Task 2: Readings – Freeman & Freeman Chapter 8 & 9
Pre-Posting – Read both of these chapers (8-How Should We Teach Reading to Emergent Bilinguals? & 9-How Can Teacher Help Ells Develop Academic Language?) and consider what they confirm or add to your knowledge of working well with English language learners.
Posting – Review the applications section at the end of each chapter p. 223 & p. 256) identify 2 you would like to try/explore in the future. Please explain why you chose it, what its relevance is for you personally, and your plan for the application you chose. Clarify what you see as the key to English language learners
Application #1 | Engagement is key to reading success, especially for emergent bilinguals. Bring to class two books that you have found to engage your students. Explain how you used the books and why you think the books were engaging for your students (page 223).
ReplyDeleteOk, in the elementary school art room, we use picture books to introduce pretty much everything. For example, so far this year for 1st grade we’ve used “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” and “Little Green” to introduce different types of lines. We’re currently using “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” and a generic “shape” book I can’t remember the name of, to introduce how lines become shapes, and how shapes are used to create images. Picture books are one of my favorite types of visual aids, because they often include simple academic language and vocabulary, and illustrate images in easy-to-break-down ways. Picture books engage students because they create the opportunity for students to make personal connections and ask extra questions. Students are able to view text, listen to text, AND see images that interpret text at the same time. Picture books are great because they’re exactly that: pictures! There’s a reason we use the cliché, “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” This is excellent for ELL learners because it gives a variety of examples and potential ways to process information about one thing. The more students are able to associate certain picture books and images with verbal text, the sooner they are able to see connections between the two, and begin developing a deeper understanding of both language and content.
Molly, as an ELL teacher AND connoisseur of children’s books, could you share some more specific examples/ways we can use picture books to help ELL students in the classroom? Mike too! What are your thoughts?
Application # 2 | Teachers can scaffold instruction to bridge from conversational to academic language (page 255).
Ian provided a GREAT example of this application in our Week 4 discussion when we were laughing at an unrealistic example of a teacher asking a student to “activate his prior knowledge in order to answer the question.” Ian was able to parse out a hypothetical conversation that illustrates a realistic way in which we can scaffold instruction in order to create bridge between conversational and academic language:
(Asking students if there are any other solid materials found within the atmosphere)
Teacher: Give me an example
Student: I don't know
Teacher: Well, what did we talk about last unit?
Student: Plant stuff
Teacher: Right, do you remember how they reproduce? How do they make more plants?
Student: I don't know. They make that dust stuff
Teacher: Pollen?
Student: Yeah, pollen.
Teacher: Okay, pollen needs to get from one plant to another. How does some pollen travel?
Student: Bees.
Teacher: Yeah, bees is one way. How else does pollen travel?
Student: I don't know. In the air. Oh!? Pollen is in the atmosphere.
Teacher: Yeah that’s right, besides gas, there is pollen and other small plant material in the atmosphere.
(Btw Ian, you’re an awesome example-maker-upper. I’ll make sure I contact you when I need examples for future art classes)
Karin, couldn’t agree with you more that a picture is worth 1,000 words. Especailly for our low proficient ELL students, they have no choice but to be visual learners at first. I’m so glad you asked about how to incorporate picture books to help ELL’s! I’m just going to talk about a few things in general that you may or may not be able to use in an art classroom.
Delete-Choral reading(reading aloud together): Repetitive books like “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you See?” helps students predict what is going to happen and practice the fluidity of reading.
-ELL students are able to interpret information visually and pictures are easy to comprehend in any language. Even the playing field for ELL students by choosing a picture book that doesn’t have any words and create an assignment for the general classroom that has to do with comprehending and replicating the material in the book. ELL’s are then able to create their own image, the way that they interpreted it without someone telling them HOW to do it.
-Onamonapias: These are words that imitate the sounds they are associated with. Children’s books are filllllllllled with onamonapias, and as long as you explain what they are at the beginning of the book, children will be more engaged and more likely to follow along with exciting words such as those.
Hope these few examples help!
Karin, the examples Molly gave are excellent and represent some of the ways that we can help English Language Learners - as well as beginning readers who are native English speakers - to engage with picture books.
DeleteTo add my input, I will refer to something you wrote in your original post. This quote from your post is the most telling:
"Picture books engage students because they create the opportunity for students to make personal connections and ask extra questions."
