Focusing on Learner Strengths
In order to leverage assessment data that helps us hone in on learner needs, teachers must take the time to recognize and leverage student strengths. Yes, when working with students who struggle and ELs it may seem almost easy to identify the gaps in learning and the challenges to success. However, only teaching students from this perspective can create a teaching and learning experience that is solely focused on correcting, remediating, and changing all the things that are “wrong”. This has greater implications down the road for struggling students and language learners especially, since their confidence as learners is many times already low. Due to this, students are not often motivated to achieve rigorous goals when this overwhelming discouragement is in place. A more empowering approach (for both the teacher and student) is to engage students in learning to leverage their strengths to empower them to grow. So what can this look like? Well, students benefit from regular one on one time with the teacher where students are part of the identification of their literacy and linguistic strengths before collaboratively setting goals for their growth. As part of the process, teachers might consider allowing the strengths to dominate the conversation, with the goal setting as a follow up. This allows students to approach the target goal from a place of confidence, strength, and encouragement. Once this goal is set, teachers and students benefit from focusing in on the power of that one goal, rather than working to improve everything. While we might be tempted to offer feedback and try to correct everything. From the perspective of the learning process, studies indicate that it may be more powerful to focus on one mini-goal at a time. In addressing this goal, the pre-requisite skills that students possess to achieve it, should be used as a stepping stone and “bridge” to connect one skill to the next. This is just one of the ways that strength-based approaches are so powerful. It helps students to make key connections of what they are already able to do, with the one next step they need to take in order to continue their progress. For example, as a teacher is working with a student, she notices that the readers is effectively speaking, reading, and writing the beginning and end sound of single syllable words. The teacher has the opportunity to use this phonemic awareness to begin to develop within word sound patterns. However, consider working on helping students to identify the power in the phonemic awareness they already possess before sharing new strategies to assist in greater improvements. When teachers take this time to focus in on strengths, students are better able focus on targeted goals with confidence. They are able to use the skills they already possess to bridge what they are able to do, with what they are learning to acquire. This strength-based targeted focus encourages students to embrace new goals with a bridge of skills they already possess as their guide.
Improving Fluency with Partner Reading:
What is partner reading? Partner reading is a cooperative learning approach where a student works with a partner to read a text. While there many different approaches to text selection, partnerships should be carefully considered and both partners should be able to access the text. Why use partner reading? Partner reading allows both readers to take turns reading a text for the purpose of increasing accuracy, rate, and expression by reading and re-reading a text. Part of the effectiveness of the this strategy is the structures in place for readers to model fluent reading with expression, to provide each other opportunities to collaboratively build on their comprehension, and to work together to provide each other with positive and targeted feedback. In addition, this student-directed learning gives teachers the opportunity to monitor student learning and provide individualized support as needed. When to use partner reading: Partner reading works best when students have basic print concepts and phonemic awareness. For ELLs, it is also important that partners are given an opportunity to experience a model of fluent reading. Finally, many teachers find that partner reading fits best within the context of “Daily 5” or “Centers” time. How to use partner reading: 1. Choose the partners (One way to choose partners is to pair high-performing readers with a lower-performing reader for fluency practice. Additional considerations for ELLs is to ensure that one reader is more advanced in their vocabulary and text meaning. An additional strategy for choosing partners can be to pair readers by instructional need in order to facilitate teacher support or to partner readers across grade levels.) 2. Assign partner roles – A and B. 3. Model the strategy with a think aloud of partner dialogue and feedback. 4. Select reading texts or passages at or close to the partners’ independent reading level. 5. Make sure each partner has a copy of the text. 6. Have the partner A begin reading the text aloud for a set length (it can be 1 minute, 5 minutes, 2 pages, etc.) 7. While partner A reads, partner B should follow along and correct any mistakes when necessary. 8. Partner reading can and should include a comprehension check as final part of the process and accountability measure for their work. Adaptations for ELLs: 1. Be sure that during the modeling and explanation of the strategy, students know that pronunciation of words based on accent should not be corrected. 2. Have partners retell orally and then write a summary of their retell of the story rather than answering comprehension questions. 3. Have partners develop and write a 7-word summary of their reading rather than answering comprehension questions. 4. Have partners identify unknown words to add to their words study and vocabulary development. 5. Have students identify the main idea and their logic behind it. 6. Have partners read informational texts in order to build content background knowledge for upcoming Science, Social Studies, and other units of study.
