Nathan Fukuwa

8th Grade
11/10/2011
Read and Response 5: Chapter 4 Outline
Chapter 4 covers the principles that create quality teaching for English learners.
These principles were fashioned through many observations and reflections from middle
school and high school teaching in this country and many other countries. Principles
provide us constant and explicit strategies for our teaching repertoires.

Principle One: Sustain Academic Rigor

English learners are still capable of learning advanced academic subject matter in
English. No subject should be dumbed down to due to their English learning level. In order
to promote deep disciplinary knowledge, learners must be able to connect across facts
related to core ideas and sway away from factual recall promoted by standardized testing.
English learners must be challenged to combine ideas, synthesize, and compare and
contrast in order to deepen sense of concepts.

Principle Two: Hold High Expectations

Dont treat English learners as incapable of succeeding academically. You must hold
them to the high standards that you hold all of the other students to. Students should not
be held back from academic curiosity and should be encouraged to extend their reach of
learning through diverse classes. Deliberate scaffolding must be set in place to achieve
high expectations.

Principles Three: Engage English Language Learners in Quality Teacher and Student
Interactions
Sustained conversation with students increases their ability to construct meaningful
and rich levels of communication. It also provides students with constructive feedback,
critical thinking, and challenges them to reflect on previous and future goals for learning.
Principle Four: Sustain a Language Focus
Teachers must always remember that English learners will be challenged
cognitively by the material, while coping with language issues in comprehension of
grammar and academic vocabulary. Being able to anticipate the different needs of English
learning students will help scaffold their learning through better lesson development.
Lessons, projects, and assignments should provide meaningful context while addressing
grammar and vocabulary through this context, instead of separating it.
Principle Five: Develop a Quality Curriculum
Textbooks are never a complete curriculum. There are five basic design factors
when developing instructional materials for English learners: 1) Setting long-term goals
and benchmarks, 2) using a problem-based approach with increasingly interrelated
lessons, 3) using a spiraling progression, 4) making connections between how the subject
matter is relevant to the present and future lives of students and their communities, 5)
building on students lives and experiences by drawing from the funds of knowledge that
students and their communities posses. Ultimately, you need to figure out a way to
communicate these elements to the students and they must understand what is expected of
them.