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Top 5 Ways to Spend Down F18 Budget & Grow Your Dual Language and Bilingual Programs:

In the next few weeks, schools and districts across the country are in the midst of a crazy time between now and June 30th called “spend down”, it is the last few months of the year where they are forced to either spend their remaining budgets, or risk losing that money altogether.  For many schools, this means ordering supplies, technology, and other catalog “wish list” items that were not possible during other times of the year. However, there is very little evidence that using funds for these “wish list” items has any impact on student achievement.  One reason might be that educators have very little time to learn how to best utilize these purchases to support the needs of their students.  Most likely, these additions rarely lead to improvement in practice and outcomes for students because the pressure to spend now before the time is up also prevents thoughtful planning for how these additions fit into current systems and structures.  So how do you avoid the shopping spree mentality and invest your final F18 budget in a way that makes a difference for your language learners?  As schools also begin planning their professional learning for the 2018-2019 school year, the five areas below are several “must have’s” that all schools should include and advocate for their dual language and bilingual programs. Program evaluation: Every dual language and bilingual program must analyze the needs of their educational community before building a comprehensive plan to coordinate supports.  Careful diagnosis of the districts’ programs must include an analysis of a variety of data sources, as well as utilizing other qualitative data to ensure effective services and outcomes.  The process should be methodical and flexible for dual language and bilingual program administrators to get a clear understanding of accountability, evidence to support a new program implementation, increase effectiveness of pedagogy and practices, or generally assessing needs. Leadership Training: Every leader should have the training and tools to lead and grow their dual language and bilingual programs.  This includes understanding how the curriculum and instructional practices should look the same and when they should look different in these classrooms. Additionally, every DL and bilingual program leader (building and district level) should have the opportunity to build their capacity for observing instruction that occurs in a language other than English and offering constructive feedback around strengths and opportunities for growth.  This cycle of feedback is a critical lever for improving student achievement. Equity Training: As record achievement gaps are reported across the country for dual language, bilingual, and English Learners, schools must work together to explore and analyze issues of inequitable distribution of resources, limited access in education, and how issues of race, culture, language, and identity create doors or barriers to opportunities for students. If schools are to change limiting beliefs, policies, and resource distribution models, misconceptions about students assets (rather than their deficits), social norms, and academic achievement must be rooted in a deeper understanding of the role that bias (both blatant and invisible) plays in the academic success of each student.    Accepting the sociocultural-linguistic biases within their schools improves educators’ ability to become mutually responsible learners with and from students to design more effective practices, materials, and systems that lead to student growth. Spanish Literacy: Teachers have many opportunities to build their expertise and knowledge of strategies to teach reading in English.  However, very few teachers in dual language and bilingual programs have received ongoing professional development that support their examination of the similarities and differences between English and Spanish. In addition to speaking Spanish, teachers in dual language and bilingual programs need to explicitly learn how Spanish literacy is developed authentically if they are to create a literacy experience that develops the sounds, words, sentence structures, and context that help students become biliterate. Ongoing coaching plans for key personnel: Educators need continuous follow up during the implementation of new ideas and practices – initial training is simply not sufficient. Ongoing coaching plans for key personnel (e.g. instructional coaches, dual language teachers, principals, etc.), allow schools to design coaching cycles which can encompass the following components: building the initial prerequisite skills & understandings, expertise in practices & tools to make new learning accessible, fidelity of implementation, effectiveness through formative assessment, and differentiated support based on need to continue improving practice. If you are interested in more information regarding any of these school supports, we would appreciate the opportunity to discuss supporting you through your program’s dual language, bilingual, ELL, and leadership training needs to improve your diverse students’ long-term success.  Please email us at alexandra.guilamo@tajulearning.com or call us at 312 – 800 – 3477.

What Makes an Exemplary Curriculum for Language Learners?

