Differentiated Instruction for Ell Students

Differentiated Instruction for ELL Students

June 27, 2011

EDU675WK5 Research

Maureen Lienau

Differentiated Instruction for ELL Students

"Differentiating instruction stresses the need for instruction to meet the needs of each child as opposed to expecting children to adapt to the instruction" (Morris, 2009).Meeting the needs of an ever growing and diverse student population is an on-going and complicated challenge. Differentiated instruction developed as a way to meet the needs of gifted and talented students, special education students, and those with different sociocultural backgrounds. Differentiated instruction helps to designate various instructional strategies that can be used with English language learners (ELLs) to make teaching comprehensible and learning more successful.

English-language-learners (ELL) are one of the fastest growing populations in public education today. These learners, particularly Hispanic children, are at high risk for falling behind and/or dropping out (Roekel, 2008). Many times this group of learners is classified as problematic or special education learners. In order for schools and district to make a progress with this group they need to implement differentiated instruction. According to the Urban Institute, two-thirds of ELL students nationally come from low-income families (Roekel, 2008).. This means families do not have the funds to give their child the tools that they need for their education. For example they may not have enough money to buy a computer or to pay for internet services every month. A student that does not perform according to the state achievement test can affect their school as well as the school district. This is why it is crucial to meet the student's needs through differentiated instruction; this is not only for the success of the student, but for the success of the classroom, the school and the district.

The design and development of differentiated instruction as a model began in the general education classroom. When a classroom becomes more diverse, differentiated instruction is applied at all levels for students of all abilities (Hall, Strangman, Meyer, 2011). It is also essential for the staff to work together to gather ideas. Teachers need to consider every student as an individual. Children come from different backgrounds, with varied life experiences, and often with very different educational needs. Tomlinson states that differentiating instruction means providing an environment where students have multiple options for taking in information, making sense of ideas, and expressing what they learned (Tomlinson, 2001).

According to the designers of differentiated instruction view the alignment of tasks with instructional goals and objectives as essential. Goals are most frequently assessed by many state-level, high-stakes tests and frequently administered standardized measures. Objectives are frequently written in incremental steps resulting in a continuum of skills-building tasks (Hall, Strangman, Meyer, 2011). The goal of the teacher is coming to understand more and more about that learning position so that learning matches learner need (Engle, ny). The teachers needs to find the area of learning that cause the students to struggle; in this case the teachers will know that the ELL students are struggling due to their poor language English speaking skills, this will help them to target the instructional goals and objectives to help their students be successful and as proficient as possible.

Differentiated instruction help develop individualized learning goals, define curricular content, structure learning activities, and conduct varied assessment that allow student to choose to achieve the goals (Thousand, Villa, & Nevin, 2007). Differentiated instruction should not be taken as a way to make instruction easier or harder for an individual student; it must be proactive and focused. The plan is to find ways to learn as well as to express learning so that the learning matches learner needs (Tomlinson, 2001). It should be a plan to reach the goals and the objectives of what the student needs to learn. ELL student differ in a variety of ways including oral English proficiency, literacy ability in both their own language and English, not only do our teachers have to teach grade level content standards, but they may also have to find ways to support language learning in the four domains of listening , reading and writing in their classroom (Lucas, 2006). According to Joyce and Shower's extensive research and experience in professional development they suggested that schools should look carefully at the intended outcomes of development programmers in the context of their own goals, problems and priorities (National College for School Leadership, 2003).

In the plan of action the staff should improve their ability to integrate technology into the curriculum and use it as a tool for learning. Technology as well as the teacher can help student improve their writing, reading comprehension and decoding skills in all areas of the curriculum. In order to optimize the education of our ELL students, teachers must effectively manage the complexity of skill, content, and English language development instruction as well as find ways to make this instruction accessible for these students (Lucas, 2006). ELL students should be given the opportunity in a classroom to participate, they can be encouraged to hear and respond in English, because classroom interaction is essential for their education. Students should also be given choices as to how they will engage in classroom activities. Giving students choices about materials, activities and assessments gives students a sense of empowerment and naturally increases students' motivation and engagement. Choices support differentiation in that they enable students to make selections about what mode to use for a task (visual, kinesthetic, or auditory) or what multiple intelligence preference to utilize in a given activity (musical, linguistic, etc.) (Dahlman, Hoffman, Brauhn, ny).

Teaching ELL students in a regular classroom can be overwhelming and a challenge when teachers don't prepare ahead for differentiated instruction. First teachers need to be familiar with the student's academic level this will help them to see what they can expect from them; they can see what the student is capable of doing in class. In order to do this teacher may have meeting with other teachers from pass grades or with other teachers that work directly with the ELL student. Teachers need to remember that