A brilliant idea, possibly?

[He saw some ESL work I was copying for another student, and he seemed to find it interesting. It is definitely age-appropriate, being aimed at the adult immigrant; it has limited vocabulary and structure, which is all to the good. And it occurred to me that the ESL grammar teaching might be just what this guy needs — English especially in its written form is foreign to him. And the patterned form of the exercises, ten or fifteen changing statements into do-does questions, etc., would give him repetition and allow him to work independently.

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?[/quote]

Hi Victoria,

Yes, your idea is a brilliant one and alots of kudos to you for being willing to try different strategies. Then again, based on your responses to various posts, I shouldn’t be surprised.

As an FYI, I have looked at ESL material for my own purposes and many times, thought that perhaps I could find material that was useful. I never devoted enough time to this possibility but it sounds like it definitely might work for your student. What do you have to lose and maybe because your student is the one proposing it will give him the incentive to do everything possible to make it work.

Wow, it sure took a wad of weeding to get through to your idea, but in the end -there you are.

Which language was your student interested in (the first language or English?)
Did you asked him or, are you guessing?
Have you, are you applying your ‘discovery’ yet?

From reading some of your other posts (grad school rants) it’s difficult to not come away wondering - what is most interesting to you, believing you’ve found something or, applying and testing your ‘discovery?’

The (very sketchy and broad) notion that Ld’s have similar analogous roots to “first languages’ is not a new speculation; that’s not to say you may not transpose ESL teaching methods to the students you describe, several teachers already do.

Do your work-
Keep up the enthusiasm, but don’t let it detour you from objectivity.

Cheers.

Will, I do not apprecaite your nasty comments. If you don’t like reading my posts, then don’t read them.

To be honest, it took me a while to figure out your point, too…
but yes, I have borrowed stuff from ESL, especially when dealing with language development issues, not, say, sound processing issues. YOu’re already going to be sensitive to any adaptations you need to make for him because of his unique learning style.

Got a couple folks with that kind of profile at the CC where I am. I’m not sure how our track record is with ‘em - it’s an ongoing search to figure out how to meet their needs. (But our Adult Basic Ed folks, I must say, *do* try to *teach,* not just provide worksheets and hope they get done.)

Will, you mightw ant to read a few *more* of her posts… then your questions would be answered.
I am sure you have much more to offer — let’s see, there should be one other post on here somewhere, since right now you’ve got two posts. Is it of the same variety?
I don’t care much for “constructivism” as its (mis)applied in the classrooms… but there is room for being constructive.

victoriah,
Sorry, I didn’t expect your feelings to be hurt by my questions, suggestion and observation.
I would have sent my post to you as a personal message (off the board) but it appears you are not a registered user.

In any case, here is the URL to the post that spurred my (presumed offensive) comment.
” http://www.ldonline.org/bulletin_boards/bb2.html
victoriah:
“My grad program in education was a joke…[on and on…] I am NOT making any of this up!”

I found it confusing how you jumped to your bemused educational background/experiences when the original post asked:
” Can anyone give me some good suggestions for a reading program that would be good for him? Thanks for the input. http://www.ldonline.org/bulletin_boards/bb2.htm ”

All in all,
I’ll trust that you are on the right track and can understand that with respect to your brilliant idea, I am asking simple (yet direct) questions that are intended to help you constructivly investagate your inquiry. I’d suspect that as a masters graduate you were taught to expect a range of challenging questions?

Again, my comments are not intended to be as personal as you have taken them, I am simply suggesting that you examine your ideas objectivity as a tried and true course for following through on the work that interests you.

If you feel compelled to reply in a personal way, it would seem respectful to disburden the bulletin board by becoming a registered user so that (when appropriate) personal messages can be directed too, and/or from you.

Please, no offence was intended and good luck to you
__________________________________________

Furthere on, to what has taken a very curious tone:
:shock:

I am totally baffled by the underlying tone of comment that is directed toward me by the LDOnline boards Monitor /, “Webmistress.”

Frankly, it seems out of form -for someone who serves an official role as the boards moderator to transgress to direct editorialized personal comments toward other registered users who visit and contribute to this bulletin board.
This is truly odd, to say nothing of edging on an oppressive use of ones position.

post script,
I would read more of the original posters posts if they were as readily available asall registered users post are, yet they are not as available as you have found and may continue to find other registered users posts to be.

Will,

If you look at Sue’s post, webmasteress is referring to her own site for which she gives us the link. I am just not sure you are reading and comprehending people’s posts before you respond.

Janis

Stranger and stranger…

Janis:
This is what the webmistress posted:
“I am sure you have much more to offer —”

I presume she is referring to me.

webmistress:
“… let’s see, there should be one other post on here somewhere, since right now you’ve got two posts.”
Yes, I have made one post prior to the one I made to this chain.

webmistress:
“Is it of the same variety?”

If I must parse how the webmistress post reads, I am left with the impression that she is weighing the value of one users post to another.

>>>From this I’m at a loss to understand how the webmistresses is referring to her website?
_________________________________

This seems a strange position for a webmistress to take, for she is in a position to edit posts at will.

I am not accusing or suggesting that this is or has ever been the case but, I am a bit surprised at the general tone and insinuation.

As spokeswoman , please guide me to how this can be interpreted as a reference to her own site?

Believe me, if I am mistaken I would certainty try to understand why and make amends (as I believe attempted with the original posters conflict with my reply to her asking for suggestions re the topic line of this chain.)

