Laila Taylor

ITEC Portfolio Artifact Reflection

Standard 4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness:

Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse
student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness.
1. Briefly describe the artifact and the context in which it was created. What was/were
your individual contribution(s)?
I created this artifact, ELL Lesson, for ITEC 7430 as part of my field experience. I
developed a plan to work with one of my English Language Learner student over a unit
that we were about to cover in class. Since academic language is a harder concept for
students to learn and I wanted to provide some background knowledge for him and to
make him feel more confident in class. The plan lasted for a two week time period.

2. Explain how this artifact demonstrates mastery of the standard/element under which it
is placed.
This artifact meets Standard 4.3 because it addresses using digital tools and resources to
support the needs of diverse learners. The lesson that I taught was over Ecosystems and
Habitats. My student that I worked with has only been in the United States since this
October, and for the most part is still in a silent period. The objectives that I had for my
student are as follows: understand the definitions of ecosystem, habitat, community, and
biome, as well as organisms that can make up each level. Instructional supports: look at
pictures of each level, have flashcards of the level with the Spanish translation, have the
student match the picture with the word, have the student draw and label a complete
ecosystem.
In order to help my student feel more comfortable and welcome in class I wanted
to pre-teach the vocabulary terms to the student before we covered it in class. Because of
the cultural differences my student would not raise his hand or ask questions during class,
so I talked with him and came up with a plan of him drawing instead of writing the
vocabulary words. The digital tools that worked best to meet the needs of my student in
the ELL module was Talk English app and Spell board app.

Laila Taylor

ITEC Portfolio Artifact Reflection

3. What did you learn from completing this artifact? What would you do differently to
improve the quality of the artifact or the process involved in creating the artifact?
I learned that when testing students who are learning to speak English the teacher cannot
expect the ELL student to test the same way as the English speaking students or each
other for that matter. For example out of the six students that are enrolled in the ESOL
program at my school and in my classes, only one cannot speak English at least proficient
in the BICS area. However, one of my ESOL students has basic communicative skills but
cannot read in English or Spanish at grade level. He is sped as well as ELL, his Lexile is
115. Student R can read in Spanish extremely well and is progressing faster with his
sight words because of his reading ability than my other student. This results in the way I
assess both students differently based on their abilities and needs. Before this module I
was under the assumption that younger children learned a new language faster than adults
or older children. Student R confirmed for me what the Iris Center stated, he has been
able to learn English faster because he already understand the language syntax. I would
incorporate more resources abut language acquisition and academic vocabulary if I
completed this assignment again.

4. How did the work that went into creating the artifact impact school improvement,
faculty development, or student learning? How can the impact be assessed?
As a formative assessment I had Student R draw an Ecosystem and label all of the
vocabulary words that we had covered that entire week. Student R did a fantastic job and
I helped him translate the definitions for each word into Spanish. We laminated his
drawing and hung it in the hallway for his peers to see. Student R was very proud and
our students are so sweet to him they told him good job several times. This experience
was very beneficial for the student and myself. Although the student was able to
understand the content that we were covering at the time and made a C on his vocabulary
test he is still struggling with his academic language and time and repetition will only
improve that. More importantly the experience created a level of trust between him and I
as well as some positive peer feedback for his self-esteem.