Chapter 5 BLOG

As teachers of English learners, we are constantly taught the latest strategies the district wants us to use. SDAIE is what has been talked about lately in my district. What I find interesting about SDAIE is that it uses many of the strategies that we have as part of special education. SDAIE, as well as special education, calls on teachers to address all of the learning modalities, teach in a concrete way, and provide real-world correlations to learning. “SDAIE teachers not only address the content objectives of the discipline they teach but also support students’ academic English by the use of visuals, hangs-on props and manipulatives, and cooperative learning” (Diaz-Rico, p. 136). In addition to teaching based on SDAIE strategies, I am now learning to incorporate a language objective and learning strategy objective with my content objective. All of the objectives are things that I want to see my students do, or accomplish. With ELs, I am trying to figure out what my students’ greatest needs are. This will help me determine what goal I should write; what I should focus on when creating lessons. Is their greatest need listening, reading, speaking, or writing?

There is an interesting BLOG on the Scholastic website, http://blogs.scholastic.com/ell/, that is focused on strategies that are based in SDAIE. It aligns with this chapter in that it helps the teacher to focus on the needs of the EL when designing instruction.


Response to Peers:
Like Jose Tapia, I have heard people talk about SDAIE and the strategies it entails, but I never even knew what the acronym stood for. What I really found interesting about his post is the reference to the book for English and Spanish readers. It is called 500 Words to Grow On. I like that it incorporates illustrations with the words. I also read Melissa Hale’s BLOG for this chapter. She states, “…and to be completely honest, we do not have this in special education.” She is referring to collaboration between EL teachers and content area teachers. This saddens me. While I do not have a specific language teacher, I do have an instructional assistant from language support services that comes to my class daily. She works with a group of my EL level 2 students. It is a tremendous help to have this support. I had to fight for it, but it was totally worth it.