Do you have students who speak marginal or maybe no English in your classes? I do. In California I was very used to having Spanish speakers in my classroom and my Spanish is okay enough to communicate with them (and their parents), but this year in addition to my Spanish speakers I have an Afghan refugee and an African refugee who speaks Kirundi and a little French. It breaks my heart when I can’t communicate with these students and make me so guilty when I know I’m not giving them the education they deserve.
I wish I could take credit for this idea of how to integrate Personalize Learning with ELL students, but I can’t. In fact it came from a student who was using his tools to help himself learn. Once I got google classroom synced with Khan academy and students were logged in to complete assignments, I walked by my Afghani student to see that he also had google translate open in another window to translate the prompts into Farsi. Genius! Although I know it will take him much longer to complete the assignments, that’s fine. He is advocating for himself and I can tell he’s feeling accomplished. Not to mention less prep time for me!
I encourage you to show your ELL’s how to use online learning and google translate to aid in their understanding as well!
