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.
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.