Teaching English language learners is a common practice in Arizona where I teach.

We have a very diverse community, including many students of Hispanic heritage. In light of this, it is necessary to implement a variety of strategies to engage students in meaningful learning, and to ensure comprehension. In EDU 220: Foundations of Approaches to Serving English Language Learners, we identified and implemented theories and strategies proven in Structured English Immersion and English Language Learners programs in the United States. As part of this process, we chose an effective strategy and taught our peers about it, also involving them in a demonstrative activity. This PowerPoint, Using Manipulatives with ELLs, was co-developed with a partner based on information from the course text book, Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners, Third Edition by Adrienne L. Herrell, and Michael Jordan. We developed the slide show to introduce the benefits of using manipulatives, and to identify the proper steps to effectively integrate their use into learning. The lesson continued with an activity which allowed our peers to practice the method as students in an elementary setting. I found that the process of learning about this strategy has helped to inform my own teaching practices. Manipulatives can easily be misused if not integrated properly, negating their benefits, and creating loss of learning time. Through this process, I was able to clearly identify 5 steps in the use of manipulatives (see slide 5), in which learning objectives are chosen first, and manipulatives are used as a tool to achieve the learning goal, rather than letting them become toys for students. By providing guided practice, students are able to properly use them as tools to investigate concepts and engage in meaningful learning. As I move out of the elementary classroom, and into a 6th grade English Language Arts setting, I need to find new ways to adapt manipulatives for the benefit of my students. I had previously used manipulatives mostly with math content. Examples of their use in my classroom for language arts have included using pictures to identify vocabulary words, a Boggle board that was changed weekly, which students used to create words with, and sentence strips from texts used to recreate the story sequence. My use of manipulatives in math and science was far greater. A professional development goal I would like to achieve is to learn more about, and implement more use of manipulatives in my ELA classroom. This will significantly impact English Language Learner success in my classroom.