Virginia Rojas has moved beyond "the bilingual wars"—those sometimes bitter debates about how to best meet the needs of English language learners in the mainstream classroom: Should English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students be allowed to access content in their first language—or should English be the predominant language of the lesson? Should ESL students be pulled out of the general classroom—or should ESL teachers "push in" and coteach?
Virginia Rojas
Rojas, a language education specialist who has taught ESL at every grade level, has a definite opinion on the matter: "ESL students should be allowed to use their own language to learn English." But she thinks the focus today needs to be on good teaching. Regardless of ideology, "if we all focus on instruction, we can help all kids get to where they need to be," she asserted.
Different but Equal Roles
Rojas supports a coteaching approach that is standards-based and differentiated. In her model, the content teacher and ESL teacher work together to plan an ESL combined lesson. The content teacher identifies the standard on which the lesson is based and the key concepts being developed. The ESL teacher then matches that standard to the benchmarks and skills addressed in The ESL Standards for PreK–12 Students, published by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.
For example, one 6th grade language arts standard is "writes biographical sketches." To meet this standard, students must be able to use descriptive language. "I'm an ESL teacher. What do I know students will need in order to meet that standard?" asked Rojas. "Adjectives and adverbs. Students will also need to know how to tell about a person's life—that's past and present verbs."
Once key concepts and skills of the content standard have been identified, the ESL teacher reviews the 75 benchmarks included in the ESL standards and picks out the five or six most salient skills. For “writes biographical sketches,” Rojas identified at least four corresponding ESL benchmarks:
- Applies basic reading skills to gather information.
- Takes notes to record information. "Sixth graders in general need to know that," said Rojas. "Sixth graders know how to read, but they don't know how to read for specific information."
- Retells information in written form.
- Produces text features. When writing a biography, there are specific things that have to be part of the text, Rojas noted. "You can't say things about someone without giving supporting details." She added that providing supporting details is a "very English rhetorical style" that isn't emphasized in many other languages. So this "is a very important skill for ESL kids to focus on."
Differentiation comes when the content teacher and ESL teacher work together to determine what assessments could be used to gauge students' understanding of the lesson. For this standard, for example, students could create a time line, write a children's book, create a diorama, or design a magazine page. The more proficient a student is in using the English language, the more complex the project should be. "For me, this is differentiating instruction. This is exactly what [all teachers] need to be doing," Rojas stated.
The Cooperative Classroom
Teachers also need to incorporate at least two reading strategies in their lessons if all students are to fully immerse themselves in the content, Rojas asserted. "And none of these strategies have students working alone."
Cooperative learning is the backbone of any effective ESL combined lesson and of effective reading instruction, she suggested. "The more you have kids reading together, the more they will understand that reading is a social behavior, because they get to talk about what they're reading with someone else."
Rojas recommended that teachers always use one or two cooperative learning techniques in any given lesson so that ESL students—indeed, all students—"will be given opportunities to speak and participate" in the classroom.