While I’m sure Sue is capable of responding for herself, I hope she won’t mind if i respond as well. Sue is not acting in any “official board moderator” capacity though she did at one time work for LD Online. She is the “webmastress” (not mistress!) of her own Resourceroom site, which is linked at the bottom of the post. (BTW, it is full of useful information for teachers of learning disabled students) She is not able to delete others’ posts. These boards do not have a moderator participating in the discussions, though the content is monitored for inappropriate posts and they will delete such posts from time to time.

I understand now, and If this is true, I’ll stand corrected and retract my comments to Sue.

Sue, nice going!
When I see you post from this corrected vantage, I can bounce with your tongue in cheek, playful sharp eyed tone.

I’ll also extend my end of an apology to all who have wondered down this serpentine thread only to watch it degrade into a faceless and ridiculous linguistic personality feast. It’s an unfortunate small pool phenomena that I’ve heard happens in online forums (“chatter over a back-yard fence”).

Despite the help I’ve seen this bulletin board rally to others, I am beginning to feel that the thin skinnedness (?) of the original post on this thread has a contagious element. And man, having experienced it here - I don’t think this is level of exchange is my cup of tea.

Good by-

This note is to Will, if he does not make good on his promise to leave.
Other readers may not find it interesting, so please skip.

Will—

Some of us get irritated at the clunkiness of the sign-in system. I have an “official” name of victoria and an unofficial one of victoriah. If you had actually read my old posts you would know this. You would also have seen several hundred posts under the name victoria.

Read up on the psychology of the Passive-Aggressive personality. You ought to know more about yourself.
Passive-Aggressives love the internet and particularly messing up community bulletin boards; these give wide-open range to their ability to bully verbally while the physical separation protects them from any kind of social consequences.
Some of the games played by this type include wrapping up a pseudo-apology around another and usually even nastier insult — eg: thin-skinnedness — oh, my I must be in the wrong to be so terribly sensitive, I should feel so guilty — sorry, this kind of guilt manipulation hasn’t worked on me for a long time.
Another kind of popular manipulation of guilt game consists of making fun of a person’s attempt to express themselves until they get too embarrassed and angry and then look ridiculous in public — you thought you could make me look bad by talking about “wading through” my posts and about “rants”. Yes, I am fed up by your deliberate attempt to embarrass me. Luckily I have a number of friends here who know me and what I do, and you are the one who looks out of place.
Both of these use the P-A’s favourite trick, manipulation of language connotations in order to play a superiority game. Sorry, I don’t fall for it any more.

The reason I am bothering with this at all is that I have seen a number of communities both on the internet and off ruined by someone who came in to play games and feel superior by stepping on other people’s heads, rather than to do something constructive.
This board has already been severely damaged by one person who deliberatelyt overran it, which is why the sign-in now exists.
I repeat, if you don’t want to read my posts, then don’t read them.

I enjoyed reading all the comments on the posting “Possibly a Good idea”. I teach reading to older students aged 12-18 at a residential placement facility and I often use many supplies that would be ESL or ELL kinds of stuff. For exampe, I use the HI -Lo books ( high interest - low vocabulary). There are many series of them that have proven to be successful for my kids. I also use puzzles from a company called Didax that are groups of words with pictures of the items titled: compund words, initial consonant blends and digraphs, silent letters, sounds alike (homophones), analogys. These are a lot of fun and many times my ESL students (for real) can see the pictures and understand the words for the first time. The students I am working with have been truant for quite some time before they get locked up and have missed out on a lot of remedial instrution.

If he shows interest in ESL material, why not? It can’t hurt and if he brings a genuine interest to it, it could help. Perhaps the deliberate quality of ESL instructional material meshes with his interesting self and/or his learning style.

For a comment, I’d only suggest that we have no way of knowing what he was like or ready for in the third grade. Young people can grow, mature and develop in leaps and bounds sometimes and he only recently have had those leaps and bounds. What he’s clearly capable of today doesn’t necessarily mean he was capable of that even as recently as yesterday. Our abilities grow with us and sometimes in fits and starts.

I’ll be starting a new thread and reporting new discoveries with this student on it.

c kelly, hi, i am working in a juvenile detention center/jail. I am new to this type of setting. I have a lot of experience working with adults and youth that are handicapped or disabled. I also have experience with voilent, troubled youth. I am interested in any other ideas you might have for working with the age group 13-18. I am particularly interested in the areas of reading and math. Our curriculum is limited so I am trying to keep it interesting and appropriate. I have freedom to do as I wish. Our population can change on a daily basis so many of our kids are only here 2-5 days which makes things difficult. I do however, want to make their time here count. I would say that its about 50/50 as far as sped/reg. ed students. Any info you might have or links to other resources would be greatly appreciated. I know this is in response to a message posted awhile ago but I am new to the site and am a first time user. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Thanks!! Josie :D [/b]

I’m working full time at the community college now so I have less time to drop hin here… missed a fascinating thread and thanks for the defenses :) (in September there wasn’t the “update notification” thing or I hadn’t bothered to check it).
I’ve got info on stuff for older students all over my site since that’s who I work with, too.
I did monitor this board for a few months, in 1998 when I worked for LD OnLine… it was tough, ‘cause I’d been a regular participant and had to pull back because of the kinds of reasons Will mentioned… the one drawback of the job :-)
In my experience, learning the skills is the ticket to improving the esteem, not the other way around by the time they get to this age. I keep waiting to meet all these “great word callers with no comprehension” — though yes, the comprehension suffers too when they’ve lived in a world of almost exclusively non-verbal communication (yes, words are used… but not many, and most of the message is in nonverbal modes).
Marva Collins book (even though it deals with younger students) helps me get on the right wavelength sometimes.