The success of linguistically and culturally diverse students has become a shared goal for educators and policy-makers across both political lines because there are now over 5 million students from homes where a language other than English is spoken.   The impact of this fast paced-growth began with grants, funding sources, and other program level compliances.  However, the consistent failure to see achievement and growth in both language and content, has created a shift in the conversation from minutes of instruction to what educators are teaching and what they are doing to change the consistent failure. It is a conversation that inevitably leads to curriculum. Is there a curriculum that is best for language learners?   Is there one that is better for dual language programs, versus bilingual programs, versus ESL programs?  And while I have my own views on whether curriculum should be the focus of the conversation, here is the short answer from an article I am in the process of submitting. Curriculum that have historically served language learners have consistently been characterized by learning that is less challenging, more repetitive, more focused on skills that require low levels of thinking and denies students the opportunity to engage in any type of productive struggle.  It is, in short, a curriculum that ensures language learners do not grow and remain uninspired to move beyond their current possibility in life. How do you know if you have this type of curriculum?  Ask yourself the following questions: Does the teacher do most of the thinking? Do the lessons leave students unsure of what to do with new learning after the lesson? Does the curriculum allow students to sit passively and “stay under the radar”? These remedial-mentality curriculum leave learners with little opportunity for achievement.  On the contrary, any curriculum that can reach the level of being exemplary must provide content, concepts, language, and meaningful opportunities to create knowledge that is worth learning within a context that allows every student to be a part of the larger community regardless of their language proficiency.  In thinking about curriculum in this way, there is no perfect curriculum.  Rather, the perfect curriculum comes from knowing who each and every child is, and using that knowledge to adapt the materials’ ability to help each child make meaning, seek the answers to real questions, and develop more complex ways to communicate their truth within the world. Even still, there are some criteria that must be part of how we evaluate the efficacy of our curriculum for our language learners. The following are not the only criteria that should be used to evaluate curriculum.  However, if you are looking to evaluate your current curriculum materials, or looking to adopt a new one, these three criteria should top your “look for’s”: The curriculum affirms the identity of the students that are meant its beneficiaries: meaning it provide content, concepts, and creation of knowledge (pedagogy) worth learning, and that it honors the life experiences that have shaped the individuals they are and will choose to become. Provides modeling, shared practice, oracy, and independent learning experiences that include variety and choice in how they apply that learning and challenge the way they look at things. Allows for authentic and high-quality pedagogy for the language of instruction, and authentic and worthy tasks/artifacts to support the access and achievement of each diverse learner.   These three criteria are critical.  If we cannot, at a bare minimum, say that our curriculum affirms the learners who it was purchased for, that there are a range of paths for students to apply that learning, and that the pedagogy is authentic, we cannot expect to have different outcomes.  So, what will you do to ensure that your curriculum doesn’t work against your goals?    

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.

Part 4: Prefixes and Suffixes

Over the last few weeks, we have looked at the different strategies for improving students’ ability to acquire new vocabulary words. Teaching prefixes and suffixes (together known as affixes) is just one more strategy teachers can provide to students in order to help them infer the meaning of unknown words that are encountered as they read every day. While teaching affixes is a great morphemic clue to leverage (by that, I mean any meaningful part of the word), it is important to know that it is not the only one.   Other morphemic clues that students can leverage include: Compound words Derivational suffixes Word parts For today, however, we will focus on how you can teach students to use affix clues in a word, without spending a month having them memorize prefixes and suffixes which will undoubtedly impact the personal investment, consciousness, and enjoyment of words that is at the center of effective vocabulary instruction. In order to leverage the “minds-on” type of engagement that students need to truly and deeply acquire vocabulary, you can follow the strategy below which combines explicit instruction with student ownership. When students come to a word they don’t know that may contain a prefix/suffix, STOP First remove the prefix/suffix from the rest of the word See if there is a real word left Have students collaboratively come to an understanding of what the prefix/suffix means on their own Combine the meaning of the prefix with the meaning of the remaining word Use the replacement strategy by putting the new meaning in the sentence to see if it makes sense A few closing thoughts. This work is intended to extend throughout the span of the year. It is not a unit that you teach and lay to rest. Rather a strategy that students continue to refine and practice over longer periods of time with continuous feedback.   Part of that feedback can lie in how students transfer the knowledge gained from this work to other areas of the school day and life. For example, are you seeing the use of these prefixes and suffixes in their writing, when they encounter these similar word patterns in their Science books, when the same prefixes are attached to terms in Math? Finally, as with all areas of teaching, motivation and engagement is the key. Students need to see the value, personal success, and benefit of learning not only the strategies but investing in this level of mental rigor. To that end, continue to leverage the ideas offered in part 1, Word Consciousness, and part 2, Word Play. If there are additional ways that you motivate and engage your students to invest in word learning, please comment below. Or you can email us at tajulearning@gmail.com. ***For a complete look at how to teach prefixes and suffixes, look at our resource titled, Inside Word Clues– A Common Core Aligned Unit for teaching affixes, compounds, derivational endings and more.  

