ELL Tutoring

At the SERVES conference for AmeriCorps I had the opportunity to take a workshop on working with ELL students who are in mainstream classrooms.  It was an eye-opening workshop that helped me to recognize that students take between four to seven years in school to reach grade level performance.  Most students do not stay in the ELL classroom for all those years.  This helps me understand why students may still struggle after years of being in English speaking classrooms.  One suggestion I have for working with students is to make sure they understand their homework both in English and their native tongue.  Sometimes students will be able to read a question and understand the words, but the ideas are lost because they focus on understanding the language.  Being truly bilingual is a gift, and students need to continue to develop their reading, writing, and communication skills in both languages so that their bilingualism will be an asset to them in the future.