Final review

A high school history teacher wants her class of advanced EL students to deepen their understanding of historical events. She creates social media profiles with the names of the historical figures as the usernames. She gives students the following assignment:

• In your group, writing in the character of the historical figure you choose, compose a social media post and share it with an appropriate recipient from our list of historical figures.

• Your post must address an issue that would have been significant to your historical figure.

• Respond to each other’s posts.

• Maintain the character of your historical figure throughout.

What is the primary rationale behind this instructional strategy?

• Writing in the character of a specific historical figure will stimulate students' critical thinking and enhance communicative competence

• Integrating technology through this assignment will stimulate students' critical thinking and enhance communicative competence

• By focusing on a single historical figure, the volume of information that students need to process will be significantly reduced

• The social media posts will provide an opportunity for the teacher to check the student’s writing for accuracy in language use

An elementary teacher has a class of beginning EL students. During oral reading times, the teacher notices that the students are using many L1 phonemes in pronouncing L2 words. The most effective strategy in helping students use their L1 phonological knowledge in producing L2 strings would be for the teacher to

• correct the students each time they mispronounce a word during oral reading.

• Discourage students from using L1 phonemes when pronouncing L2 words
• make a list of all the words the students mispronounced during reading time and give them a spelling test on this list.

• have students read along silently as she plays an audio recording of a short book they are familiar with. She plays the recording once more, with the students reading along chorally.

Which of the following describes a beginning EL?

• Students have little or no ability to understand and use English. They may know a little English but not enough to function meaningfully in social or academic settings.

• These students have some ability to understand and use English. They can function in social and academic settings as long as the tasks require them to understand and use simple language structures and high-frequency vocabulary in routine contexts.

• Students are able to engage in grade-appropriate academic instruction in English, although ongoing secondlanguage acquisition support is needed to help them understand and use grade-appropriate language. These students function beyond the level of simple, routinely used English.

• These students have attained the command of English that enables them, with minimal second-language acquisition support, to engage in regular, all-English academic instruction at their grade level.

A middle school social studies teacher has a sheltered class made up of beginning and intermediate EL students. To introduce a lesson on different terrains in the United States, he shows slides of deserts, woods, lakes, mountain ranges, river valleys, farmland, mountain valleys, and so on in various parts of the United States. As he shows each scene, he asks students to brainstorm about words suggested by each scene (for example, farmland might elicit words such as rows, neat, planning, harvest, and so on) and writes the list on the board. Then he asks for student volunteers to describe each scene orally in a few sentences. This activity primarily supports which of the following EL instructional goals?

• Students learn new vocabulary by connecting images to word lists.

• Students demonstrate comprehension of important content – area knowledge.

• Students gain new knowledge through activities that develop language and content concepts in a meaningful context.

• Students practice oral language in a low- stress class activity.

An elementary school teacher wants his beginning ESL class to participate meaningfully in an upcoming science unit on insects. A teaching activity that would be an effective introductory strategy for this science unit would be for the teacher to:

• put a plastic model of insects around the room and have each student pick an insect and draw on it on 3X5 card and on the back, write three words that describe that insect.

• show a film on common insects and then ask students to talk about which part they liked the best.

• conduct a short lecture on misconceptions about insects.

• arrange the students in a circle and have each student complete the following sentence orally: “I think insects are scary because…”

Which of the following is the best strategy to help ELs when having phonetic struggles?

• Modeling think-aloud strategies during guided reading.

• Focusing on context clues and word structure analysis during read-alouds

• Integrating activities with high-frequency words into learning centers.

• Presenting small group lessons on digraphs, consonant blends, and vowel sounds.

Differentiated instruction is NOT _____________.

• individualized instruction

• student-centered

• rooted in assessment

• more qualitative than quantitative

There are times in all classrooms when whole-class instruction is an effective and efficient choice.

• True

• False

All of the following factors have been found to shape a student's learning profile EXCEPT _________.

• gender

• culture

• socio-economic status

• intelligence preferences

Matching the complexity of a task, materials, and support to a student's current level of knowledge, understanding, and skill refers to differentiating the process according to _______________.

• readiness and interest

• readiness

• learning profile

• interest