Practicing Teaching Analysis

The teachers that I have observed this semester did not do as great of a job at supporting English Language Learners as I would like to in my own classroom. I saw opportunities for vocabulary instruction, but it was minimal in execution. However, over the course of my experience in the secondary education program, I have seen teachers that do a good job of supporting ELL students and use every opportunity they see for vocabulary instruction. I think it depends on how important the teacher feels that vocabulary instruction is. The teachers I saw that were better at it were middle school teachers. In middle school, everyone is learning vocabulary, not just ELL students. In high school, teachers sometimes assume that their students have the same vocabulary they do (which is not true 9 times out of 10 even for non-ELL students). In my teaching career, I would make sure that even if I am teaching seniors in high school that I am incorporating some sort of vocabulary instruction.