Teaching
English languagE Across the content AreAs











Judie hAynes and  debbie ZAcAriAn










TEACHING
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACROSS THE CONTENT AREAS











TEACHING
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACROSS THE CONTENT AREAS



















JUDIE HAYNES and DEBBIE ZACARIAN








Alexandria, Virginia USA



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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haynes, Judie.
Teaching English language learners across the content areas / Judie Haynes and Debbie Zacarian.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4166-0912-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1.  English language—Study and teaching (Elementary)—Foreign speakers. 2. English language— Study and teaching (Secondary)—Foreign speakers. 3. Second language acquisition. I. Zacarian, Debbie.   II.  Title.
PE1128.A2H3836 2010
428.2’4—dc22
2009040131

20 19 18 17 16 15  14 13 12 11  10 09          1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11  12

TEACHING
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACROSS THE CONTENT AREAS



Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1:    Creating  an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment . . . . . . 5

2:  Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal
Engagement of ELLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3:  Small-Group Work and ELLs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

4:  Content  Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs  . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5:    Reading Comprehension  Instruction for ELLs. . . . . . . .  71

6:    Writing Instruction for ELLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

7:    Homework  and Assessment for ELLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

8:    Communicating  Effectively with Parents of ELLs . . . . 119

9:   Effective ELL Instruction in Action  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135


Appendix 1: Suggested Verbs to Use When
Composing  Language Objectives . . . . . . . . . 147

Appendix 2: Lesson Modification  Worksheet  . . . . . . . . . . 151

Appendix 3: Home Language Survey   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Appendix 4: Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

About the Authors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181


v
















FOREWORD
By Elizabeth Claire








The worst day in my life was my first day of school in the United States. I felt like an alien. . . . I didn’t understand any- thing. I didn’t know anybody at  all.  I was late to all of my classes. It was like a  nightmare.  I just sat down and put my head down on my  desk. I wished for the end of the day,  so I could go home.—C.M., a 7th grade ELL student

Stories like the one above are multiplied a thousand times each day across the United  States as newcomers sit in mainstream classes at the mercy of their teacher’s patience, sensitivity, and preparation for their arrival. Whether these newcomers spend the day bored and frustrated or engaged in meaningful activi- ties and socializing with their classmates is all up to the subject area teacher for the greater part of their day. Newcomers  form an  increasingly large percentage of our public school popu- lation. They  are tomorrow’s workforce,  citizens, and parents. What happens to them matters deeply to all of us.


vii
viii | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



When  I was a mainstream teacher,  before I became an ESL teacher, I certainly had plenty of sensitivity, but not much preparation, and my hands were more  than  full, so I know what the problems are from both sides of the table. I was often guilt-ridden because I didn’t know how to find time to give the amount of attention these newcomers needed and still cover what had to be covered for English-fluent students.


Multiply   me by 6.2 million teachers across the United States, most  of  whom  teach  classes  that  include  English language learners.


Judie Haynes and Debbie  Zacarian to the rescue.


It would be hard to imagine two more qualified educators to help mainstream teachers not only to assist ELLs so that they participate  fully  in class, but also to enhance the learning of the rest of the students at the same time.


I met Judie Haynes as she was giving a workshop for ESL teach- ers at New  Jersey TESOL. We discovered that, by amazing co- incidence, we had both considered writing a resource book for mainstream teachers of ELLs. We both were anguished by the plight of ELLs  whose days in mainstream classes  were filled with  wasted  time,  embarrassment, and  social  isolation. We could see that these students would be marked for life by their experiences during their English-learning years. Society would pay for the absence of attention to their needs. Hoping to pro- vide what was missing in the field, together we wrote Classroom  Teacher’s ESL Survival Kits 1 and 2 (Prentice Hall, 1995  &  1996). Now, along with Debbie Zacarian, she has written a book that
Foreword | ix



provides practical strategies for school  principals, curriculum directors, supervisors, and, of course, mainstream teachers.


Judie taught for 29 years and has tirelessly trained the main- stream teachers both at her school and in other school districts around the United States. She wrote a column on elementary ESL issues for TESOL’s  Essential Teacher. Her last book, Getting Started  with  English  Language  Learners:  A Guide  for  Educators (ASCD,  2007), helps classroom teachers and school adminis- trators  learn best practices for incorporating ELLs  in school. That book has become a “must-read” in the field.


Debbie  was also a columnist for TESOL’s  Essential Teacher, writ- ing on issues for secondary teachers. As director of the Center for English Language  Education and founding director of the Center  for Advancing Student Achievement at the Hampshire Educational  Collaborative     in  Northampton,  Massachusetts, she has extensive experience with training classroom teachers to work with English language learners.


Now   together,  Judie and Debbie    have joined forces to write the  perfect  book for educators—not a how-to from the ivory tower, but a guide from down in the trenches, with example after  example  of  experiments  and  successes  by  mainstream teachers and school leaders. This book offers dozens of insight- ful and simple ways to plan for ELLs  participating in a unit, incorporating them in groups where they can hear authentic language and be responsible for a role in the group. I was de- lighted to see that language in the  text is down to earth; he book reads like a collection of short stories that teachers can quickly relate to.
x | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



The strategies in this book don’t require that you do anything extra, just differently. The techniques that work with ELLs will enhance your  lessons such that every one of your English- fluent students will benefit greatly as well.


If you are a teacher or administrator who has been struggling to secure ways for ELLs to participate in general education classes and school activities, you can be relieved. Teachers and admin- istrators cannot read this book without  having their percep- tions altered or altering the lives of their ELLs. The book reads quickly, and opens eyes. With hands-on and visual learning a great part of lesson presentation, reports, projects, and testing, all students benefit, and you gain for yourself that remarkable feeling, remembered for a lifetime, of having made your stu- dents’ days meaningful and powerful.


Elizabeth Claire Founder and editor Easy English News















ACKNOWLEDGMENTS









Our book was written with the support of many people.

Several classroom teachers from River Edge Public School in New Jersey—including Joann Frechette, Julie Mahoney, Patri- cia Wondra, Susan Meldonian, Laura Menzella,  Cathy Danahy, Monica   Schnee, and Nancy   Du  Bois—generously shared their expertise.

We  spent long hours collaborating on this manuscript and appreciate  the  support  of  our  families—especially  our  hus- bands, Joe and Matt.

We thank ASCD  acquisitions editor Carolyn   Pool for guiding our efforts  during the writing stage, and copy editor Ernesto Yermoli for helping us with the editing of the final manuscript. They both contributed greatly to this book.

