A hindrance to many English language learners is that classroom teachers teach less challenging material compared to their monolingual peers. Classroom teachers may believe that their ELL students do not have enough language proficiency to grasp the content being taught. Often times though, ELL students do in fact have enough English proficiency to understand the same content as their peers.
In my own experience, I have observed ESL students not being pushed enough with their learning by not only classroom teachers, but by ESL teachers as well. For example, kindergartners will learn their letter names and sounds throughout the entire school year instead of moving on to digraphs and magic/silent “e” words. This occurred even when the students mastered all of their letter names and sounds.
I have been told by ESL teachers that their students were not progressing because they are English language learners! This was not the case! In my opinion, the ESL students in her class were not being pushed enough. In other words, there lacked a zone of proximal development(ZPD) among the students. ZPD is the difference between what a student can achieve independently and what the student can achieve with help. “Proximal” means skills that the learner is “close” to mastering on their own, but cannot master at that point in time. Therefore, the teacher uses scaffolding, which is support that builds on a student’s existing knowledge in order for the student to accomplish the slightly more difficult task being presented. Scaffolding helps the student achieve the skills or tasks that they could not have achieved on their own. Scaffolding only works within a student’s ZPD. This means that the teacher should not stretch the student’s knowledge and abilities too far from what the student currently knows. Scaffolding is effective when the teacher slightly stretches their student’s knowledge and abilities (working within the students’ ZPD) by building on the students’ prior knowledge and by having high expectations of their ELL students. Support is gradually removed as the ESL student is able to complete the task on their own.
As an ELL teacher or classroom teacher who has ELL students, have high expectations for your ESL students! I have often observed that ESL students know much more than they let on! Assess your ELL students, so you are aware of their current knowledge and skills. Share your assessments with the ELL teacher or the classroom teacher. This way, you both know when and how to expand your ELL students’ learning.