If we encourage our students to identify more closely with the text, and to ask questions about the things they see in the pictures, they will begin their development of the sophisticated reading processes they will use as they grow up.
One way to do this as a teacher, and something I do with my own children, is to ask them questions about the pictures, to try and stimulate their thinking. The most obvious is asking questions about the main character, such as "How do you think she feels?" or "What do you think he is going to do?"
Beyond that, though, if you've got a book with a lot of stuff going on in the background, you can ask questions about that. A lot of picture books and illustrated children's books will have a lot of detail in the background. I like to ask questions about the things in the background because I think it helps encourage thinking about the "big picture" and paying attention to details other than the main ones. This kind of reading and thinking about background or peripheral details will work better for some students than others; I think it's strongly connected to the differences between field-dependent and field-independent learners. Unfortunately, even at this stage I constantly struggle remembering which is which.
Anecdotally, I've seen the results of this over the long-term of reading with my boys. Now when we read, they will point things out to me in the backgrounds of pictures that are not part of the main detail. Just earlier today, we were reading a book about some kids who traveled back in time to a medieval castle. In every picture, there is a kid in the background chasing a pig. (Just bear with me for this example...!) Anyway, by the time we got halfway through the book, my boys were pointing it out to me. At the same time, they were paying attention to the main story, and asking a lot of questions about it, too.
I hope that helps!
I am excited to connect things to my own curriculum at some point. Right now, I’m feeling a disconnection between the content and the students in my field experience. The students seem to still be into everything, but there isn’t the level of engagement beyond the actual thing we are doing if that makes sense. Like they are engaged because they aren’t doing math, not because they care about what the class is doing. Maybe something will get connected to a book or a culture, but it usually doesn’t go beyond the surface.
DeleteI am excited to implement my own ideas in my student teaching next semester as right now I have just been modifying my cooperating teacher’s curriculum to fit my course requirements.
As a sort of side note, has your co-operating teacher given you a lot of freedom in changing things? Do you feel comfortable trying to change things?
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ReplyDeleteSorry I deleted this before. The formatting was off and I can't edit posts anymore for some reason.
ReplyDelete“Many English language learners have become good “word callers.” Too much time decoding, not enough time reading engaging text. What’s been your experience with ELLs? Are they “word callers”?”
I don’t think I’ve had enough experience working with ELL students to really have an informed opinion about this area, but it’s an interesting idea to. I’m curious to see if anyone in the group has noticed this and to what extent. I can speak to students in general and I think there are a lot of students, not just ELL, who do a good job going through the motions of reading, writing, or speaking and slip by under the radar.
Whatever the case with a student, this got me thinking about the awesome color method that Erik and Mike presented in the last class. I think strategies like this could do a lot of good. If a method is as involved and multifaceted as Mike and Erik’s it leave little doubt as to whether a student is going through the motions are really getting a concept.
Since I mentioned that color model from last lesson, I’d like to say how awesome it is. It really seems like something viable. It also ties in with some of the reading in chapter 9 regarding academic vocabulary. One of the potential criticisms of the color model (sorry, I don’t remember exactly what you called it) is that it is pretty intensive. The whole process could take a lot of time to solidify understanding of a single word, but I don’t think that is actually a problem. Chapter 9 suggests that giving a few words each week is actually more beneficial than bombarding students with language. I know we do this in art: practically every unit focuses on only a few pieces of vocabulary. I mean, nearly all of early art education is just working with a handful of words (the elements and principles).
“Look back at Cummins’ quadrant. List several activities you have done with your students or that you have observed that fit in Quadrant B (cognitively demanding and context embedded).”
From the text: “In addition, we can see what we are discussing or if we have pictures or other visual cues, it is easier to follow the conversations, even if we lack full language proficiency.” This is all part of embedding content in context and its what we do in the art room. I realize most of my posts are “here why art is awesome”, but seriously, the art room lives in quadrant B.
The “context-reduced” zone exists on the other side of the scale and it relies on language outside of context. From the reading, I take it as a necessary evil in education. The example given is standardized tests. Questions are not necessarily related and little to no visual clues are given. This rarely happens in the art room (at least my art rooms).
In another win for art (at least in terms of this theory), the “cognitive demanding” side of the scale relies on background knowledge instead of the subject. Art is focused on building upon prior knowledge and techniques, which become more in-depth as experience is gained. Instruction is scaffolded over short and long periods of time to make “difficult concepts comprehensible”. This occurs in art from lesson-to-lesson, unit-to-unit, and year-to-year.