The adage “many fingers make a hand” speaks to the gratitude that we wish to express.

xi
















INTRODUCTION









The  audience for Teaching English  Language Learners Across the Content Areas is teachers, supervisors, curriculum special- ists,  principals, and superintendents  who are  working with English language  learners  (ELLs)  in  their  classrooms. This book is the result of our combined experience working with ELLs:  Judie taught  elementary  and  middle  school  ELLs  for
28 years and has been working with teachers of ELLs for the last 16  years; Debbie    worked with high school ELLs  for six years, administered K–12 English language education for over
20 years, and taught at a university for over a decade where she designed  and developed  courses  for general  classroom, secondary  subject-matter, special education,  resource,  and English as a Second Language  (ESL)  teachers, as well as for administrators who  taught  English to ELLs. Debbie   directs a professional development, consulting, and support center for
teachers and administrators of ELLs.



1
2 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



Educators are teaching a rapidly growing number of ELLs  in U.S.  schools, yet most public school teachers are not  trained to do so. As a result, they are challenged to find effective ways to ensure that ELLs  are actively participating in  content area instruction. This is particularly so because many ELLs receive limited instruction in ESL.


We believe that students’ success is highly correlated with their engagement in the learning process. Although statewide assess- ments are often used as measures of student success, we worry about the impact of tests that are given when students are not yet competent in English. Learning English is a developmen- tal process that occurs over a period of years. It is dependent on the  comprehensibility, quality, and sustainability of lan- guage and content learning experiences. Although advocating for fair testing is important, modifying instruction to make it accessible to ELLs is at the core of what must occur.


Through our own experience, we know that ELLs  need to be instructed  by  teachers  who  create  and  deliver  lessons  that effectively teach both content and the English language while promoting active student  engagement. It is our goal to help teachers  build  classroom  and  school  environments  where all  students, including ELLs, can  flourish. We  want to show elementary grade-level, secondary subject-matter, special edu- cation, and resource teachers;  curriculum directors; adminis- trators; support  staff; and other stakeholders how to involve their ELL students in content activities with the whole class to the greatest extent possible. To that end, this book will focus on how teachers can improve student academic language and literacy learning in language arts, math,  science, and social studies classes.
Introduction | 3



The  ideas and tools that we present in this book will help teachers strengthen students’ capacity to learn content vocab- ulary and concepts, activate students’ background knowledge, modify content area materials in ways that specifically address language  and  content  learning, and  communicate  content information to ELLs. The book is organized around strategies for working with ELLs in a content area class. These strategies include


•     Developing      classroom   learning   environments   that enhance learning for ELLs,
•     Writing lesson plans that ensure optimal engagement of ELLs,
•     Planning small-group configurations that include ELLs in mainstream instruction,
•     Teaching  vocabulary in a way that helps ELLs  under- stand content area information,
•     Designing    reading and writing instruction that is at the appropriate English language level for ELLs,
•     Assigning homework and developing assessments that are linked to instruction, and
•     Learning  to effectively communicate with the parents of ELLs.


Each chapter opens with a classroom scenario that depicts a common  challenge in elementary,  middle, and high school content area classes, followed by specific ideas for modifying instruction for the benefit of ELLs. These  opening  scenarios are situated in science, math, and social studies classes. Small- group configurations can be used in all classes.
































   CHAPTER ONE            

Creating an ELL-Friendly
Learning Environment



1













iddle school social studies teacher Ms. Morales  was teaching a  unit on the settling of Plymouth Col- ony in the 1620s. She had four ELLs in her class at
varying stages of English language  acquisition, all of whom had the ability to converse socially with their peers in class- room situations. Ms. Morales  wasn’t sure why one of her ELLs, Tuan Li, was still in an ESL class, as his oral participation was strong. He spoke well and seemed to follow the lessons.


The goal of the day’s lesson was for Ms. Morales’s students to be able to  demonstrate three differences between the houses of settlers in 1620 and houses in the present-day United States. Ms. Morales   wrote  this objective on the board. Below it, she also  wrote  three  brief  statements  about  what  her  students would do during the day’s lesson: First, they would take notes about the houses in Plymouth. Second, they would write facts about the houses. Third, they would synthesize their notes and write a paragraph comparing the homes of 1620 with those that exist today.

At the beginning of the lesson, Ms. Morales  reviewed the voy- age of the Mayflower and the first winter of the new  settlers in Plymouth, using pictures to retell the story.  She  observed that her ELLs  were able to participate in this oral review and was pleased with their use of the academic language from the



7
8 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



lesson. Ms. Morales   then introduced the vocabulary from the text that students would read on the Internet. She  used  pic- tures to demonstrate the meanings of the words and phrases that she had identified for this lesson, and showed the students how to use a graphic organizer to take notes. She noted that the ELLs in her class appeared to understand the text and were able to write key words in their organizers. However, when Tuan Li wrote his paragraph, he did not transfer the academic language used in the lesson to his writing. Here is what he wrote:


In Plymouth they have small houses with one big rooms. It was only made from straw for the roof and the wooden board for the down part of the house. Houses in river edge, many of the houses is made of brick. The house is big.


Tuan  Li   had  been  in  U.S. schools  for  two  years. He  spoke English well, volunteered in class, and  worked cooperatively with classmates. Ms. Morales   was pleased with Tuan Li’s par- ticipation in the oral part of  the lesson and with his under- standing of the material that he read online, but she became concerned with his writing. She wondered if he really acquired the academic language and concepts of the lesson. His use of academic  vocabulary,  grammar,  and  sentence  structure  was poor. Ms. Morales  thought that Tuan Li had been in the United States long enough to acquire the skills necessary to write in English.


*  *    *


Teachers of ELLs, such as Ms. Morales,  should routinely con- sider the following questions: How long does it take to learn
Creating an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment | 9



English? What should we expect during this learning process? What should we do to help students to learn English as they learn content?  Title  VI  of U.S. federal law describes compe- tency in English as the ability to do ordinary classroom work in English and requires schools to provide ELLs with an educa- tion that is available to all students in the same system (Alex- ander &   Alexander, 1985). Each state draws from this federal definition to regulate the laws governing the education of ELLs in public schools.


The  phrase  “ordinary  classroom  work”—meaning  what  we expect students to be able to learn in English—is a good start- ing  point  for  us  to  think  about  how  to  modify  classroom instruction. The  way we work with ELLs  reflects our beliefs about  their  ability  to  perform  ordinary  classroom  work. If Ms.  Morales   mistakenly believes that  an ELL  is defined as a student who does not speak English,  then she might think that Tuan Li is competent in English because his listening and speaking skills are strong. However,  the  capacity to do ordi- nary classroom work in English includes the  ability to com- municate appropriately in social and academic  situations by listening, speaking, reading, and writing.



Language Acquisition Versus
Language Learning

The  term “English  language learner” refers to students who have learned a language or languages other than English dur- ing their preschool years and are now learning English as an additional language. School-age ELLs  like Tuan Li  must learn English because they cannot succeed in school without it.
10 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



Learning   a  language  is  distinct  from  acquiring  it  (Krashen,
1982). Consider     Tuan   Li:  He was  in  the  4th grade  when he  enrolled in a New   Jersey elementary school. He  learned English while also learning math,  science, social studies, art, music, and physical education.  By contrast, he acquired his native language through the process of communicating with his family and  community.  Acquiring  language is an uncon- scious  process, whereas learning a second language is a  con- scious one (Krashen, 1982). When learning a second language, students must learn about its  structure and appropriate use. An ELL whose native language is Spanish, for example, will be accustomed to placing adjectives after nouns, and must learn to do the reverse in English.



