Total Physical Response (TPR)
Reading Strategies for Language Learners: Levels 1-2.9 TPR (Asher, 1979) Why and when to use TPR: The purpose of TPR is to provide students with limited vocabulary in the target language and opportunity to learn language necessary to communicate through physical action and kinesthetic connections. TPR can take place in a number of instructional settings: whole class instruction, strategic small group, or individual reading/writing conferences or support. While it is most often used with language and vocabulary that involve commands, it has been very effective when included in the support of other language and vocabulary, as well. The extent of the need and the language levels of your students should help to decide the appropriateness of the strategy with proficiency levels 1-2 in most need of visual and kinesthetic connections to build word and concept knowledge as measured by ACCESS. How to use TPR: The teacher gives an oral command (usually an action) to a group of students and models the appropriate kinesthetic response e.g., “pass your paper to the front”, “copy the sentence from the board”, “open your books”. Eventually, the teacher is able to give the oral commands without modeling as students learn how to respond appropriately with the action desired by the teacher. When students can respond to the command appropriately, the teacher has the formative assessment needed to move on to the next command or language development goal. In another modification, students are introduced to a new concept, e.g. love. The students learn to associate a kinesthetic response that allows them to understand the idea behind the word. Students might learn to put their hand over their heart and smile as a kinesthetic response to the new concept.
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New Provisions in ESSA Cause Schools to Ask: How do We Improve Teaching?
The Every Student Succeeds Act has everyone wondering what it is going to take to meet the new responsibilities written into the legislation when it comes to struggling schools and entities that serve English Language Learners. While states now have greater autonomy and ownership over the goals they set for students, it is with the explicit understanding that with this responsibility comes accountability to show results. In the end, there are a number of changes that stand out of from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). However, one of the most interesting is the focus on professional development and efforts to retain high quality teachers in districts – particularly those teachers who serve the most needy and at-risk student populations. In Title III (the part of the act that discusses supports and expectations for the academic achievement of English Language Learners), Section 3102 it states that, “the purpose of this part (is) … to help ensure that English learners, including immigrant children and youth, attain English proficiency and develop high levels of academic achievement in English … (by) improving teaching skills in meeting the diverse needs of English learners, including how to implement effective programs and curricula on teaching English learners.” So in the midst of budget cuts, increased teacher responsibility, greater class sizes, and other challenging conditions, how can your school improve teachers’ skill set to serve diverse students and the implementation of effective programs designed to meet their needs? Plan like a teacher. But not just any time. Effective professional development begins with intense planning that includes the same components as those used by effective teachers: Clear objectives, the essential learnings that must result, clear assessment of its effectiveness, and delivery (or instructional) strategies for engaging each learner in the deep thinking required for lasting change.Schools will need to leverage their very precious time in new and innovative ways. This means that some information that previously dominated professional development may now need to be communicated via email or a brief staff meeting. People who work in schools, know the number of initiatives, critical deadlines, district updates, etc. that arise during the course of the year. However, if we are really going to “improve the teaching skills” of teachers who serve the most challenging populations, it is going to take time, at the very least. Think long term. Remember that the objectives do not need to be achieved today. School reform does not take place over night as it involves people’s beliefs and long-standing habits that have served them well. Each person in the school system plays a role in the success of every student. In order to meet their needs as a learner (to be challenged enough to want to engage, but not so hard that they give up), a plan must be devised. As part of planning to improve teaching, schools must evaluate what they are doing well and what critical steps will move them to the next level. By staggering these steps towards greatness, schools can ensure stakeholders that are willing to stick with the challenges that emerge along the way. Consider the number of initiatives. At any given time, schools are offered a wide variety of partnerships, initiatives, and other programs that are designed to help students succeed. The greatest challenge then, is that not every partnership supports the particular goal of all schools. And because schools move at lightning speed, when a partnership is brought in that does not support the goals of the school, it only works to distract from what is important. Consider staggering the number of partnerships, initiatives, and other programs to coincide with the measurable goals that you have for your learners. Not only that, but be sure that that the initiatives being implemented by schools are housed and monitored in one location. This way, the work load, manageability, and coherence of programming can be seen at a glance. Approaching it in this way, will also give schools a chance to see the sheer number of initiatives that teachers are trying to manage, which should give them a sense of the number of initiatives they will be able to do well. Focus on students. Do not implement without measuring. How are students responding to new initiatives? Are the programs being implemented positively impacting student achievement? What about for subgroups? Student success should be the number 1 deciding factor in terms of the implementation, retention, and cessation of programs and initiatives. Because without measuring the impact for children, we will never truly be able to target and reproduce success for our students. Drastically increase implementation support. Consider how you fulfill these needs in your adult learners. Do teachers and other personnel who work with students have a model of what effective implementation looks like? Do they have the ability to observe someone else? Do they have the opportunity to be guided by an expert teacher when they are stuck in implementation? Is there someone checking in or conferring with them around they implementation goals? And what is the accountability for their implementation of the professional development that takes place whole group? Finally, and most importantly, is to increase the amount of support during the implementation phase of any program and initiative. During implementation, teachers are dealing with uncertainty, feelings of doubt, lack of expertise, and few references for what success might look like. It is during the implementation phase that most initiatives actually fail. Not because they are bad initiatives, or because they don’t potentially meet the needs of the student population, but because teachers lose the support when they need it the most. Think about effective literacy instruction. You have a model (an opportunity to see it in action with an explanation of what was seen and time to process that experience), shared practice, possibly partnered practice, guided practice, independent practice, conferring, accountable talk, etc. All these things serve to support students during the implementation of a new strategy. More and more, we are seeing that professional development fails to produce
New PD Offerings for 2016/2017
What Every School Must Know About Transitioning to ESSA:
Every school is ramping up to prepare for the quickly approaching start date of the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This act, which replaces NCLB, is set to go into effect on August of 2016. So what should every educator know? One critical thing for educators to know is that, while there is greater flexibility for schools in several areas, schools must still show their accountability system. ESSA creates accountability through annual measurable objectives, or AMO’s. AMO’s are meant to define district’s new AYP. Now, schools that were previously defined as in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, won’t have the results of that status removed. These schools will still have to prove that the same or similarly designed interventions are in place in order to improve the achievement levels of the students that the school serves. However, one new addition is that schools no longer have to offer school choice, SES or parent notice. Of course, there are a great deal of other implications that come with the shift out of NCLS and into ESSA. But the question of accountability is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Next week, we’ll look at how assessments are viewed. Will there be more testing?
