week 9

I felt that the problem posing approach to learning is a great way for students to be able to come to their own conclusions and own the language.  The students feel is if they need to communicate and therefore they learn and enjoy learning a lot more.  They connect with the material because problem posing questions and strategies allow students time to think and time to create opinions about the material, making them learn much more in the short period of time.  I enjoyed this reading because I felt that I received a lot of insight on how to teach ELL classrooms that are tested in a high stakes testing criteria.  The chapter gave advice on how to teach students that will be tested.  It suggested being aware of what is on the test.  I think this is incredibly important because you can steer conversations to include testing materials without forcing the class to follow an unbending schedule.  Wong states in chapter 3 that these materials will spontaneously arise.  I disagree with this slightly.  I felt that if you need the students to learn the test materials, teachers might have to work these materials in by looking for opportunities, not by hoping they spontaneously arise.  Another strategy was to teach beyond the test.  Although this is a great idea, I feel that this might be quite a lofty goal for an ELL class.  It's a great idea on paper...teach more than the test requires, but I can't see myself cramming materials in the class so that they know way more than the testing materials.  I want my students to have a firm grasp on all of the material, not force more than they can handle.  I guess this depends on the level of the class and how quickly they learn the material.  Some classes may get further than others.  The last strategy was to pose the test as a problem.  I think this is problematic in some cases.  Wong talks about showing the statistics to the students as a motivator.  However, I think that showing ELL students the fail rates of the test might become a stressor or a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I know that if I were a student, trying to learn a new language, I wouldn't want to hear about the probability of me not passing the test.  That would stress me out and, as we know, a high affective filter doesn't allow for much learning.