Stages of Second-Language Acquisition

Language  learning is a developmental process, each  stage of which represents growth and expansion of the ability to know, use, and critically think in the new  language. The  following descriptions of the  stages  of second-language acquisition are intended to  help  teachers ensure that their lessons comple- ment the current stage of a student’s English learning.


Stage 1: Starting

In this  preproduction  stage, students  are  just  beginning  to acquire a receptive vocabulary. They can listen attentively to explanations supported by visuals, point to correct answers, act out information, draw and label pictures, and understand and duplicate gestures and  movements to show  comprehension. Some may even be able to copy words from the board. Choral reading and Total Physical Response, a teaching method that
Creating an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment | 11



encourages ELLs to respond to language with gestures and body language, will work well with students at this stage, who will need much repetition of English words and phrases in context. Students in Stage 1  will also  benefit from having a “buddy” who speaks their language. Teachers should focus attention on listening comprehension activities and on helping students to build a receptive vocabulary. It is common for students to lis- ten much more than speak at this stage and to display under- standing  through body language, such as by pointing to  an object. Remember that the school day is exhausting for these newcomers as they are overwhelmed by listening to a new lan- guage all day long.


Stage 2: Emerging

Students  enter  this  early  production  stage  when  they  have been learning English for about six months to a year and are beginning to  produce language. During    this stage,  students can usually speak in one- or two-word phrases, learn new aca- demic vocabulary with visual support, answer yes/no or either/ or questions, provide names of items, categorize information, make lists, and write very simple sentences to go with pictures. Students in Stage 2 should begin to participate in whole-class activities.  Teachers should aid learning with graphic organiz- ers, charts, and graphs and begin to foster writing in English through labeling and composing short sentences.


Stage 3: Developing

At  this  stage, ELLs  will  begin  to  communicate  using  short phrases, understand modified content material, match content area vocabulary to definitions, and comprehend their teacher’s clearly articulated explanations and directions. They also may
12 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



begin to initiate social conversations with classmates. Students in Stage 3 will benefit from the use of flashcards and duet and choral reading activities.


Stage 4: Expanding

English language learners at this stage are becoming more flu- ent. They can highlight important information in a text, use graphic organizers independently,  and skim  material for spe- cific information; they are also able to analyze, create, debate, predict, and hypothesize in  English. However,  the writing of ELLs in Stage 4 will still have many errors as the students con- tinue trying to master the complexity of English grammar and sentence structure. The teacher’s focus at this stage should be on student comprehension and writing.


Stage 5: Bridging

At this stage, ELLs can perform in all areas close to the level of their native English-speaking  classmates. However,  they will continue to  need teacher support with oral and written use of more complex vocabulary and sentence structure, and may also  need  support  developing  learning  strategies  and  study skills. It is  important  to  remember  that  although  students at this stage are no longer in ESL programs, they will still be learning English for years to come.


Building Connections

In the mid–20th century, several scholars contributed to what we  know about how languages are learned in the  classroom. Current  theories pay particular attention to what occurs in the
Creating an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment | 13



brain during the learning process; see, for example, Sylwester and Cho   (1992), Caine   and Caine (1991), and Diaz   Rico and Weed (2006). Most  researchers on the subject believe that the primary function of the brain is to build connections between new information and what it already  knows. This  biological process is the cornerstone of  our knowledge about second- language learning. It suggests that students are not empty ves- sels of knowledge; rather,  they come to class with  a body of knowledge that is based on their personal, cultural, linguistic, social, and academic knowledge. When  students are engaged in an atmosphere that helps them to build connections to their varied backgrounds across the curriculum and in a welcoming, nonthreatening way, learning is optimized.


According to Krashen (1981, 1982), learning a second language requires the following three core elements:


1. A comfortable learning environment with a low thresh- old for anxiety
2. Meaningful    tasks  that  purposely  engage  students  to learn how to speak, listen, read, and write in the new language
3. Engagement in tasks that are just a bit beyond the stu- dents’ current ability



Language Learning and Culture

Learning  a language also involves learning the norms of the culture in which the language is used. Routine tasks can pose unique  challenges  for  ELLs  if  they  have  not  learned  these norms. For example, in many U.S. public high schools, students
14 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



elect class officers—a democratic process. The act of voting in a school election requires students to understand the principles of democracy and elections, as well as what role each class offi- cer plays. Teachers must provide explicit instruction for ELLs to actively understand what it  means to be a learner in the classroom community and to participate meaningfully in it.



Social Language Versus Academic Language

Jim Cummins, a renowned scholar of second-language devel- opment, believes that language learners engage in social con- versational skills before they engage in academic skills (1981,
1984). He posits  that  students  develop  basic  interpersonal communicative  skills  through  the  process  of  engaging  in informal settings such as the school playground or cafeteria. However, to perform successfully in school, students must also attain cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP)—that is, the ability to manipulate language for academic purposes. The amount of time it takes for students to become proficient in a language depends  on their backgrounds. Students who have had prior schooling and rich literacy experiences (includ- ing a literacy-rich home environment) tend to become com- municatively competent in three to five years, whereas those who have previously had limited  or  interrupted instruction or a radically different type of schooling  may take five years or more. Learners  who are not fully  literate in their native language will take even longer to acquire CALP in the second language.


We do not believe that students learn social language before academic language, as this would imply that learning is a linear
Creating an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment | 15



process. Both types of learning are optimized when  teachers connect new information to students’ personal, cultural, lin- guistic, social, and academic backgrounds (Diaz Rico &  Weed,
2006; Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008).


Teachers of ELLs should be attracted to working with such stu- dents and create an environment in which students’ personal, cultural, linguistic, social, and academic experiences are seen as rich resources.  Similarly,  ELLs  must  be attracted to learn- ing in their new environment and interested in learning about the culture in which they now find themselves. Consider  the example of Dmitry, a brilliant student who had been at the top of his class in Russia. When his parents decided to come to the United  States, he felt very angry  about the decision but had no way to express this anger directly to  his parents. Instead, he simply refused to  try to learn in school. When  pressured, he had a cousin do his  homework. In short, by  refusing to open up to the new language and culture, Dmitry lost a whole year of English language acquisition when he first came to the United States.



Designing Socially Relevant
Learning Activities

We believe that students learn best when the curriculum is socially  relevant and when students are given opportunities to examine their  world, such as in the earlier example of Ms. Morales engaging her students in comparing their lives to the lives of children from the 1620s. Socially relevant curricu- lum has been found to be an important element for learning (Luke, 1994;  Vasquez, Muise,  Adamson, &   Heffernan,  2003).
16 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



Lessons   that  allow  ELLs   to  participate  more  fully  in  their schools and communities should be at the heart of the work of teaching.


