Chapter 1 Reflection
How the home environment affects children and their learning so drastically is a very interesting concept. It is evident that home environments have a big role on how children grow up and these environments contribute greatly to their personality. However, I never realized the role the home environment could have in a student’s classroom learning experience. Growing up in a middle-class English speaking family, I was exposed to reading and writing at a young age. Because my mother is a teacher, she was very articulate when speaking and that is where I learned the majority of my language. What I found interesting from the text is considering what would have happened if I went to a school where English was not the dominate language. Say for instance I went to a French school; I would not have had the background knowledge from a young age and I would not feel confident speaking or interacting with others in French. I am surprised that I never realized this before reading this chapter, but those who do not grow up in English-speaking houses, or home environments where they have not been exposed to stories and books, will have a much harder time in school.
This is an issue that teachers need to be aware of to be able to assist those students. Zwiers’ point about how teachers need to make the expectations clear for students in the classroom and how they need to teach students about academic English, is important to help students feel confident and comfortable in their school environment (2008). Teachers need to be aware of the different students in their classrooms and focus on students as individuals and realize what they need to do to help each student succeed.
These points are important when in a physical education environment since there are a lot of terms that not all students will know. For example, the term advancement; moving forward towards a goal line in a game, will not be known by all students, and teachers must explain the definition of the word before moving forward with the activity.
Zwiers, J. (2008). Understanding how students use language. In Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms (Ch. 1, pp 11-15). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass