Creating Lifelong Learners

Jennifer Jacobson, assistant editor, of American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers shares this article on what the research says and doesn’t say about teaching English Language Learners.  It’s a lengthy report with the takeawy for me that it does seem that English Language Development (ELD) is best when taught as a separate subject and not simply integrated throughout the day.  In California, we’re required to teach 30 minutes of ELD but few teachers do.

I’ve become a better teacher of English Language Learners by watching one of my favorite TV Shows, Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. This is a show about buying stocks. If you’re not interested in stocks you might be turned off already, but Jim Cramer is an entertainer. He takes what could be boring and incomprehensible and makes it engaging and completely understandable for people who know little about stocks AND those who know a lot. Isn’t this what we’re trying to do in the classroom, particularly for English Language Learners and students with limited language exposure?

Realia

When talking about stocks he wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, Cramer brings in a ten foot pole. When recommending baby boomer stocks he wears a diaper. When recommending Energizer he wears bunny ears. When talking about the differences been Hasbro and Mattel he brings pictures of a HazMat team (Hasbro/Mattel…HasMat). Think about how you can take something that you’re teaching that’s incomprehensible and bring in something visual to make it comprehensible and engaging for people who may not understand what you’re talking about otherwise.

We need to bring something physical into the classroom. It’s not always the actual thing that you bring because it’s not always possible to bring an elephant into the classroom. But you can bring in a symbol of that thing. A teddy bear can substitute for a man about to undergo open heart surgery. A tossed bean bag quickly replaces a comet flying across the sky. When you’re talking to students who don’t have the academic language to understand everything that you’re saying, give them something they can see that’s not just you talking.

Vocabulary Objectives

Your lessons should have a vocabulary objective.

When Cramer wants you to know about PE Ratios (that is price to earnings ratios) he will put the word on the screen. He makes it clear at the beginning of the lesson that he wants you to understand “PE Ratios.”

English Language Learners’ have a much smaller lexicon of academic English. Teachers include new vocabulary in their lessons all the time but are not often explicit enough about the words they are teaching. A lesson might include the word persuasion without making it explicit that you want students to learn and use the word persuasion. Students can generally figure out the meanings of words long enough to understand your lesson but we’re trying to add new words to students’ long term vocabulary and so we need to make sure they understand that’s an expectation. We also need to make sure they know how to use the word. A linguistic frame works for this purpose.

Example linguistic frame for fossils unit:

Cramer provides these linguistic frames by applying new vocabulary to multiple stocks using consistent language and then provides the audience practice by having them call in the show and use the vocabulary.

In our rooms we need to write the new words on the board. Make it clear before the lesson starts that today students are learning the words X and Y. Give students opportunities to practice using the new words and help them by providing them with a linguistic frame. Get them to talk to each other to practice using the new vocabulary. We can then add another step that Cramer doesn’t have time for in a one-hour show and have students write with the new words. We’ve scaffolded it enough now to expect that they will use those new words in their writing.

Engage Students

I know some teacher have the attitude that they do not need to be entertaining. But couldn’t you be a little interesting to watch? One of my colleagues refers to teaching as doing a six hour one-woman show five days a week with props. Imagine yourself in the audience of that show. How good a show are you? Would you like to be in your class?

I’ve added a fake ear to my repertoire. When students are too quiet, I put it to my ear and say “I can’t hear you!” A rubber chicken helps to lighten the mood when no one is responding and even wait time isn’t working. One cluck and suddenly students feel comfortable enough to come forward and venture an answer.

Cramer makes it fun with all the props, the excitement in his voice, and even sound effects. Cramer shares his sound board and all his sound effects are available online. I use these when students are half-asleep (think math after recess). When a student gets an answer right you play the Hallelujah chorus. Today we’re going to talk about fractions…”Tah Dah sound”…applause…

Not all sounds are appropriate for the classroom but you can use your judgement. I’ve also used a free Mac download called Buzzer for much the same purpose.

Before using this I tell students that I’m going to be using sound effects that are silly but if they get too silly I’ll have to stop. And a couple times I have stopped when students got carried away, but most of the time it helps them pay attention. The sounds bring them back to the lesson when they wander off.

Link to Sound Board

The Take Away

Teachers are entertainers whether we want to be or not. Use your post to be interesting. It’s true that it’s not your job to entertain but when students are entertained they pay attention, they comprehend, and your classroom management is stronger.