Let  us return to the example of Ms. Morales’s class. Once Ms. Morales    began  to  understand  more  about  the  sociocultural realities  of  her  ELLs  as  well  as  their  language  and  content learning needs, she adjusted her lessons. Most  of Ms. Morales’s students played in community baseball games after  school. Because she knew that her ELLs  were not familiar with base- ball and were not being included in the games, she decided to expand the study of the Plymouth settlers to include a com- parison of popular games in  the colonial United  States with those that are popular today. She posted the objectives of the lesson on the board, used a graphic organizer to support her students’  learning,  and engaged her students in a variety  of paired discussions about the two time periods.  She also used class time to ask her English-fluent students to encourage ELLs to participate in baseball games after school and to  support them when they did.


Characteristics of an Effective
Learning Environment

Learning  activities must be based on deliberate and explicit instruction that allows multiple opportunities for


•     Student  understanding  of  the  lesson’s  key  content goals and activities;
•     Teacher modeling of activities before students engage in them;
Creating an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment | 17



•     Frequent  opportunities for students to practice activi- ties comfortably; and
•     Multiple and repeated connections to student’s personal, cultural, linguistic, social, and academic experiences.


Posting Core Content Ideas

As Wiggins and McTighe (2005) note, it is important to plan learning experiences that are based on the core content ideas that  we want our students to learn. It is very helpful to post these ideas on the board for student reference, as they not only can provide an anchor for students throughout the course of a unit but also provide teachers with an important reference point  when  designing  and  delivering  lessons.  Posting  core content ideas in the form of questions can be particularly help- ful, furthering students’ interest by encouraging them to seek answers.


Thinking  that the terms “reflect” and “belief system” would be difficult for students to understand, Ms. Morales revised her core question to read, “How did the everyday activities of the settlers show what they believed?” She thought that this core question would be more easily understood by all of her  stu- dents and serve as an important reference point for learning the core concepts.


Posting Daily Content and Language Objectives

The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, also known as the SIOP model (Echevarria et al., 2008), points to the impor- tance  of  posting  daily  content  and  language  objectives  for our students. Teachers should inform students of the lesson’s
18 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



purpose by sharing with them what material they hope they will learn and what they will be expected to do to learn it.


Teachers  should inform students of the lesson’s purpose by posting one or two short, student-friendly statements or ques- tions (e.g., “What  games did the settlers play in  1620, and what games do we play today?  How are they the  same  and different?”). These  statements are intended to  focus student attention on the content to be learned and its connection to the overarching unit objective.


Teachers  should also provide a list of the key activities that students will do in class that will require them to listen, speak, read, and write. We  suggest that these activities be described using  action  verbs  (e.g., “Identify four  games  that  settlers played”). Suggested action verbs for describing listening, speak- ing,  reading, and writing activities may be found in  Appen- dix 1. Activities should be listed in the sequence in which they are to be performed. No  more than four key activities should be included.


Ms.  Morales    began posting her daily content and language objectives  on  the  board  before  each  lesson  and  read  them aloud to her  students. She also referred to them throughout the  lesson. Presenting  objectives  visually  is  essential  when teaching ELLs.


Teaching Vocabulary Explicitly

Every subject has its own language and includes thousands of words  that are specific to it (Marzano &   Pickering, 2005). In science class, for example, an experiment involves making and
Creating an ELL-Friendly Learning Environment | 19



testing a hypothesis, observing the  test, and collecting and analyzing data. Students must learn the academic vocabulary that is required for each subject. Teachers must explicitly teach and display vocabulary in class, as well as identify key terms, words, idioms, and phrases (Debbie calls them TWIPs) that are needed to learn and engage with the subject matter.


Implementing Participation Structures
That Support High-Level Active Learning

Learning occurs best when teachers provide students with fre- quent  opportunities to participate and interact with others (Cohen,  1994; Echevarria  et  al., 2008; Faltis     &   Hudelson,
1998). Paired work and group work are the most effective meth- ods for engaging students in using language, as they allow stu- dents to practice using new content vocabulary in the safety of a small learning community.


In this chapter, we described an effective learning environment for  ELLs. We discussed the ability to do ordinary classroom work and outlined the states of English language acquisition. In the next chapter, we will investigate how teachers can plan lessons that will optimally engage ELLs.
































   CHAPTER TWO           

Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs
2













rs. Sokolov,  a  9th  grade  social  studies  teacher, began a unit of study that corresponded with her state’s curriculum standards requiring students to
understand the role of citizens in a participatory democracy.   She introduced the unit by engaging her students in an explo- ration of the civil rights movement. In planning the first day of the unit, Mrs. Sokolov gathered several articles that she had collected about President Obama, most of which mentioned the fact that he was the first African American to become pres- ident. Mrs. Sokolov figured that the best way to begin the unit was to read one of the articles aloud and ask her students to share their opinions about it. She jotted this idea down in her planning notebook. She planned to finish the opening lesson by asking students to identify key words that they would use to describe the significance of President Obama’s racial back- ground. This would be followed with a homework assignment to read a chapter from the course text about civil rights and prepare a list of related vocabulary words.

Thinking  that  her  first-day lesson  plan  was  complete, Mrs. Sokolov went to the teacher’s lounge for a cup of coffee. While there, she told one of the school’s ESL teachers, Ms. Tedesco, how she planned to introduce the civil rights unit. In response, Ms. Tedesco said, “Have you thought about the students who have never  experienced what it means to live in a democ- racy?  Many    of  your ELLs  come from countries that are not democracies.”
23
24 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



*    *         *


When   creating  activities  to  help  ELLs   connect  to  content, teachers should be sensitive to U.S.-specific elements that may seem unfamiliar to students from different cultures. We often take for granted that our students have prior knowledge about various people, places, things, and events. If a teacher has not activated  prior  knowledge  or  built  background  information about content material, teaching the vocabulary that is asso- ciated with the new content will not solve the problem. Just because ELLs  may be able to  read words doesn’t mean they will understand their meaning in the  context of the content being taught. Indeed, many of the ELLs in Mrs. Sokolov’s social studies class were not familiar with the democratic process, let alone the specific language and content associated with it. The essential question that the school faculty had chosen for the year was, “What does it mean to live in a democracy?”


At first, Mrs. Sokolov thought that teaching her students about the uniqueness of having the first African American president was a good  plan. However,  when she began thinking more deeply  about the key purpose of her task, she realized that it involved much more than understanding and being able to use vocabulary  associated with fighting for one’s civil  rights.  She thought carefully about what it was that she wanted her stu- dents to learn. She developed a guiding question that she would post for her students: “How do civil rights affect your life?”  By organizing her unit around this question, Mrs. Sokolov believed that she would be able to create and deliver lessons that would require her students to learn about the historical time period of the civil rights movement, and she felt that her guiding ques- tion related well to the school’s essential question.
Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs | 25



We believe that adequate lesson planning must include the following steps:


1. Thinking about what we want students to learn,
2.  Identifying methods of assessing student learning,
3.  Identifying and addressing ELL-specific challenges inher- ent to the lesson,
4. Deciding   how to activate prior knowledge and build background knowledge, and
5. Designing   ways to explicitly guide ELLs  as they prac- tice using new language and content.