Teacher Appreciation
How Is Everyone a Language Teacher?
Over recent years, it seems that the challenges students face when having academic conversations have only gotten larger. Students struggle to have meaningful conversations, they struggle to stay on topic, they struggle to find the words to help them speak knowledgeably and precisely about the topic being discussed. While these challenges exist for a number of reasons, the reality is that these are challenges that impact us all. Whether we are teachers of Reading, Math, Science, junior high, high school, or the elementary level, we all rely on language as the vehicle for learning and measuring the impact of our teaching. And in the world of education, oral language is king. We talk, explain, lecture, discuss, read out loud, and listen each and every day. Oral language is part of the fabric of teaching. Yet, do we actually know what oral language actually is? Well, oral language is generally made up of the following five elements: academic vocabulary – understanding the meaning of words (T1 – T 3) morphological skills – understanding the impact of word parts on word meanings (including prefixes and suffixes) syntax – understanding the rules of word order and grammar phonological skills – understanding the range of sounds pragmatics – understanding the social rules and nuances of conversation and communication Instruction that works to develop students’ oral language has to begin with the recognition that students can not be sheltered and kept from critical questions with no easy answers. Rather, as teachers we have a great opportunity to layer in oral language in order for our students to access this rigorous content. While we will talk more about the strategies that increase oral language development, the following are just a few ways that you can begin to do this: Make time for focused and critical discussions, Promote meaningful and deep conversations by providing language frames to guide the communication, Explicitly teach students the rules of how to have conversations prior to using structures like turn and talk, Provide opportunities for students to engage with rich and complex texts, Advance students’ academic vocabularies by selecting fewer words to master more deeply with a focus on application in all areas of their language use, Allow time for reading aloud to students in order to provide access to more challenging texts thy may not able to access on their own Use content area texts to teach critical grammatical structures that Allow time for students to talk through their understanding before putting anything to paper.
VOCABULARY JOURNAL: Building Academic Vocabulary with SPEED™
It’s finally available!!!! The student journals for academic vocabulary called, VOCABULARY JOURNAL: Building Academic Vocabulary with SPEED™ is now available on Amazon! So why did we create this resource? Well, we know that challenges with vocabulary strongly influence the readability of a text (Chall & Dale, 1995). Not only that, but lacking vocabulary is known to be a critical factor in overall school failure or success in disadvantaged students (Biemiller, 1999). Yes, it is a disheartening fact that ELs and struggling students have notably lower vocabularies than their counterparts ((Oller & Eilers, 2002), because these vocabularies are such strong predictors of overall achievement. One reason for this is that their native English learnering peers acquire an estimated 3,000 new words each year in school (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). This vast number of words helps native English students achieve growth in reading comprehension and their ability to communicate mastery across content areas. The self-fulfilling prophecy is that this reading growth and content mastery creates the path for native speakers and students to, in turn, learn more words which will fuel even further growth down the line. But for EL’s and struggling students, the challenge with vocabulary is greater than just acquiring the same 3,000 new words each year. These students come with such a range of size in their vocabulary (Snow & Kim, 2007), that it is almost impossible to calculate what it would take for these students to reach the same vocabularies, and by extension the same opportunity for school success, as their native classmates. It is because of this that it becomes almost impossible to have a singular approach to helping them catch up to their peers. So what is the solution? Well, the solution needed to be one that blossomed from the uniqueness of each learner’s situations and the reality of the schools in which they learn. The solution to this challenge came organically, from studying tons of research, watching great teachers, and analyzing the impact of different approaches on student learning and engagement. I call it SPEED™. SPEED™ is a comprehensive vocabulary acquisition process that allows for the introduction, building background knowledge, explicit teaching, meaningful and varied practice, and metacognitive dialogue that allows EL’s and struggling students to acquire vocabulary words quickly and profoundly. Since many studies suggest that the amount of instructional time devoted to building vocabulary is simply not enough, part of the SPEED™ approach includes teachers’ willingness to commit to increase the amount of consideration given to vocabulary instruction. Again, the commitment is to consider vocabulary needs when planning, not to necessarily increase the amount of time. In parts 1 and 2 of this book, we will share simple and time-efficient ways of doing this. An additional piece that makes SPEED™ effective is that students are asked to develop goals around their word usage outside of vocabulary “time”. This goal setting, helps students transfer the knowledge of the vocabulary gained during safe practice into other situations and times when the term would be appropriate. So, are you ready to help your students acquire academic vocabulary with SPEED?
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.