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ESL Students and the Standards
Posted:
Jan 12, 2000 12:14 PM
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Our secondary schools, generally those for grades 6-12, are faced with
a series of special needs populations among which are the ESL
students. Ideally those in these programs are recent immigrants who
need special help learning English as they attempt to keep up in the
regular curriculum.
In the past very few materials have been developed specifically for
these students. I'm not talking about math books in Spanish, which
would only slow down English acquisition for these adolescents, but
rather appropriately designed materials that teach the vocabulary, and
the reading and writing skills necessary to understand what is going
on in the math classroom.
We need to see a fusion or an interconnection between the goals of
math teachers and ESL teachers. Nowhere do we address the special
needs of this group of students in connection with mathematics, and we
usually assign the math instruction of ESL students to math teachers
who have been given little training and almost zero support in this
endeavor.
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