TEACHING ENGLISH AS AN ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE

As the student population in International Schools includes an increasing number of English Language Learners it is becoming ever more critical that every teacher be an English teacher. As a former French Immersion student, I can empathize with my students who are working to learn both a language and course content at the same time.  

By using a variety of language scaffolds and providing regular feedback to my students I can help them to improve both their Science and English skills. Working closely with EAL teachers in a co-planning model is, in my opinion, the best way to ensure success for English Language Learners. I have included a short video below about this process in my AP Environmental Science class. 

In the video, my EAL co-teacher and I discuss how we plan, facilitate and assessed a series of Socratic Seminars about Soil Conservation and Mining in my AP Environmental Science class. All of the students in this course were native Chinese speakers and English Language Learners at various levels.