"EL" stands for "English Learner". ELs are students with a limited understanding of English. Some ELs have recently emigrated here, while others have been here all of their lives. Through their coursework, ELs must strive to learn the English language so that they may access higher levels of learning in other classes. Classes like mine.
I teach Biology to ELs, 9th-12th grade. They range widely in their mastery of the English language. While some kids can hold conversations with me, others still know me only as "Teacher", and interact with more gestures than words. These students are expected to learn the same biology course content dictated by the state as other English-speaking students, along with how to speak, read, and write in English. Separately, these objectives can be definite struggles, but put them together and they make for a supreme challenge, and for our current classroom ambitions.
The language barrier may hinder their interaction with the material and with me, but it certainly does not conceal their potential to succeed. On the very first day of school, their assignment was to write me a short letter explaining what their goals in life are. “College” popped up in nearly every kid’s letter, although sometimes misspelled.
I have a lot of ideas that I want to implement in the class to help them acquire the language and learn biology. I’d like to try sentence strips, where key ideas are written on strips of paper and then cut up, so students have to be able to put words together to form sentences so as to acquire the important points of the lesson. In general, I’d also like to make many more visual displays, especially large posters with biology vocabulary and pictures, to hang around the room.
These ideas and others would greatly be assisted with the help of a laminator. A laminator would increase the life of visual displays and vocabulary activities that I am making for my students, which means these resources can then be used again and more often for subsequent reviews, allowing for a greater uptake of both the science and language course content. Laminated materials would also easily survive regular student use in the classroom, and if my kids are going to have a shot at meeting their lofty goals, they will need all the help they can get from interactive visual displays. And from you.
Please consider helping fund this project so I can provide my students with more hands-on activities to help them access and master the language, which they will need to excel as scientists and to express their potential. They deserve nothing less.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. S. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.