5 Easy Ways to Build Your Students’ Academic Language
Last week we discussed the need to intentionally frame the social language of schools. Social language of school is the language that follows the rules of academic conversations and is flexibly used for a variety of purposes. This week, we look at academic language. Academic language is the language students need to access textbooks, assignments, assessments, and other academic tasks. It requires students’ knowledge of a number of grammatical features, vocabulary terms, and other features of the discipline. There are two main components to academic language: language of instruction and language of the discipline. The language of instruction is tier 2 vocabulary terms that are essential for students to complete learning tasks and engage in rigorous thinking. They are terms such as: support, analysis, determine, evidence, critique, and more. The language of the discipline is tier 3 vocabulary terms that are essential for students to learn the content to the degree embedded within the common core. They are terms like: axiom, theme, alliteration, democracy, slope, mammal, and more. It may seem like a daunting task to have to begin teaching academic language. So what can teachers do to support students’ mastery of both components of academic language? The following strategies can be used by teachers at any grade level to help begin the process of moving students from casual social language use to greater comfort using their academic language. Encourage and model the use of academic terms during casual classroom communication. When students are engaged in cooperative learning, projects, and group processing, monitor and provide feedback around students’ use of precise terminology. Model the explicit use of precise language, as well. Encourage students to read a wide range of texts. Students should have opportunities to read texts at their independent level, instructional level, grade level, and (as long as they are supported through close reading tasks and shared reading experiences) push level. Students should also have the opportunity to read from a range of genres within fiction and informational texts as well. Teach key vocabulary that students need to know and help students process when and how they are to use them. Allow students various opportunities to use those words in a range of authentic contexts. The more regularly students are able to uses the words and the more varied the practice, the greater the impact on student learning. Provide language stems to anchor students thinking and use of academic language. Language stems give students the academic language as a scaffold until they are comfortable enough to use academic language on their own. An example of a language frame is: My analysis showed that _____ because ______________. I know this because on page __________ the author states that __________________. Bridge academic and social language. All students benefit from translating their casual language to their academic language as sort of a side by side dictionary. This translating of social language provides students an opportunity to see the similarities and differences between the two which helps them make critical connections in the brain. This connection makes it easier for students to use precise language when it is needed.
3 Big Reasons We are All LanguageTeachers:
When we introduce ourselves in education, it is commonplace to identify with the content area or grade level we teach. I am a Science teacher, a Math teacher, a 3rd grade teacher, etc. But one thing is for certain; we are all language teachers, and we are all teachers of students. This means that there may be more similarities than meets the eye when it comes to the ingredients necessary to help students achieve success. When it comes to language, there are a range of pre-requisite skills necessary in order to be successful. Both social and academic language are necessary for meaningful learning to take place. And while we will talk more about academic language next week, it is important to also understand the needs of every learner when it comes to social language. Social language includes the words and communication tools students use in social situations. In school, that involves three major skills: using language for a variety of purposes, changing language, and following rules of academic conversations. There are a number of purposes for using language in school. Students must greet each other, share information, make requests and ask questions, and make commitments. Even when these language uses don’t involve the use of tier II and tier III terms, are students able to appropriately use language in these context? In an age when students spend more time texting in jargon like LOL, tweeting with limited characters, and pinning images that spark their interest, it is becoming more and more difficult for them to change their language for those purposes. After all, these social media and mobile communication tools has made using short hand code, the norm. These methods of communication also prevent students from seeing their audience. This makes it harder for students to assess the needs of the listener or audience which translates to difficulties meeting the needs of the listener or audience in real life. Not only that, but more and more, students are struggling to even understand the need for a different approach to conversation when they are talking to an adult vs a friend, speaking during after school activity vs during a conversation about a class project, and giving enough details for people to follow the speakers’ logic. When teachers wonder how children could be so rude or inappropriate in a classroom, they can ask whether the students know the “rules” of following classroom conversations. Chances are, they have not. So what can a teacher do to develop the social language needed to succeed in class? The rules needed for social language in a school setting are the following: Turn-taking in conversation (including active listening) introducing topics of conversation staying on topic rephrasing when misunderstood (clarifying speech) how to use verbal and nonverbal signals (saying thank you and making eye contact) proximity to peers when speaking (shoulder length apart and knees to knees) how to use facial expressions and eye contact
1 Research-based Strategy Truly Great Teachers Use
In the world of high stakes testing, we often worry about how we are going to “cover” all the standards in our curriculum, especially when we serve EL’s (English Learners) and struggling students that need greater amounts of support. It is a real concern with no easy answers. So what is one part of the solution? Chunking. Chunking is an approach based on cognitive theories, or constructivism. It is based on how teachers “chunk” or group information into logical and related units. These units are then easier to commit to memory because it reduces the amount of cognitive stress levels as the amount of information that the learner has to process is divided into smaller, more manageable units. Teachers’ ability to effectively chunk information for learners aides in and facilitates much needed information retrieval so that students are more easily able to engage in higher order cognitive demands. One of the most powerful benefits of chunking for EL’s and struggling students is the fact that since teachers are planning smaller chunks of information as a unit, it allows each element within that unit to serve as background knowledge for the next piece in the chunk. Teaching, then, simultaneously becomes new information and background knowledge for students to make vital connections to the information already present in their long-term memory. So, for example, if I want to teach student how to compare themes in literature, I know that students must be able to do several things. They must learn how to make comparisons, make inferences, understand what a theme is, cite evidence from a text, etc. Each of these units could be sequenced as chunks that go deep into new learning before moving into the next chunk. So when thinking about what to teach next in your unit, try not to think about what fun holidays or activities might be around the corner. Try to ask yourself, what’s the next chunk of learning that will make a difference for students’ ability to master the standards? Here are five great reasons that you should chunk. Creating small pockets of learning for students to hang on to promotes greater learning outcomes Sequenced “chunks” build background knowledge for the next “chunk” Chunking supports short memory functioning Allows for closure of each small “chunks” which enhances recall Facilitates comprehension
5 Reasons Why Expectations Change Results for all Students, especially ELLs
It seems simple, that as educators, we have the same high learning expectations for all students in given classroom, grade level, or school. After all, we wouldn’t want to knowingly deny the access and benefits of a high-quality educations to any child. And the reality is that the vast majority of educators do not approach their educational planning and instruction with low expectations in mind. After all, this ideal of high expectations is founded on the concept that whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are probably right. Our beliefs and expectations have a profound impact on our hopes for accomplishment and effort to succeed. So what does this mean? It means that students who are expected to learn at high levels tend to do so, while students who are expected to learn at low levels also tend to achieve exactly that – regardless of their ability. This phenomenon has long-been researched and is most commonly known as the Pygmalion Effect. In this study of the self-fulfilling prophecy, people internalized their positive and negative labels. Their level of success followed their labels accordingly. The conclusion was that by increasing the leader’s expectation of those who followed, the performance will result in better performance by those who were following them. The impact of this study has implications in more than just education and extends from education, to social class, and of course, ethics. Yet, when we are faced with students that don’t speak English, that read significantly below grade level, and are otherwise challenged to perform at grade level expectations, many are at a loss in terms of what to do to marry the competing worlds of meeting students’ needs and meeting the Common Core State Standards. And whether intentionally or unintentionally, we find ourselves lowering the expectations for these groups who already have a history of underperforming. And while the challenge is certainly a perplexing one, this solution only results in further exacerbation of the very problem. So what is a reasonable, yet high expectation for our struggling students, particularly those who are English Learners? And why should we commit to this course? Research shows that shifting our instruction to support the development and emphasis of more academic English leads to greater academic success. Without intervention and increasing success rates for English Learners, they will drop out of high school at twice the rate as the English-speaking peers (Rumberger, 2006). It is true that English Learners achievement levels and growth progress at different rates, but cognitive scientist agree that it is by increasing the success rates on challenging tasks that increasing the rate of growth for all learners. Student access to the core academic curriculum (Callahan & Gandara, 2004) – which is now the Common Core State Standards – is one of the most important variables leading to English Learners growth and ultimate success. Research has shown that the simple act of asking students (particularly English Learners and struggling students) to elaborate one powerful way to challenge students in a manner that demands that they explain the details of what they know. This is an opportunity to solidify connections in their minds which is proven to have a greater impact on rate of growth and overall achievement.
Sweet Sentences
Surprising Teaching Move Leads to Success with Struggling Students:
As educators, we know the importance of having clear objectives. We know that we need to differentiate our instruction, even if we don’t always know how for the populations we serve. However, did you also know that research shows significant results when teachers work to create a culture where students are encouraged to and feel at ease asking for explanations and asking for help? So why is that, you ask? There is a certain amount of vulnerability in asking for help and telling a teacher in front of an audience that you don’t understand something and need additional explanation. In an age where image and social pressure is growing by the second, these are behaviors that have to be explicitly taught, fostered, and encouraged. This idea that students’ self-confidence and ability to maintain a positive attitude about themselves even when they don’t understand has an incredible impact on their ability to engage with the content and practice their new learning correctly. Additionally, many struggling learners and ELLs have high anxiety when it comes to speaking in public – especially early in their language development. This affect towards engaging orally in class could have a critical negative impact for kids. Students who are too anxious to verbalize their lack of understanding and need for additional help slide further behind in the access to grade level content. Educators must also be alert to possible delays in their language development. The reality is that language production is incredibly complex, which is why there is a great deal of anxiety around it for some learners. But if we cannot find a way to ease that affect towards speech in general, and more specifically towards asking for help and clarification, the students’ learning potential will not be realized. Finally, when struggling students are stressed, they go into a “survival mode” or “fight or flight” mode of thinking. The stimuli that cause students’ stress levels to rise and to feel stress range from the physical space, to emotional climate of the class, connections a child may have to other negative events, and people’s interpretations of every interaction. When students feel stressed based on one or more of these possible events, they do shift into a mental “survival mode”. While in this mode, learners are not able to cognitively perform at higher levels. Some may find themselves “going blank”, others preoccupied with getting called on by the teacher, and still others may just have a general sense of being incapable of grasping the content that is being shared with them. And how does one ask questions, when they are at such a loss and state of stress. So what can teachers do: Help students to be question conscious – that is to notice the questions they have and to enjoy asking questions that take their learning deeper. Incentivize students being brave by asking for help and explanations when they need it. Set up a place, structure, or cue for less verbal students to ask for help and explanations. This could be anything from flipping a card on their desk to flipping down the corner of their paper. Allow group influence to support the work. Many times, if one person does not understand something, there is another who feels the same, but did not ask. By encouraging the class to thank the person asking the question for helping them all to learn, you allow the class to be part of how you reinforce that very behavior. Create a buddy system. Encourage students to take care of each other by seeing if their buddy has any questions and if they know how to successfully complete the work.
Essential Language for Reaching the Common Core:
Over the last few weeks, we have talked at length about a number of ways to increase your students’ vocabulary so that they are able to access increasingly more complex text and grow as readers and intellectual beings. In fact, with the arrival of the Common Core State Standards, we’ve all become more mindful of the complexity of texts we present to our students and the tasks they are given to process what they’ve read with increasing depth and challenge. In order to begin accessing increasingly complex texts, we know that one thing students need to acquire is a growing bank of words at their disposal in order to make meaning. However, in order for students to begin to successfully tackle more rigorous tasks, there is another critical need. It is absolutely vital that students understand what a performance task, practice application, or assessment is asking for them to do with the same level of fluency and automaticity that we expect from them when reading any text or passage. The Common Core State Standards offer us two categories of words that students must master – nouns and verbs. The nouns of the standards detail the key concepts and ideas that are essential take aways in Literacy, Math, and NGSS. Without access to these words, students will struggle to make meaning of and from the standards with rigor or precision. The verbs of the standards outline the thinking and mental tasks for which students must be prepared to engage. It is one thing to give students the opportunity to critique a peer’s argument, and to revise their argument based on that feedback (depth of knowledge 4). It is another reality for that student to expertly know what it means to offer a peer that critique. There are a number of strategies that you can leverage in order to teach these words such as: gradual release with modeling, visual representations, total physical response, four square, concept mapping, categorizing, creating student glossaries/dictionaries, gradients, word play, and more. Additionally, it is critical to know what these high leverage words are. While the nouns vary between the different subject areas and grades, the following list of verbs will be an incredibly helpful starting point in teaching your students words that will help them to think with the depth necessary to successfully complete tasks and master the standards. Analyze Articulate Cite Compare Comprehend Contrast Delineate Demonstrate Describe Determine Develop Distinguish Draw Evaluate Explain Identify Infer Integrate Interpret Locate Organize Paraphrase Refer Retell Suggest Summarize Support Synthesize Trace If there are additional ways that you help your students to access the language of the Common Core State Standards, please comment below. Or you can email us at tajulearning@gmail.com.
Part 5: Teaching Cognates to English Learner Students
When it comes to English Language Learners, it is critical that students have the opportunity to see their native language as an asset. Particularly for native Spanish speakers, a way to do that is to help them understand the sheer amount of academic vocabulary they have at their disposal through the use of cognates. Teaching students to leverage their native language to their advantage by looking for cognates is incredibly powerful due to a number of factors. One of those factors is the nature of these cognates themselves. Many of the cognates in Spanish seem to be high use words that cross domains (Reading, Science, Math, etc.). For example, matemáticas and mathematics are cognates in Spanish. The fact that these are “high utility” words only strengthens the power of instruction with them because of the the impact of multiple exposure to a specific set of words and student acquisition of the “layers” of meaning a given word might have. One strategy to do this is to following the process below: Teach students what cognates are – “words that mean just about the same thing in English as in your native language”. Have students look at for words that might be cognates in authentic texts Have the students answer the following questions about the word What is the English word and what is the native language equivalent? Does the word mean about the same thing in both languages? Do the words sound alike? Do the words look alike? Are the two words cognates? Why or why not? Are there any parts of the word that are not the same? While this strategy above is not fool-proof, it does begin to help students see how to pull from their native language knowledge in order to have access to a larger bank of words, concepts, and background knowledge which can only help. If you have questions about cognate instruction, please don’t hesitate to leave your question below. Additionally, if there is an additional topic that you would like to see posted or additional ways that you engage your students to invest in word learning, please comment below. Or you can email us at tajulearning@gmail.com.