Basically, art lives in the “context-embedded, cognitively demanding” quadrant, which is the target environment for teaching according to this theory. Art rocks.
Couldn't agree more, Mike and Erik's color lesson was spot on. What a great example and is very memorable. I think it's important to look not only at ELL's for "word callers" but all students. Many young learners see "sight words" and are able to read them, but have no level of comprehension. You talked about the importance of incorporating a few words at a time....like you do in art. It's a great and effective idea so the students aren't flooded with information.
DeleteIan, regarding your second point first, what a great example of how art is solidly rooted in quadrant B. I know in some of my field experiences I've asked myself "Why are the students doing this?" and that was usually when the context wasn't clear. While times have changed and maybe I'm not embedded enough in the school culture to fully gauge what was going on, it felt like the meaning and "big picture" aspect of the tasks in question was not always clear.
DeleteAs for the color model (in the text, it was called "student friendly vocabulary explanations") I think the reason Erik and I liked it so much was because its multi-faceted approach seemed to almost guarantee comprehension of the new vocabulary. It does get pretty involved, but like you said, when it's used wisely, I'll bet it's extremely effective.
I haven't had a lot of direct experience with word callers now that I think about it. I spent just a little bit of time with some middle schoolers who might fall under that label. In my own classroom, ways that I would promote reading comprehension would be jigsaw techniques for comprehension questions, as well as think-pair-share questions, so students could collaborate toward the end product. I think one way to make sure kids don't slip by under the radar is by holding them accountable for some aspect of the reading. Not to embarrass them or intimidate them, but to get them involved from the beginning and keep them there.
"Art is focused on building upon prior knowledge and techniques, which become more in-depth as experience is gained." Great comment Ian! I noticed this in a BIG way when I was writing my Op Art and Installation Art units this semester. When filling out the TPA sections related to prior knowledge, my responses became more in depth and built upon the knowledge taught in each previous lesson. I had a hard time deciding where to stop, since I could have easily explained how the lesson builds on student knowledge all the way back to learning how to hold a pencil!
Delete“If I'm going to teach these kids English, why would I use books that have Spanish in them? They should be using only English."
ReplyDeleteIn my ESL classes, we’ve talked about the importance of incorporating the students native language in their second language learning. This is especially true if the student has strong literacy skills in their first language, because they are then more apt to learn English literacy skills at a faster pace. Teachers need to incorporate and support native cultures and languages so students are more motivated and encouraged to learn content information. I think it’s important to turn the situation around and pretend you were placed in another culture with another language you don’t know. How would you want to be treated? Would you want English to be incorporated into you learning? What about the American culture? Would you appreciate if teachers incorporated it into your learning?
"I can't use bilingual books with my student because they have both English and Spanish in the same book. That's like concurrent translation.”
When second language learning, many if not most students use a combination of their first and second languages. Especially for low proficient students, they are already focusing on learning visually for everything. By incorporating bilingual texts, the students are able to maintain a higher level of focus and comprehension
Molly, you make a really good point here and I have an example I can share. My wife had a student who was an ELL and was really struggling with the language. For one unit, they were going to be reading Dickens's "A Christmas Carol." She was really concerned he would not be able to keep up. We ordered a dual-language copy of the book from Amazon in order to help him. He still struggled answering the comprehension questions, but my wife said that it seemed to help him stay relatively up to speed with the rest of the class.
DeleteYour golden rule example really resonates with me. From the beginning of this program, I've been thinking about harmonizing my curriculum with my students' home cultures and languages. While the ultimate goal is their English proficiency, it's a disservice to our students to disregard their first language entirely. I think using their native language as a scaffold in reading is an excellent tool to keep available. Similarly, I think that asking students to compare themes or topics from our readings with things that are culturally relevant for them is important, too.
Like you, I would turn the question back on the person asking "Why?" To them I would ask, "Why not?" For me, it's also connected to that "Get it Right in the End" approach we discussed in Vlad's class. I wonder if the sample question in your topic is an example of "white privilege." I think a lot of people might ask that question simply because they don't understand how important culturally relevant materials really are.
