“Students whose failures with printed text have caused them to build negative associations with the medium can become discouraged and lack the confidence that further efforts will yield progress.”
MEYER & ROSE, 2000
Hi classmates – I’m Ivonne,
Various learning and resources, manipulatives and videos could have potentially increased my understanding of fractions in 6th grade. Due to the discouragement I had in not understanding the material, and self-blame for not knowing the language I steered away from fractions as much as possible, and when there was no option my low scores showed my discouragement and lack of engagement. Years later I understood that it was not all on me, there were factors that contributed to discouragement and disengagement, such as proper challenge and support as an ELL student, lack of school resources and various formats to enhance student learning without shaming students for not knowing the material. Even if there were other forms that teachers tried to engage me in I had a language barrier that prevented me from understanding direction and instructions.
Several years ago, I saw a couple of Pinterest post on fractions that I thought would have been ideal for the learning style I needed then with a language barrier. It used Legos to represent wholes and fractions. For a long time, I felt too discourage that I did not seek to learn more, overtime I came around to learning it and I felt more confident because I was no longer a novice English language speaker. Currently I have many ELL students in my preschool class. A lot of encouragement, engagement, repetition, various methods of learning, and support is needed to enhance confidence as a student is learning a subject.
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Ivonne's Blog 
Yikes, fractions. I was subbing for a math class and I just figured fractions out – the basics. There are many components that went into how you felt: being an ELL and not understanding the material. This math, like most subjects, build off of one another. So if you didn’t know how to do fractions then there is a big chance it was difficult to multiply fracts and divide fractions etc. I like how you used the Universal Design for Learning vocab in your blog like the word engagement because that is surely important.
Your voice in the blog is definitely academic I believe there should be a reference here on here.
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