Also recommended: Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model by Echevarria, Vogt, Short

This from fellow Apple Distinguished Educator, Matthew Callison, an excellent tool for engaging students in reading.

Mr. Callison works with a third grade population of English Language Learners. He has students record audio reviews of books they are reading and uploads them to this blog, BookLook.org.

There are just a handful of reviews so far but this would be a terrific. You might want to have your students listen to some of them but more importantly, why not employ this technique in your classroom? Whether or not you put the recordings online, you can use Garageband on the Mac or Audacity on the PC (both free programs) to easily record your students.

What a great way to develop language, motivate students, and engage them in higher level thinking.

This post is a wish for a perfect world but if you agree with me, you can do something about it fairly easily. I am really trying to make a conscious effort to adjust my own thinking and the way I talk about students.

I think we need to be careful not to refer to children as special education students or GATE (gifted and talented) kids. The students who are gifted are really students who have been identified as gifted. Students who are not gifted are students who are gifted in ways we haven’t identified yet. Special education students are students who are receiving special education services.

Usually I hate things that are simply a matter of semantics but I don’t think this is one of those cases. The way we refer to a student when we speak about them affects our thinking about that student in subtle and not so subtle ways. Our expectations of our students, of course, influence the achievement of those students. As we know there are inequities in the labeling of children as gifted and special ed, it is even more important that we resist those labels as permanent diagnoses.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t differentiate instruction or individually adjust our instruction in the face of one of these diagnoses. However, what I see happening is that once a student is identified as “special ed,” the regular ed teacher often throws up her hands as if there’s no longer any way to reach that student. Students who are identified as gifted are often given additional access to the limited amounts of technology in inner-city classrooms and this is not fair or beneficial to our society. Often those other students could be gifted if given twenty-first century skills with which to communicate. I say this, having seen how those students who sit in class unmotivated and possibly unnoticed are very often the ones who are most adept at using the computer as a communication tool when given the chance.

What do you think?

I’ve been noticing that a lot of teachers get bogged down by individual stories in the Open Court units and miss the big ideas of the units.

While you do need to teach the stories in the anthology and will need to scaffold vocabulary just enough to give access to English Language Learners, the individual stories are almost irrelevant except as they relate to the big ideas of the unit. So while the 2nd grade Kindness unit has two stories about whales and I show a two minute clip about whales so students understand what they are, how they move, and how they sound, this is not a unit about whales. Whales are in the stories as examples of humans being kind to animals and on a broader level how you show kindness to people who are helpless (animals being an example).

By relating stories to the big ideas of the unit, you can also relate those same ideas to other curricular areas thereby increasing student comprehension and knowledge across the curriculum.

So how do you focus on units?

You need to sit down before starting each unit and figure out what are the big concepts of the unit that you want to teach. The manual makes several suggestions for each story and offers sample questions, you won’t be able to teach all of these. Choose the ones that relate to your state standards, the ones that make the most sense to you, the ones that seem most relevant. I like to do this with my grade level as it’s helpful to bounce ideas off of other people. If you have a theme, then suddenly you have a purpose for why you’re reading what you’re doing.

I’ll offer a few examples…

My links to the theme are not “the right answer.” You need to choose how you’re going to approach each them and then weave that thread throughout the unit. When you do this, other components of the program such as the Concept/Question Board and handing-off discussions are going to be far more meaningful because you’re no longer talking about just the characters in a particular story. You now have a broader theme that you can relate that story to.

an excerpt from Open Court Resources.com

Here is an example from second grade “Look Again” unit of how you can scaffold difficult vocabulary/unit concepts for English Language Learners so that all students can participate in conversations and writing about a particular unit.

Background for Teachers: Four Types of Camouflage:

1. Protective Coloration: blending in for protection or to surprise prey

2. Mimicry: pretending to be something else to hide (like the walking stick) or to frighten other animals (like the moth)

3. Changing Colors: to match surroundings (like the chameleon or octopus)

4. Costumes: wearing a disguise (like some crabs)

Many students, particularly those learning English might try to explain how an animal uses camouflage by saying “The cheetah uses camouflage by camouflaging with the grass.”

Try to insist upon more exact language when speaking and writing about animals. Provide students with a frame such as this one to assist them in speaking about animal camouflage:

Some refer to this scaffolding as a linguistic frame.