By Arla Jones and Kimberley Kreicker, Ph.D.
South Middle School in Lawrence, Kansas has a diverse ESOL population comprising approximately 12% of the student body. South has both long-term ELs and relative newcomers, mostly of Spanish, Laotian, and Arabic language backgrounds. We are the two full-time ESOL professionals on staff.
With the middle school model, ESOL is an ungraded subject, and is scheduled as “guided studies” for one 43-minute teaching period every other day. The students are placed in ESOL by grade level – rather than English proficiency level – so ESOL classes usually include absolute beginners along with highly proficient students. Managing the diverse needs of each student in any given class period can be quite a challenge.
For the past few years, Lawrence Public Schools has offered teachers several unique technology-based opportunities. In 2014, we applied for the district’s Blending Learning initiative. We hoped to improve our classroom’s ability to meet the needs of each student by differentiating through blending. We are now in Year Two of implementation. Here are a few of the lessons we have learned as we have gone through this process:
- Blended learning is a brilliant way to manage a diverse classroom, and to truly differentiate for each and every student.
- Lessons and activities can be computer-based for some students, creating time for the teacher to work individually or in small groups with others.
- Programs such as Don Johnston’s Co:Writer and Snap-and-Read – and the Google extension Voice Recognition – really do help English learners to become more independent writers. Imagination Station (Istation) is a revelation for improving literacy.
Our classroom looks and feels quite different since we started blending. Rather than having one core lesson and trying to adapt it to the proficiency levels of every student in the room, we now have a unit of study that we are working through, as well as a substantial number of online activities that students can do at any time. We also allow students to request our help with work for their core and elective classes. So, at any hour on any given day, you might see one student working on a poster for a core class; two or three students working on our unit of study either with a teacher or on a device; another student listening to/reading a young adult novel; and perhaps one or two more working through I-station, completing a math assignment, or whatever else it is that they need to do. Our students do not have complete choice about what they do in the ESOL classroom, but it is fair to say that they have guided choice. We guide them toward the options that we believe will help them the most on that particular day.
We love our blended classroom. The atmosphere is very relaxed. The students feel confident that they can get the help they need when they need it because we are so much more available to them than we were in our more traditional setting. Since the class is ungraded, we are able to read for the sake of reading, and write for the sake of writing. We believe this makes our students feel more comfortable with seeking help from their teachers and from each other.
Blending does bring some challenges to consider. Getting started is extremely time-consuming and somewhat disorienting. Relief came when we found that we could work and plan alongside the students. We also found that the students can help to build the online lessons, as part of their own learning process. As an example, rather than generating our own list of vocabulary for the students to learn, students share the vocabulary that they are trying to learn for core classes. They work together to create a Quizlet of images and definitions that all of our students can use. The students are significantly more engaged because they are choosing what they will work on, and they know that what they are working on will be useful to them again, perhaps even later that very same day.
We have been extremely pleased with the results of bringing blending into our ESOL setting. There have been frustrations and setbacks, to be sure. When the internet doesn’t work, when the apps won’t load, or when the students forget their passwords, it can be very tempting to run screaming from the room! We have learned to take a breath and – honestly – let the students sort it out. Through that experience, we feel that our ESOL students have become more independent as learners and are taking more responsibility for their own learning. As their perseverance has grown, so has ours…and we find that it is great fun for us all to learn alongside each other.
Arla Jones is from far western Kansas and attended Washburn University, Kansas University and the University of Denver. She started her professional life as a librarian at the New York Public Library more than 30 years years ago. She also taught in the New York Public Schools and at The Ethical Culture-Fieldston School. She moved back to Kansas in 1994, where she was the Youth Services Coordinator for the Johnson County Library. Arla became the librarian at Lawrence High School in 1997 and then later became an ESOL teacher. She transferred to South Middle School in 2013 to become a member of the SMS ESOL program with her partner, Dr. Kimberley Kreicker.
Dr. Kimberley Kreicker is an ESOL Instructor and Coordinator at South Middle School in Lawrence, Kansas. Kim has worked in most every aspect of ESOL education, from the state and federal level, to the K-12 level in Kansas and New York, to teaching the ESOL endorsement courses at a number of universities in our area. Despite a strong preference for being at the beach, Kim lives happily in Lawrence with her partner of 25 years, librarian and ESOL teacher Arla Jones.