Teachers also need to think about the visual aids that will best aid comprehension, how to simplify the language of instruc- tion, and how to deliver  instruction that is targeted to both the English proficiency levels of students and their grade-level content.



Thinking Backward

Researchers Wiggins and McTighe (2005) point to the impor- tance of “thinking backward”—that is, considering what it is that we want students to learn and how to assess it when plan- ning learning experiences. When  Mrs. Sokolov began to plan her lessons, she decided to change her guiding question from “How do civil rights affect your life?” to “What is a civil right?” to ensure that her ELLs  understood the  concept. Each of the activities that she designed was for the purpose of helping stu- dents answer this core question. She also began to think more deeply  about the term “civil rights” and the ways in which she might modify the language of her lesson for ELLs without
26 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



diluting the material. The more she planned, the more she real- ized that her lesson would be stronger for all of her students.



Specific Content Area Challenges for ELLs

Here are some of the distinct challenges in different content areas  that  ELLs  face and that teachers should consider when planning lessons.


Reading

Many    ELLs  lack  content  area  vocabulary  and  have  limited comprehension skills in English. Although they may be able to sound out words phonetically, they may not be able to ascer- tain meaning from the context. English contains many idioms and figurative expressions that may be overwhelming to ELLs. Furthermore, the cultural background depicted in the text may be unfamiliar to ELLs.


Writing

Because many ELLs write through the filter of their native lan- guage, word order, sentence structure, and paragraph organi- zation in English may be problematic. There are a plethora of exceptions to the rules in English grammar. In addition, stu- dents often lack the vocabulary that they need to successfully write in English.


Mathematics

It is important to remember that mathematical concepts are not  necessarily universal. Math   teachers need to  validate the
Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs | 27



foreign systems of mathematics and prior mathematical knowl- edge that ELLs bring to their classrooms. Students may not show work in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, or may show such work in a different way. Concepts  such as the Fahrenheit  temperature scale and U.S. currency units may be unfamiliar to many ELLs. Teachers  should also keep in  mind that many cultures use commas where we use periods and peri- ods where we use commas; for example, “1,067.32” would be written “1.067,32” in many countries around the world.


Science

English language  learners  may  lack  familiarity  with  the “hands-on” approach to teaching science that is common in the United  States. Making    predictions and drawing conclu- sions  independently may also be difficult for ELLs. In addi- tion, the vocabulary of science presents a difficulty to students who speak languages where there are no cognates. Directions often involve multiple steps and can consequently be difficult to understand. Science textbooks, which feature complex sen- tence structures and passive voice, can also prove challenging for ELLs.


Social Studies and U.S. History

Social studies and U.S. history may be the most challenging content areas for ELLs, who may have very limited background knowledge to activate. As with science, textbooks will often con- tain an overabundance of complex sentences, passive voice, and pronouns. Students may also be unable to tell what is important in the text. Even maps have a nationalistic or cultural focus: In China, for example, the continent of Asia is in the center of the map and China  appears larger than it does on U.S. maps.
28 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas


Language and Content Objectives

Echevarria and colleagues (2008) point to the importance of coming up with both language and content objectives for les- sons to let  students know what they are expected to learn. Language objectives refer to the specific vocabulary or use of lan- guage that teachers want their students to learn and use during a lesson. An activity related to a language objective might be as simple as, “Write two key ideas that your partner shares with you.” For  ELLs, the act of writing ideas must be taught explic- itly.  Content objectives refer to the subect  matter information that you want students to know by the end of the lesson.


Mrs. Solokov wrote objectives for the entire unit in her plan- ning notebook and shared them with students on a handout. During   the unit, she wrote each  day’s language and content objectives on the board. For example:


Content objective: Today  we will understand what a  civil right is by listening to Martin Luther    King Jr.’s  “I have a dream” speech.

Language objective: Today  we will write down three  civil rights that are mentioned in Martin Luther     King  Jr.’s  “I have a dream” speech.



Connecting Content to Students’ Prior Knowledge and Experience

To help students to meaningfully understand and express their understanding of the content, it is important to connect the
Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs | 29



lesson’s core ideas to students’ prior knowledge and experi- ences. Mrs. Sokolov’s revised plan includes asking ELLs to dis- cuss with their parents the kind of government and rights that people have in their home countries. Her plan  also includes modeling the interview process. Modeling  the tasks that we assign and engaging in think-alouds  benefits ELLs  greatly,  as does guided practice. Many ELLs are not familiar with the step- by-step process of completing a task in a U.S. classroom. When Mrs. Sokolov jots down her think-aloud plan in her planning notebook, she notes the steps that she will  model with her students as she prepares for the interview.



Supplementary Materials

Teachers should identify and compile any supplementary mate- rials for their lessons in advance. Although Mrs. Sokolov had many newspaper articles about President Obama, she had not assembled materials about the various types of inequality that her students could discuss. She went to the guidance counselor to learn more about where her students had attended school and lived, then researched and found several Web sites about the types of political ideologies common to these  areas. She also selected Web sites that contained news clips from various important events in the fight for civil rights.


It is important to visually display both the language and con- tent goals of the lesson. Goals should be written on the board, on chart paper, or on handouts. If they are written simply, they can greatly assist students. It is also a good idea to include pic- tures that realistically depict what is to be learned.
30 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas


Field Trips

Some teachers take their students on field trips to see and experience the content, often as a culminating activity at the end of a lesson. We suggest scheduling field trips for the very beginning of a unit instead,  so  that students can draw from the experience later. A good example is the teacher who takes students on a trip to a nearby  garden, where she helps the students pick weeds. Upon returning to the classroom, the stu- dents staple their individual plants onto a piece of cardboard and begin labeling the parts.



Open-Ended Questions

We believe that turning the core ideas that we want students to learn into open-ended questions and posting them on the board is an important aid for learning. Such visual representa- tions are critical, because spoken language is fleeting; once we speak, our words can no longer be retrieved. Posting the core ideas as questions allows students to refocus, revisit, and rethink what is occurring. Mrs. Sokolov posted the following question in her room: “Are civil rights important in a democracy?”




Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers  offer  students  an  important  visual  for examining the lesson’s core ideas. We suggest that teachers use the same graphic organizer for similar tasks. A  flowchart, for example, is used for describing a sequence of events. We also believe that all teachers in a particular grade level should use
Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs | 31



the same graphic organizers. Using similar graphic organizers throughout the school really helps ELLs comprehend the task at hand.



