EL students are getting further behind every year in math classes.  How are students going to learn math when they can’t understand English?  This is a key topic to focus on with EL students.  When given the opportunity, I will stress English on top of Mathematics in my classroom.  I plan to go over once a week a lesson about the English of the lessons we are learning. 

Groups always help learning.  In my math class, a lot of assignments and classroom work will be in groups.  I think that groups are a very successful way of solving a lot of problems.  For the struggling EL learners, students with a comfortable and safe classroom environment can excel through their piers.  Stronger students can assist the struggling students which in fact helps them understand the material better.  Obviously the plan is to give extra points to groups that can do this successfully.  

• Modeling:  An article about how the new standard of Common Core is going to work.  This is published before Common Core was put in effect but has the reasoning and meaning behind it.  It turns basic math problems into models so students are more interested and not so turned off but the problems.  
• Arithmetic:  With the new procedure of Common Core Students are taught in a new style of thinking.  Rather than an algebraic way of thinking in algebra and geometrically thinking in geometry, student will now learn to think mathematically as a whole.  Specially for my class, students will compute problems in an arithmetic way of thinking.  
• Standards: The new standards are a good way to keep all schools and teachers on the same schedule and level with their students.  The only problem is it takes the creativity out of teaching from the teachers.  In my class I will make sure to not lose focus of how I want to teach with also following the framework.