Part 3 – Strategies for Learning Unknown Words

 Yes, students need access to a large bank of words in order to be successful readers. But they also need to be able to process and analyze new words for meaning as they encounter them. Without this skill, readers miss important parts of text that hinders their ability to make meaning. These “word learning strategies” generally fall into two categories. The first category is “inside” the word clues (from here on out referred to as inside strategies). These clues come from the morphemic analysis of the word itself. The second category is “outside” the word clues (from here on out referred to as outside strategies. These clues come from the contextual analysis of the surrounding text and text features of a passage. When teaching inside strategies, teachers have the opportunity to show students that we can find meaning in a word by looking at its important parts. Students do so by looking at root words, base words, affixes, inflectional endings, and chunking. When teaching inside strategies to ELL’s and struggling learners, consider including these critical pieces as part of direct instruction. Know that gradual release (teacher modeling, shared practice, guided practice, independent practice and application) of this skill is necessary for effective implementation by students. Look to see if there is any word chunk that you recognize (either base, root, or other high frequency word you know). Take apart the word into any bases or roots and their affixes. Find meaning from those word parts that you’ve taken apart. Rebuild that word using the meaning you’ve gleaned from each important part. When teaching outside strategies it is important to help students see syntactic and semantic clues provided by surrounding words and phrases. Syntax is a fancy way of talking about the rules that form our grammar structure and the patterns that we find in sentences (e.g. if you see a subject first, you know that a verb must follow). Semantics simply means, meaning or an interpretation of its meaning. Therefore, outside strategies really help students understand how to use what they know about English and the meaning of the surrounding text to make educated guesses about what a word means. When teaching outside strategies to ELL’s and struggling learners, it is important to include the following components as part of the process for increasing vocabulary development. Teach students that writers use specific clues to the meaning of challenging words in the text. Deliver explicit instruction that includes modeling and examples of the various types of context clues (i.e. definition, synonym, antonym, example, and general). Provide guided practice in using context clues with authentic and appropriately challenging texts. Now, I know that we have simplified this process greatly. However, if you are interested in what these two approaches might look like, please take a look at our products Context Clues and Text Clues. Both of these common core aligned resources provide student reference sheets, anchor charts, activities, and explicit examples for teaching inside and outside word clues. And, as always, if you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to send us a message. By: Alexandra Guilamo

Vocabulary Instruction: Part 2/6 Word Play for Teachers of English Learners and Struggling Students

In part 1 of this series we talked about word consciousness being whether students grasped that words are the currency of the English language and whether they “bought into” reason why words are essential. We offered a number of strategies to achieve this: from having a word-rich environment, time for metacognition, student choice, and student ownership. While these elements are critical, none is more critical than the general affect students have towards word learning. What does this mean? Affect is the general feeling and emotions that students have toward vocabulary instruction and word learning. The reality is that we now understand that vocabulary instruction must be more an act of metacognition than anything else. However, to get students to think about what they know, how they know it, and to extend that knowledge to other examples, students have to “feel like it”, or have the desire and the positive affect towards the activity and the level of thinking required to complete it. In the Danielson Framework for teaching, she talks about this as the culture for learning – “the classroom culture is a cognitively busy place characterized by a shared belief in the importance of learning…” Vocabulary instruction, arguably, must leverage this culture for learning piece more than ever. Yet, vocabulary instruction has not traditionally been an activity that lead teachers or students to jump for joy. There seems to be an unspoken sentencing and submission to word work and vocabulary development being boring. And everyone seems to be at a loss to change this course thinking. So what will it take to create a fun, “cognitively busy place” where kids have “bought into” the significance of words and their identities as readers of words? One place to start is games. We all love to play games, and some games seem to bring a sense of nostalgia, ease, joy, and willingness to all who partake. By tweaking the nature of a number of classics and adding simple questions like: “how do you know”, “what’s another example that shows the same pattern”, “what is a right time and a wrong time to use this word”, etc., you can create a fun and metacognitively busy place where students are begging to have to time to play with words. So what are some games that lend themselves to targeted vocabulary and positive affect and culture? Word pattern tic tac toe Synonym or antonym dominoes Vocabu-nopoly (vocabulary monopoly) Hang-man Pictionary Charades Scrabble Word hunts (not word searches) Go fish with definitions or synonyms Word pattern or word meaning Bingo If you are looking for more ideas on word work games, or you’d like to see how these games might help your classroom, take a look at our 30 Ready-Made Games for Vocabulary Development (in English and Spanish) in the product section of our website. Author: Alexandra Guilamo TaJu Educational Solutions Provider

