer time to formulate responses. She could also allow the ENL students to ask questions relating to vocabulary use if they needed, or have materials to take notes during the other speakers portions.

I think my largest take away point in my work at North Central has been to look more critically at what I am asking ENL students (and therefore all students) to do in assignments, and to take an appropriate amount of time planning my lessons for all students. We have discussed in many classes at Butler the importance of planning lessons, and that this is often an area which is overlooked by teacher who are too bogged down in grading, testing, and delivering lessons. I know it will take substantial amounts of time to plan the demanding and complex lessons I will want in my classroom, especially if they are as centered in student focus as I hope, but I have no doubt this level of effort will be worthwhile in pursuing!

References

Flynn, Kathleen M., and Jane D. Hill. “The Stages of Second Language Acquisition.” Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners. Alexandria: ASCD, 2006. 14-21. Print.

Levine, Linda N., and Mary L. McCloskey. “Language Acquisition and Language Learning in the Classroom.” Teaching Learners of English in Mainstream Classrooms (K-8): One Class, Many Paths. New York: Pearson, 2008. 1-25. Print.

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