Planning Assessment

When planning lessons, teachers must think about the forma- tive and summative assessments that they will use to determine that students are learning key ideas. In Mrs. Sokolov’s case, she also needs to ensure that the language  that she uses in her assessments matches the English proficiency levels of her ELLs. (See Chapter 7   for helpful information on creating  effective assessments.) It is essential to know the  level of English pro- ficiency of each ELL in the class and create learning activities and assessments to match it. As noted in the previous chapter,   these levels range from beginners with little to no proficiency to students who are nearly proficient.



Providing Multiple Practice Opportunities

Margarita   Calderon    (2007) suggests that students need mul- tiple practice opportunities to truly “own” new vocabulary. It is our experience that students need at least 20 repetitions, if not more. To this end, Mrs. Solokov included paired and group work in her lesson plan, which she  believed would help her students to practice the interview skills that they were to use at home. She wrote the group activities that she had come up with for the entire unit in her notebook and provided her stu- dents with a handout of the activities. Here is an example of a group activity that Mrs. Solokov designed:
32 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



Each group will

•    Create   a short skit about one important event that occurred during the civil rights movement.
•    Find  or draw illustrations depicting this event.
•    Create    a list of the key terms,  words, idioms, and phrases (TWIPs) that will be used during the skit.
•    Prepare to teach the vocabulary before presenting the skit.
•    Present the skit to the class.
•    Listen  to other groups’ skits and provide them with feedback  based on whether the event was clearly described  and   key  TWIPs were  identified  and displayed.


After completing her lesson plan, Mrs. Solokov reviewed it one more time to ensure that it was suitable for the various pro- ficiency levels of her ELLs, ensured that the material would be explicitly taught, and provided a range of direct examples of how she wanted her students to use language to  express understanding.

*    *        *


We suggest that classroom and subject area teachers complete the checklist in Figure 2.1 and the worksheet in Appendix 2 to help them  modify lessons for ELLs. These  modifications will benefit all of the students in the class.


In this chapter,  we reviewed various planning strategies that are  essential to teaching ELLs  in the content area  classroom. We  discussed identifying core  ideas  and posting them in the classroom,  tapping background knowledge, preparing  visuals
Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs | 33



to  use  during  the  lesson, using  think-alouds, and  creating small-group configurations. We also discussed the importance of providing students with multiple practice opportunities to think and learn. In the next chapter,  we will  further  discuss how teachers can use small-group configurations to help ELLs
learn academic content.


Figure 2.1
Checklist for Modifying Lesson Plans for ELLs



□  Plan resources, visuals, and vocabulary activities in advance.
□  Act out vocabulary words and key concepts.
□  Use visuals (pictures, videos, drawings, maps) to aid comprehension.
□  Provide a study guide at the beginning of the unit.
□ Identify content and language goals and write them on the board for students.
□  Use graphic organizers.
□  Simplify your language: repeat, restate, reword.
□  Arrange for students to work in groups.
□  Explicitly teach vocabulary and provide students with word walls.
□  Provide multiple opportunities to practice new vocabulary.
□  Add a word bank to activities and tests.
□  Give both written and oral instructions.
□  Teach ELLs to underline or highlight main ideas in text.
□  Assign a buddy to ELLs and arrange for tutoring.
□  Modify instruction so that ELLs can participate in content area lessons.
□  Tailor assignments to ELLs’ levels of English language acquisition.
□  Modify tests (e.g., by using word banks, simplifying language, asking fewer questions).
□  Allow ELLs to show what they know in multiple ways (e.g., through oral responses, drawing, labeling, acting out answers).
































CHAPTER THREE

Small Group Work and ELLs




3













tudents in Mrs. Mahoney’s 6th  grade science class were deeply  engaged  in  their  assignment  as  they  worked together  in  heterogeneous  groups. The  class  included
six ELLs  at various levels of language acquisition and from several  different  language  backgrounds. The  students  were studying the formations of different kinds of volcanoes. Their assignment was to fill in a chart asking for specific informa- tion about each type of volcano.

The ELLs held roles in their respective groups (e.g., artist, time- keeper,  errand  runner,  researcher)  that  were  commensurate with their levels of English proficiency. In one group, Eduardo, an ELL at the emerging state, served as the artist, drawing illus- trations of the various types of volcanoes with the support of his group members. In another group, Safwon, a new learner of English,  served as errand runner,  gathering and distribut- ing all of  the  supplies from an illustrated list. It was also his job to ask the teacher for help when it was needed. In a third group, Ji Sook, who was at an intermediate  stage of English language acquisition, served as the researcher, tracking down information and pictures of various types of volcanoes on the Internet. She printed out the  online material and gave it to her group  members. Mrs.  Mahoney   circulated from group to group, monitoring student participation and ensuring that the groups were on task.



37
38 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



Throughout  the  course  of  Mrs.  Mahoney’s  class, ELLs  were promoted to more English-intensive roles in their groups as their language ability increased. Ji Sook, for example, had only recently been promoted from artist to the role of researcher. In every case, the ELLs’ designated roles and tasks were integral to their groups’ assignments.


According to Ji Sook, her experience in Mrs. Mahoney’s science class was the first time after two years in a U.S. school that she felt comfortable working with her English-fluent peers. Judie, the coauthor of this book, taught in the  same school at the time and noticed that all of the students in her 6th grade ESL class had started to work much more in  earnest. They began bringing their science work to her class for extra help because they wanted to do a good job in their groups. It seemed clear to Judie that the ELLs in Mrs. Mahoney’s class had blossomed and were now much more motivated to learn science.


Not all small-group configurations, however, are created equal. Just because students are working in small  groups does not mean that they are cooperating. Let’s look at another example in a classroom down the hall.


Students in Mr. Russell’s  10th  grade biology class worked in small groups to complete an activity sheet with 10 questions and a chart. The assignment was not modified in any way for the benefit of ELLs; there were no visuals, and new vocabulary was not explained prior to the lesson. Many  of the ELLs were placed together in a single group, so the groups were not lin- guistically balanced. Some students worked with their groups, but many  broke off into pairs. Students had their own indi- vidual activity sheets but were directed to work together to
Small-Group Work and ELLs | 39



complete them. There were no assigned roles, and the native English speakers often supplied the answers to ELLs  without helping them to understand the  information. The  classroom was  noisy  and  disorganized. Mr.  Russell did  not  circulate among the groups to answer questions or monitor whether the teams were on task. Students were assessed individually  and consequently did not support each other’s  learning, because they had no stake in the group’s success.


*    *        *


Research  has shown how important cooperative learning is to  the  academic  and  social  learning  of  students  in  general (Cohen,  1994; Echevarria  et al., 2008; Radencich  &    McKay,
1995; Slavin, 1991; Zacarian, 1996). We believe that coopera- tive group instruction is especially helpful for teaching ELLs.


