Graduate Immersion English Learners Course

Course: Methods of Structured English Immersion for Secondary Education
Directions: Answer each discussion in 150 words each and each response in 100 words. Must use APA style formatting and in-text citations for discussion questions. This is due within 30 hours.
Discussion 1 : Effective teachers do more than just go through the motions of writing their lesson content and language objectives on the board. Getting the students involved in thinking about the objectives is important. How would you get students involved in learning the lesson content and language objectives? Provide at least two ideas.
Response 1(Christoper) :
My efforts to motivate students are aimed at things that students can relate to. I try to find ways to motivate that are not based upon rewards or punishments. I find that tailoring lesson content to meet the interests and hobbies of students is a very good way to get them engaged in what we are learning. Sometimes adjusting the content or at least relating it to something they understand helps to get them working toward the learning objective. Getting to know your students is the key to building a relevant curriculum that students can identify with (Strategies for Motivating Students, 2020). I also find that modeling the behavior expected of students helps build engagement and interest in what you are doing as a learning activity: If the teacher is engaged and excited, students are more likely to become engaged and excited in the learning process. Conversely, if the teacher doesn’t really seem to care or is not really into the material, students pick up on that and the lesson really never gets off the ground. Providing positive, relevant, and timely feedback is another element to the learning process that plays into student motivation: Students need to get that feedback regularly, and it should be positive so that they feel encouraged to continue learning and to dive deeper into the content (Strategies for Motivating Students, 2020).
Response 2 (Amanda):
Hello,
“What’s lesson one for teachers who want students to successfully grasp, retain, and apply new material? First…you need to recruit their interest. And that means finding ways to make learning “relevant, authentic, and valuable” in students’ lives” (Brookes Publishing, 2018, para. 1).
When planning lessons and language objectives, it is important to find ways to make it meaningful, relate it to something that have an interest in or have some prior knowledge of. This can be done by using culturally relevant materials, use examples from everyday life, or find ways to link it to a routine in their life or in class (Brookes Publishing, 2018). Another way to try and elicit student involvement is to give the students choice (Brookes Publishing, 2018). Providing choice could look like allowing them to work in groups, pairs, or on their own, or it could be that you offer tiered versions of the same activity that they can choose from (Brookes Publishing, 2018). One last way to provide choice to your students is for each topic create a homework menu with a variety of choices for them to choose from (Brookes Publishing, 2018). All of these are ways that when integrated can help to elicit students interest enough to get them to interact in class.
But how do you get students to be active participants in language objectives? This one is a bit trickier, but making the instructions and directions verbal and visual is a good first step (Gonzalez, 2014). Using modeling and images to help demonstrate more difficult concepts in addition to the verbal and written instructions (Gonzalez, 2014). Language learning can be difficult and intimidating so building in group work can help allow the students to practice their skills in a more personal and lower risk setting (Gonzalez, 2014).
All of these strategies are simple ways to try to engage the learner, but the most important strategy here is getting to your students needs and interests. You cannot hope to inspire engagement and interaction is you do not take the time to get to know them.

Discussion 2: With any type of new learning, students need practice and application of newly acquired skills to ensure mastery of content concepts. Describe two hands-on activities and identify materials, including manipulatives, to enable students to forge connections between abstract concepts and concrete concepts in a less language-dependent way.
Response Amanda wrote:
Hello Class,
“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand–Chinese proverb attributed to Confucius” (Herrmann, 2014, para. 1).
This quote really captures various aspects of learning, but the most important part is how it states “involve me and I will understand.” When it comes to helping students master concepts, they need more than a lecture, more than modeling, they need hands on experiences. The more you are able to use hand-on experiences in the classroom the better able you are to provide students with a rounded education. Some of the ways that are easy to implement when teaching vocabulary, sentence writing, and organizing the ideas are word cards, sentence strips, and graphic organizers (Herrmann, 2014). Depending on the level of your students understanding, word card can have either an image that they match to definition or description or a word that they have to match to a definition or description (Herrmann, 2014). Sentence strips are used to help students physically move the correct word into the blank and to act as a sort of puzzle (Herrmann, 2014). And lastly there is the use of a graphic organizer, but this is not used in the traditional sense of paper to pen. In this particular version, students use two hula hoops to make a Venn Diagram on the floor or desks and use word cards, picture cards, or physically objects to show similarities and differences between two ideas or subjects (Herrmann, 2014).
Those are just three ways that can be used to involve students into the learning process. There are so many more out there that we can learn to use or modify for our classes needs. You can use art, music, and even play find a friend (Herrmann, 2014). The important part of all of this is to be aware that students, especially language learners, need all parts of learning-seeing, hearing, speaking, and acting-to truly start to grasp everything we toss at them.