I love when teachers incorporate other languages into the classroom on any level. It's helpful for ALL students, ELL and native English speakers alike. Your post makes me think of immersion schools. There are several students I tutor who attend the International School of Minnesota or Spanish (or other language) immersion schools. Both school teach lessons taught in different languages spoken by native speakers on a daily basis. Of course, schools like this are usually private and require funding many student families, ELL and non-ELL, are unable to afford. I wonder what ways we can incorporate the idea of language immersion into public school classrooms...definitely something that requires a lot more thought!
DeleteMy mother works in an elementary school library and I was excited that they are building sections in their library specific to language learning for the current/future ELL students. They have been looking at the native languages of the school’s population and searching out resources for the students to read. Books in these languages, bilingual books, and culturally relevant materials in English. It is a big task, and it is a work in progress, but I think viewing the library as an evolving resource that changes to meet the needs of the student population is an interesting idea.
DeleteYou mentioned whether I (not me personally, but you know what I mean) would want to have representations of my own culture or language in my learning. I personally wouldn’t, but I have that sort of disassociation with my culture. I see this associated with white-privilege. I don’t see myself as “white” (not having to view yourself as a race when you are white, is one part of white privilege) just as I find value in my individuality and not place in a larger group.
HOWEVER, this doesn’t mean that other people shouldn’t have their languages, cultures or customs incorporated into education just because I don’t think I would care. Too many people think that because they don’t care about something it isn’t important. A person rationalizing inequality because of personal indifference constantly baffles me. Instead of thinking about how I would like to be treated, I like to think about how others want to be treated. I find it helps to get around actions and ways of thinking that might be a symptom of an unequal system.
The two key points I will focus on for this task are the first point from Chapter 8 (Engagement is a key to reading success for English Language Learners [ELLs]) and the ninth (Even when ELLs are tested for academic content, the tests are often measures of English proficiency.)
ReplyDeleteI’m going to start with the latter point first. Teachers really need to be careful to consider how much their tests and assignments are language-dependent. It’s OK if they are, but we need to consider how we will accommodate the ELLs who may not have the language skills available to demonstrate their content knowledge. I know we’ve talked a little about the high stakes testing that goes on in schools nowadays, but those kinds of tests we don’t really have a lot of power over. I think what’s important to remember in our own classrooms is that, when we have the opportunity to design our own assessments, that we make sure our assessments are accurately measuring what we want them to measure. Another way to think about it is to ask ourselves, “How can this student demonstrate their knowledge, skill, or ability? Am I being too rigid in my assessment?” Yes assessments need to be fair and equitable for all, so nobody gets to take an easy way out, but we are all different types of learners and performers, and ideally we should let our students show us their strengths whenever we can let them.
As for engagement and reading, yes, yes, and yes. Texts for students should be meaningful and relevant. It might always be that way for all of our students 100% of the time, but we should try to keep our students’ interests and backgrounds in mind when selecting texts for them to read. Sometimes we don’t have that luxury. Maybe we need to have our students read something in particular, like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Watership Down.” Those books might not have much of a connection to our students and their lives, despite how awesome we think those books might be, or how important the curriculum has stated they are.
So, how do we engage them? Briefly, we try to capture their interest. Find the theme or concepts in the text that might resonate with the students, and help them develop a connection that way. Consider a little boy, presented with a book by a kindly grandfather. The kid isn’t very excited about “some old book,” until his grandfather explains it’s a book about fencing, fighting, chases, escapes, giants, monsters, torture, revenge, true love, and miracles. Only then does the kid decide to give it a chance, and we all know how awesome the story in that “old book” turned out to be.
My point is this: Reading might not always seem to be the type of fun and exciting thing for our students that we want it to be, but we have the tools at our disposal (the students’ own background, interests, and motivations for learning) to make it happen.
I just realized I posted on key points instead of applications. D'oh! I will be adding a new post later today.
ReplyDeleteAlright, so I wrote about key points (above) instead of applications. So, to make up for that, here is a post about the applications. (Part 1 of 2)
ReplyDeleteChapter 8, Application 5: What are some ways you can use bilingual books in your classroom? This week choose one of the ways and use a bilingual book in your teaching. Be prepared to explain how it went.
One of the biggest factors for me would be choosing something that is culturally relevant. I know from my own experience reading when I was younger, it was hard to make connections to stories about kids living in big cities or places I was unfamiliar with. I think one concern with bilingual books is that the stories might be too regional, and I wonder how much my students would be able to make connections with a story that was in their language, but was about people or places they were unfamiliar with. A lot of the English Language learners I have encountered were born in the U.S., so they might not have any more idea what it’s like to be in Mexico or Laos than the native-speaking students in their mainstream classrooms.