Vocabulary Instruction: Part 1 – Building Word Consciousness for ELs and Struggling Students

Word Power for ELLs

“Word consciousness – and especially understanding the power of word choice – is essential for sustained vocabulary growth. Words are the currency of written language. Learning new words is an investment, and students will make the required investment to the extent that they believe that the investment is worthwhile.” Judith Scott and William Nagy. Because of the fact that words are the “currency” of the written language, word consciousness, although a relatively new concept, is critical to its successful application. Word consciousness involves two critical components. The first is an appreciation of the currency. Do students value new and vivid words, do they notice and appreciate descriptive language, do they stop and think about word choice in texts they read and in their own writing, etc? The second aspect of word consciousness is the idea that this awareness of and interest in words will lead students to the ability to know a word to the extent that they will have the desire to play with its meaning and apply it flexibly and accurately. It means that they will be invested enough to know a word truly in order to apply that knowledge anywhere at any time. This is an immense task. But at the center of this challenge is the question of whether or not students even know “why words are important”. It is not enough for the adults who teach them to merely tell students about the power of this currency. Rather, students must appreciate the importance of words and their use for themselves. They must first have a sense of gratefulness for the way words can make a person feel and the things words can do beyond the page before they can be asked to invest so fully in the tasks of awareness and investment in this currency. So what are some quick ways that can teachers build word consciousness in their classrooms? • Let students lead and own how they define the importance of words and their use. • Be interested in words yourself. Research has shown that when adults notice new words and get excited, that pattern of excitement is continued by the students who see this model. • Have a word-rich classroom where students’ exposure to vocabulary. Students should be surrounded by words and books and motivated to learn the words within them. • A safe environment where students feel comfortable trying out new words and talking about that choice is critical. • Students become more engage with words when they have the opportunity to play games, puzzles, and take part in activities that allow them word choice. • Give students choice. Self-direction is a powerful motivator for many activities, but even more so for the development of affect towards new words. • Students must have intentionally planned time to engage in metacognitive discussions about word meaning interpretations, word parts, and other conceptual knowledge that will help them transfer the words to different contexts. • Gradient activities allow students to see and play with relationships of “degree” between similar words with connotations such as angry and livid while leveraging nonlinguistic representations.

Vocabulary Instruction: A 6 Part Series for Teachers of English Learners and Struggling Students

Looking back on my years as a classroom teacher, I now wonder if I did enough to boost students’ vocabulary, their ability to manipulate word parts, their curiosity of the words chosen by an author, and their overall love of words. I know the answer is no. This is in large part to the fact that I didn’t know half of what I do now about vocabulary instruction and development. As a younger teacher, I also did not appreciate the necessity of high quality practice that led to deep word meaning as part of a high quality literacy program. I thought I was a great Reading teacher without being a great word teacher. However, after years of research and practice, there are a number of truths that have emerged. In the upcoming weeks, we will take a look at these “truths” about vocabulary instruction. These truths are based on educational research findings around vocabulary development and the elements of best practice literacy instruction. The hope is that this series will give you new insight, new resources, new ideas, and a plethora of instructional strategies to try out in your classrooms. As we dive into this work of expanding students’ knowledge of and consciousness towards words, please know that it will be messy. All great learning is. But I encourage you to share both your successful and failing lessons, so that as a community, we can learn from one another. The topic of the next 6 Sunday posts are: • 1/6 – Word Consciousness • 2/6 – Word Play • 3/6 – Strategies for Learning Unknown Words • 4/6 – Prefixes and Suffixes • 5/6 – Cognates • 6/6 – The Language of the Common Core If there is an additional topic that you would like to see posted, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at tajulearning@gmail.com and we’ll will be sure to include it.