Teaching Multilingual Children by Virginia Collier

I wanted to talk about Colliers article mainly because I am now seeing and dealing with issues that she brings up.  The article starts off by say how it is difficult to try and teach kids that do not speak english enough english so that they are able to comprehend and succeed in their class.  This is very difficult to do especially if you don't speak their langue. Right now the second grade class that I have been helping out in five of the kids do not speak a word of english, and as for the teacher she is slowly learning how to speak spanish to try and communicate with them. So now she has less then a year to try and understand spanish, and then try to get the kids to learn english.  I did not realize how difficult it was going to be to teach these kids that did not speak english until she had me work with three of the kids.
I do not know how to speak spanish and having to try and work with these kids I felt over whelmed.  They could not understand what i was saying and tried to ask me questions in spanish but I could not understand them.  After trying to use blocks and drawing pictures to get them to understand the kids became restless and gave up all together. Luckily the teacher brought the kids back into the big group shortly after.
The article then goes on to talk about seven guidelines in teaching kids english as a second language.  One of the guidelines to use is "to not teach a second language in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the first language." I strongly believe that this is very true mainly because a teacher should not try and get rid of a persons culture or language but to simply just help the student into understanding how to succeed and learn the most affective way.


Reading this article to me seems like it is going to be a big help not only to me but to other people in the class that have to work with kids that do not speak english.  the next time I go to work with my second grade students I will use some of the guidelines that Collier talked about to see if it helps with working with these kids. Who knows maybe I will even be able to get these kids to help me learn spanish this way I can help them out even more by being able to talk to them in their first language.