One example from the text that I really liked was that of Green Corn Tamales: Tamales de elote. That was basically a retelling of the Little Red Hen tale. Now, that example would probably be more appropriate for young readers, but I liked how it could be used to work with predicting. But there’s more that can be done. There are a lot of universal elements to folk tales and traditional tales. I think it would be interesting to find ways to read these kinds of tales in bilingual texts, or to do cross-cultural comparisons to stimulate reading for older students. I think by comparing a familiar tale with a similar tale from another language or culture, students can begin developing those metacognitive, “behind-the-scenes” reading skills they need to become truly effective readers. I would also try to get my students to retell the folktales from their own cultures in the setting where they live now. I think that would be something engaging to do in an integrated classroom, to promote more cultural awareness for all students as well as language learning skills. For example, maybe a native speaking student and an English Language Learner could retell Little Red Riding Hood with St. Paul as the setting (if that’s where they lived), or the pair could retell a Hmong folktale, setting it in the Minnesota River Valley near Shakopee.
(Part 2 of 2)
ReplyDeleteChapter 9, Application 3: This chapter suggests several ways to teach academic vocabulary. Try one or more of these and write up what you did and how it worked.
So many interesting ways to teach vocabulary, how can I pick? Well, I will just write briefly on a few of them, and on one from our in-class session.
In the text they talked about Krashen’s emphasis on free voluntary reading’s contributions to vocabulary building. Molly and I got to watch a lecture Krashen gave where he discussed this very topic. I think this is fantastic and I hope to be able to encourage my students to do this by offering time to do it in class, and by instilling a positive attitude toward reading in them so that they will read at home, too. I know that sometimes they might not have the time, so I will have to keep my expectations realistic. That’s also why I plan to use other methods.
I like the idea of teaching word learning strategies, especially focusing on Greek and Latin roots. Now, a lot of ELLs will come from languages that have no connection to Greek or Latin, so that might be tough for them. But all those prefixes and suffixes are so deeply embedded in English, it’s going to help students to learn the etymology of words so that they can make educated guesses at meaning when they are reading, and to broaden their writing vocabulary as well.
I also like the idea of teaching students to draw on cognates. Obviously, this won’t work with students from all languages, but it will work for students whose first language is Spanish, who make up a significant number of the ELLs in many classrooms. Depending on the demographics of my own classroom, I would use this in combination with the Greek and Latin roots vocabulary building strategies, adjusting according to the native languages of my students.
Finally, I like their recommendation to use reference tools. It will be helpful to teach my students how to use a dictionary (online and paper format) so that they can get the best use out of the tool.
I would use all of these strategies in combination with the “student friendly vocabulary explanations” (the color model) that Erik and I presented in our in-person class last week. I really liked that strategy and I see how it would be very effective for learning the most important words in a lesson or unit.
Mike thank you for the plethora of vocabulary teaching strategies. So much of our education revolves around vocabulary and the words we do and do not know. I use visual images to the nines in teaching vocabulary, so much sometimes, that I often start focusing on pictures and visual depictions MORE than teaching about the value of actual text or spoken language (of course, that's probably just my visual learner showing again.)
DeleteI also really appreciated the ways you offered for re-telling certain folk tales and stories. It makes me want to create a visual arts unit related to re-telling and manipulating stories in ways that fit more closely with student's personal cultures and backgrounds. Thank you for the inspiration!
The lack of restriction placed on art teachers in regards to evaluation is great for accommodating ELL students. We don’t need to standardize a lot of things (some people say it is coming) and that let’s the art teachers modify tests and the like with relative freedom. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case in the rest of the school.
DeleteI personally try and identify what is important in an assessment. Is it evaluating technique or understanding of a concept or is it the language itself. If it isn’t the language, there is no reason to not make that language as accessible to the student as possible. The point of the assessment isn’t whether a student can decode the test language, but do they know the content of the test.
I am surprised more time is not spent in class on the structural origin of words. Maybe it makes the whole process unnatural, or maybe English is too messed up to teach that structure because it is drawn from too many origins, or maybe it is taught that way and I’m dumb.
Regardless of my ignorance, it seems focusing on things like prefix and suffix should be involved in learning English. I imagine it can help with not just decoding, but comprehension. I mean, three letters like “pre” are embedded with so much context, it seems foolish not to give this part of language some attention in the classroom.