Abstract
It was a late fall afternoon when we arrived at the middle school mathematics classroom of Ms. J. Ms. J was a certified secondary level math teacher employed at a middle school in New York City. As Mathematics and TESOL Teachers Educators we had developed a project to help both mainstream math and science teachers and ESL teachers develop academic language for their English language learner students (ELLs). We entered the classroom for an observation, and watched Ms. J deliver a lesson to a classroom of 24 students, all ELLs, most placed at the beginning and intermediate level, with two new arrivals (enrolled in school for less than two months). Ms. J delivered a sufficient content lesson, but had made absolutely no accommodations for the linguistic challenges that the students in her classroom faced. No language scaffolds, no consideration of polysemous vocabulary, no breaking down of the complex syntactic structures contained in the word problems, and in fact, no consideration at all for the language challenges of these students. It was clear to us, as she was teaching and questioning students, that little was being understood by her students. She was teaching everything, in other words all of the appropriate content, to no one as these students understood little of the lesson.
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Further reading
Arkoudis, S. (2006). Negotiating the rough ground between ESL and mainstream teachers. The International Journal of Bilingual Education9, 4, 415–433.
This article investigates the barriers related to teacher collaboration between TESOL and content educators, specifically focusing on positioning issues.
Dalton-Puffer., C., Nikula, T., & Smit, U. (2010). Language use and Language Learning in CLIL Classrooms. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
This edited volume examines the issue of content and language integrated learning and offers a synthesis of the research on CLIL. The volume focuses on the European context and chapters represent investigations from both a theoretical and empirical standpoint.
de Jong, E.J. & Harper, C.A. (2005). Preparing mainstream teachers for English language learners: Is being a good teacher good enough? Teacher Education Quarterly32, 2, 101–124.
This article examines the gap between good teaching practices in mainstream classrooms and good teaching practices for ELLs and provides a number of considerations and examples for teachers in both contexts.
DelliCarpini, M. & Alonso, O.B. (2013). Content Based Instruction. Alexandria VA. TESOL International Association.
This book provides an overview of CBI, teacher collaboration, and the Two-way CBI approach discussed in this chapter, with examples of learning activities for a math/TESOL collaboration.
Honigsfeld, A. & Dove, M. (2010). Collaboration and Co-Teaching: Strategies for English Learners. Corwin Press.
This book provides an overview of teacher collaboration and co-teaching with chapters that include information, examples, and activities to facilitate the development of these skills for both content and ESL/EFL teachers.
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© 2015 Margo DelliCarpini and Orlando B. Alonso
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DelliCarpini, M., Alonso, O.B. (2015). Teaching Everything to No One and Nothing to Everyone: Addressing the Content in Content Based Instruction. In: Farrell, T.S.C. (eds) International Perspectives on English Language Teacher Education. International Perspectives on English Language Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137440068_4
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