EL class writes, revises and edits with honors English students
Junior Courtney Goodman helps to edit, and revise a student from the EL class. They worked on peer reviewing and looked at their rubric.
October 3, 2016
Imagine moving to a new country, having to go to school and learn a whole new language just to be able to take and understand classes. This is what most of the students in Amy Peddie’s English Learning classes have been through. Because English isn’t the first language of EL students, they have a difficult time recognizing their errors within the papers they write.
Peddie’s class was assigned a personal narrative essay. The topic of the essay was something in their life that’s very important to them. Peddie felt this was a good way for students to be able to express themselves and talk about something important to them.
This year for the first time, students in the 11 honors English classes are editing the papers of the EL students. This program provides a two-on-one learning experience for the EL students, giving them the opportunity to ask their peers, questions and find answers.
The EL students have difficult time recognizing errors with past tense and prepositional phrases that come naturally to native English speakers.
“One of the most difficult things for English Learners to understand is editing and finding where their mistakes are,” Peddie said. “So we thought that if we paired them with a native speaking class, they could find their errors a little bit better.”
Jessica Walpole’s advanced English 11 classes proof-read the student’s papers and helped the students edit and revise their work.
Before Walpole’s students met with the EL classes, they worked on peer reviewing and looked at their rubric so they knew exactly what Peddie’s instructions were.
Peddie’s hoped that doing this project would not only to help her EL students learn more, but also for the native students to learn more about the EL students.
“My intentions for the project was also for the kids to be able to share their stories and maybe for the American students to learn more about, you know, where did my kids come from, what are some of the challenges they face,” Peddie said. “I wanted it to not be just my students learning from the American students, but the American students learning about them.”
