Entry 4: Reflection

After this class, I feel like I have a better understanding and respect for language acquisition and second language learners. From taking this class, I have been able to make connections between what we have been learning and what I am seeing in the classroom.

            From taking this class, I think it will make me be more successful as a teacher and it will allow me to be more patient and understanding of ELL students. Right now, I have a whole ELL class. Just by being in that classroom, I feel like I have had the opportunity to see what it is like and what I can do to make sure second language learners are accomplishing what they need to accomplish in the classroom. I feel like from the text and being in the classroom I have seen many ways to help motivate my students to learn and to alter lessons if needed in my classroom.

            I think that all of the topics that we learned in this class need to receive the same amount of attention. Everything that we learned about in this course go together and I feel like none of the topics should receive less attention. All of the topics we covered in this course give an explanation and information about second language acquisition.

             I think the vlogs that we did helped out a lot in the learning process. The reason I think they helped is because to come up with the questions I had to read the readings assigned to us, so it helped me to be responsible in my own learning. The comments and interactions with my classmates also helped a lot because my classmates always came up with points that maybe I had missed or did not think about. I also think that because we had to include citations and text evidence it helped me to keep up with the reading which helped. The comments and interactions also helped me see points that I wanted to research more about or helped me notice more in my ELL classroom for student teaching. A lot of times in the interactions, my classmates would include examples from their student teaching classrooms which I liked because I was able to relate by seeing some of the same things in my own classroom.

            Overall, I think I learned a lot about second language acquisition. A lot of stuff I learned in this class I feel like I may have heard about or learned about in previous classes, but it was never as in depth like it is in this class. I think this class is a great class since there will always be children from different backgrounds in our classrooms. It is good to know about ELLs and the best way to teach them. From taking this class, I feel a lot more confident in teaching ELL students and being able to differentiate my teaching to better teach students who may be ELL learners. I hope second language methodology is as informational as this class.