Entry #1 - Old School Philosophy

I recently spoke with a more “seasoned” teacher, and took the time to ask her what her philosophy is on literacy education for English Language Learners (ELLs). What she said actually surprised me. Her philosophy included starting with teaching the letters and sounds and then teaching sight words for native English speaking students. She felt that the ELL students would need to learn to speak English before any other literacy instruction would be beneficial.  Her method of teaching includes a lot of teacher talk, students repeating phrases, and little to no writing by the students. 

This philosophy, didn’t quite sit well with me.  Her method did not match what I consider best practice and it leaves out key components of language development.  Research has shown that young ELLs can learn to read and write while they are learning to speak.  Since I teacher ECE/pre-k, I consider all of my students to be ELLs because they are all still learning how to speak English properly.  I believe it would be counterproductive for me to only focus on oral language development and ignore their literacy development.  I wonder how many teachers that have been teaching for many years have a similar philosophy to this teacher?