Paulina Araya has been teaching for four years with two years in Queens (D.O.E). She is currently in her second year in Suffolk County, Long Island. Ms. Araya taught ELLS during Summer School in Queens for two years in a row and absolutely fell in love with the ENL population so she decided to pursue her career in TESOL. Plus, her husband along with her parents are former ELLS. She is at my second to last semester at Touro, currently taking an online course along with a Monday night class and next semester all that remains is the Practicum. She is excited and can’t wait to graduate in June 2019.
At my school district, the most common textbook used for ELLS is called EDGE Reading, Writing and Language. EDGE consists of 7 Units. Each unit has an Essential Question that follows a Genre Focus, a Focus Strategy and implications for Grammar and Writing.
http://latinoamerica.cengage.com/ngl/edge/
Unit 1: reflects on What influences How you Act? Genre Focus: Short stories, character, plot and setting. Focus strategy: Plan and Monitor the grammar and vocabulary, sentences, subjects and predicates, Subject-verb agreement and personal narrative for writing. Unit 2: focuses on How do families affect us? Genre focus is Nonfiction: Author’s purpose. Ask Questions for Focus Strategies and for Grammar Subject pronouns, Present tense verbs, and subject-verb agreement. For students writing the focus is news articles.
Unit 3: Do we find or Create Our True Selves? Short stories: Narrator’s Point of view for Genre Focus, for Focus strategy: make inferences Grammar: Present, Past, and future tense, subject and object pronouns and for writing short stories.
Unit 4: How much should people help each other? Genre Focus is Nonfiction: Text structure and features. Focus Strategy is to determine the importance of structure. Grammar: possessive words, prepositions, and pronoun agreement. For their writing students will write a problem solution essay.
Unit 5: Do people get what they deserve? Genre focus, Short stories: Theme for Focus Strategy Make connections, Grammar adjectives, and adverbs. Writing is the description of a process.
Unit 6: What rights and responsibilities should teens have? The Genre Focus is Nonfiction, Structure of Arguments. Focus strategy is synthesizing information. Grammar focuses on indefinite pronouns, word order in sentences and compound sentences. The writing assignment is a Persuasive Essay.
Unit 7: What do you do to Make an Impression? Genre focus is Drama and Poetry, focus strategy is visualizing. Grammar aspect is compound and complex sentences, present perfect tense. The writing assignment is a literary analysis.
All seven units are common core structured and are preparing students to focus on specific strategies for the ELLS to pass the English Regents. There’re multitudes of visuals, graphic organizers, sentences starters, rough draft instructions for essays, key vocabulary review, critical thinking questions, and short stories that relate to ELLS. There is also a website https://www.myngconnect.com that helps students facilitate their learning while at home or out of the classroom.
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