Some  teachers  use  cooperative  learning  minimally  because they are not sure how best to assess individual student perfor- mance when students work in groups. Other teachers believe that cooperative learning reduces their authority in the class- room and makes it harder for them to manage their students. After all, group work requires students to collaborate effectively with peers without their teacher directly supervising every lit- tle interaction. It also requires that teachers believe that their students need to talk to learn; as such, it requires a high level of individual and group cooperation (Cohen, 1994).


Group work is based on two premises: that everyone has some- thing important to say, and that everyone is a rich resource, so it is important to listen to all ideas. Mr. Russell’s minimal use of this essential strategy significantly limits student practice
40 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



of English and content; by contrast, Mrs. Mahoney’s maximal use of practice can open important and  much-needed space for learning language and  content. Applying  the cooperative learning  strategy  well  involves  paying  focused  attention  to the elements outlined in this chapter. Doing  so will dispel any concern about assessment and authority.



Taking Cultural Expectations and
Belief Systems into Account

Teachers  must consider the cultural expectations and belief systems of students when planning group work. Whereas  the United  States places a high value on individualism—that is, “individual responsibility for self, independence, self-reliance, self-expression, self-esteem, and task over process” (Rothstein- Fish  &  Trumbull,  2008, p. 9)—70  percent of the  world’s cul- tures value collectivism more  (Triandis,  1989). For   example, in many Asian countries, schools place a strong emphasis on the importance of group harmony. The proverb “The nail that sticks out is hammered down” represents this value. A belief in group work requires us to accept that our students learn best when they learn together.



Arranging the Classroom Space for Active Student Participation

The seating arrangement in the classroom should facilitate paired and  small-group learning. Students should be  able to easily interact in a face-to-face manner. Arranging desks so that stu- dents can see each other in groups of four (or five, if the class is odd numbered) helps ELLs to feel that they are integral to the
Small-Group Work and ELLs | 41



classroom community.  We  feel strongly that ELLs  should not constantly be pulled aside for separate instruction. Yes, they will need more  scaffolding and more teacher attention, and they should certainly receive support from an ESL or bilingual teacher, but they should not be excluded from group configurations.



Emphasizing the Importance of Group Work

Students benefit from working with classmates from varying world, personal, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, so coop- erative learning benefits both ELLs and native English speakers. However, teachers should not expect their students to engage in  cooperative  learning  simply  because  they  are  grouped; rather, they should let the students know from the outset that they will be expected to work in groups composed of culturally and linguistically diverse members.



Teaching Students How to Work Cooperatively

Students need to be specifically taught group work skills as well as terms and phrases related to group work, such as “share ideas” and “everyone must take a turn.” The latter should be posted for student reference. Conflict  among group members should not be viewed as a negative if students are  willing to examine their differences, as this  process may help them to understand the content more deeply.


It is acceptable for a bilingual group member to explain direc- tions or concepts to a struggling ELL. Indeed, having a student,
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teacher, or other staff member around to clarify instruction in an ELL’s native language is desirable, as it allows students who are not yet able to learn in English to better understand the material and communicate more actively in the future. If there are a significant number of ELLs in the classroom, the amount of time given to finish tasks should be extended to account for the extra explanation time.



Assigning Group Roles

A group’s task is best accomplished by assigning roles to each member, such as researcher, scribe, or artist. It is important to determine which roles are most  suitable for ELLs  during the lesson-planning stage and to explicitly define and model the roles  for  students  during  the  lesson. When   assigning  roles, teachers should consider the English proficiency levels of the ELLs in each group. Students should be made aware that their group’s tasks can only be considered completed when each role is enacted. As their English proficiency increases, ELLs should be assigned more language-demanding roles. Roles should also be rotated, as each role requires different language functions.


To ensure that all members of a group are participating actively, the teacher may wish to assign the role of social facilitator to one student per group. The social facilitator is in charge of not- ing how many times each member of his or her group speaks. In her class, Mrs. Mahoney  assigned this role to a member of each group and asked him or her to keep a tally of how many times each group mate spoke. When the groups were done with their discussion, Mrs. Mahoney   asked the social facilitators to share their tally marks with their groups.
Small-Group Work and ELLs | 43



Figure  3.1 shows an example of a social facilitator’s tally sheet from Mrs. Mahoney’s class. When  the members of this group saw that Tom (the social facilitator) and Julia had spoken much more than the others, they began to think of ways in which
they might even out the participation.


Figure 3.1
Social Facilitator’s Tally Sheet from Mrs. Mahoney’s Class



Ji Sook           ✓✓✓✓✓✓
Safwon           ✓✓
Tom               ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
Julia            ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓





Although Mrs. Mahoney’s science activity did not require illus- trations, she felt that assigning the role of artist to  Eduardo was essential for him to participate. Another strategy that Mrs. Mahoney  used was to have ELLs at the early stages of acquisi- tion shadow a classmate in a role. Eduardo, in his role as artist, was in reality  shadowing the student who was assigned the role of scribe.


Strategies for Engaging
Students in Group Work

A variety of strategies can be used to engage students in group work. The  following are a few that we have used and  found effective.
44 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas


Showdown

This  activity is beneficial for reviewing information before a test. Each group comes up with 10 questions about the topic to be reviewed, and group members collaborate with one another to answer them. Each group then passes its  list of questions to another group. One student in each  group reads the first question on the list to his or her fellow group members, who write their responses on a sheet of paper or note card. When the reader calls out “showdown,” group members show their responses. Group members  congratulate  those  with  correct answers and coach those with incorrect responses. The list is then passed on to another group member, who reads the sec- ond question;  this process is repeated until all questions are answered.

This strategy can be modified so that each group makes up a word bank for ELLs, so that they can participate more actively in the  group. This  word bank provides possible answers to questions that are written in random order. For example, if the activity were about volcano formations, a group might create a word bank such as the one in Figure  3.2.


Figure 3.2
Sample Word Bank Responses



central vent                    crater                            Mauna Loa cinder cones                   Crater Lake                     Mount Fuji composite volcano           lava                               shield volcano funnel-shaped                 magma chamber
Small-Group Work and ELLs | 45



Round Table

The teacher asks a question or provides students with a direc- tion (e.g., “Name as many insects as you can”). One student in each group writes a response, then passes it on to the student sitting next to him or her, who writes a response as well. The paper is passed around the group until group  members have written down as many responses as they can think of. English language learners should be among the first to  respond, so that the more obvious responses are not taken before they can have a chance. The group with the most correct responses wins some type of recognition. This strategy is suitable for ELLs at the speech-emergent stage if the responses do not require too much writing and spelling does not count.


Three-Minute Review

The  teacher stops during a lesson to allow group members to  review  the information they have just learned with each other. This strategy gives ELLs a chance to clarify questions and review information within the informal setting of their group. The  strategy  works best when students are given a particular task to complete and  team members discuss and write down the most important things they’ve learned so far. The strategy is suitable for ELLs  at the speech-emergent stage if it is modi- fied to give them more time (e.g., 10 minutes instead of 3).


Think-Pair-Share

This  popular cooperative learning strategy can be challeng- ing for ELLs who are unable to speak fluently enough to share their ideas. For  such students, the strategy may be modified to include drawing (i.e., Think-Pair-Share/Draw), so that an ELL
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who is paired with an English-fluent student can draw his or her  responses rather than share them orally.  When  the ELL shares his or her drawings, the partner can then respond orally and help label the drawing.



Talking Chips

This  strategy encourages ELLs  to participate in group discus- sions. It also keeps one or two students from dominating the discussion. Each member of  the group begins with the same number of chips or  tokens. When  a student wants to speak, he or she puts a chip in the center of the table. After a group member has used up his or her chips, he or she can no longer speak. Those who still have chips must finish the activity.



Fan & Pick

The teacher divides students into groups of four and provides each  student with a note card. Every student in every group writes a question on the assigned topic on his or her  card. Then, students in each group call numbers one through four. Student #1 holds the cards, fans them out, and asks Student #2 to pick a card. Student #2 reads the question on the card to Stu- dent #3, who has five seconds to think before he or she must answer the question. Student #4 then checks the answer and either praises Student #3  for a correct response or coaches him or her in the case of an incorrect response. The students then change roles and move on to the next question. This strategy is suitable for ELLs at the speech-emergent and intermediate- fluency stages.
Small-Group Work and ELLs | 47



Numbered Heads Together

This strategy is great for all ELLs because students brainstorm the correct answer to teacher-generated questions together. In each group, students are assigned a number from one to four. After the teacher asks a question, students are given 10 seconds to think of the correct  response. They  then huddle in their groups to discuss and agree upon a single answer. The teacher then calls out a number. The student with that number from each group must write down the response on a piece of paper. When  the teacher gives a  signal, the selected student from each team shows his  or her answer.  Groups with the correct response get a point.


Jigsaw

This strategy helps students become experts in one aspect of a topic and share their expertise with classmates. In each group, students are assigned a number from one to four. Those with the same number from each group are assigned a subtopic and asked to form an “expert group” to research it and  create a short presentation. The teacher may wish to assign the same number to ELLs  at similar stages of language acquisition and help their group with the language needed  to present their information to their home groups.  Their  presentation could be in the form of drawings with labels and maps. However, the strategy works just as well if the ELLs are spread out among the groups. In such a case, ELLs at the early stages of acquisition can serve as artists, illustrating their group presentations, while more advanced ELLs can serve as project managers, sequenc- ing events or researching information on the Internet.
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Reflection and Self-Assessment

At the end of an assignment, students should reflect on how well their group worked together,  how they  view their own participation, how much they helped each other, and how the group can work even more  effectively.  When  working with elementary age students, it is helpful to make a chart such as the one in Figure  3.3.


Figure 3.3
Group Work Self-Assessment Chart for Elementary School Students




Name:                                       Role:                             Members of my group:                                                                           

I contributed to the group’s work by . . . One problem our group had was . . .
A group member who helped me was . . .

Next time I think we should . . .





In this chapter,  we have detailed critical aspects of effective small-group configurations  in  the  content  area  classroom and explained why small groups are so important for teaching ELLs.  We  have also shown how small-group activities can be modified to include ELLs. In the next chapter, we will discuss the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction for ELLs and discuss activities for providing adequate vocabulary practice.































CHAPTER FOUR

Content Vocabulary
Instruction for ELLs



4













ach year, the students in Mrs.  Clark’s 6th  grade class study natural disasters as part of their science curricu- lum. Typically, 6th  grade teachers launch such lessons
by asking their students if any of them have experienced a tornado, earthquake, or  other such event, and the students share their  experiences. However,  because Mrs.  Clark’s  ELLs were  not  familiar  with  the  vocabulary  needed  to  express themselves clearly in English, she decided to introduce her lesson in a way that would also provide explicit vocabulary instruction. Drawing   from Echevarria and colleagues’ (2008) work on how to spark student interest, Mrs. Clark  decided to begin her unit of study by passing out copies of the following excerpt from L. Frank  Baum’s The Wizard of Oz:


From  the far north they heard a low wail of the wind and Uncle Henry and Dorothy   could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. There now came a sharp whistling sound in the air from the south and as they turned their eyes  that  way,  they saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also. The house whirled around two or three  times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy   felt as if she were going up in a balloon. The north and south  winds  met where the house stood, and made it the exact center of the cyclone. In the middle of a  cyclone the air is generally still, but the great  pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it up higher

51
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and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone; and there it remained and was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.


Before reading the excerpt out loud, Mrs.  Clark   provided her students with highlighters and asked them to mark any words that  they  didn’t  understand. She  believed  that  reading  the excerpt would help her students understand some of the key concepts and terms for the unit on  tornadoes, and she also knew that many of her students were familiar with The Wizard of Oz in their native languages.


After reading the excerpt aloud, Mrs. Clark  asked her students to identify the words that they felt they needed to know. Col- lectively, the students created a word chart and discussed the meanings of the words using the context, their  dictionaries, and an electronic translator. Students scanned pictures and dis- cussed the bolded words in a National Geographic book about tornadoes. They  linked the bolded vocabulary to what they had read in the excerpt. Once this activity was completed, Mrs. Clark   gathered her students  around the classroom computer to watch a video clip of a tornado in progress. Drawing   from what they had learned from their discussion of the excerpt and the book on  tornadoes, the students spoke excitedly among themselves while watching the video clip, using much of the new vocabulary that they had learned: “Look  at the funnel!” “Wow, it’s twisting!” “It’s going to touch down!” In a discus- sion about the video afterward, one student exclaimed, “I have never seen a tornado. Tornadoes are a scary disaster!”
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 53



After  the students viewed the clip, Mrs.  Clark   asked them to write a description of what they had learned from their read- ing. Several used descriptive words to illustrate the  destruc- tion that they had observed.  When  this task  was completed, Mrs.  Clark   asked each student  to read his or her observation aloud to a partner, who in turn was asked to write down the new vocabulary words that the other student  used in his or her description. Because the students knew that their partners were going to be listening for new  vocabulary words, they made an effort to use them.


*    *         *


We believe that teachers should use explicit vocabulary instruc- tion and connect new words to students’ prior knowledge and experiences. Children  become literate as they secure meaning from the world around them: Context  cues, such as the golden arches of McDonalds  or the red octagons of stop signs, can be understood by children three years old and even younger. The process of learning from these cues is known as  forming an “environment print” (Hudelson, 2001). Young ELLs have had many  opportunities  to  build  connections  among  symbols, words, and  meanings, but often in other languages and  cul- tural contexts. Teachers  of ELLs  must  therefore create oppor- tunities  and  multiple  demonstrations  for  students  to  learn new concepts and vocabulary in English (Crandall, Jaramillo, Olsen, &  Peyton, 2002).


More  often than not, ELLs haven’t been exposed to the English vocabulary and concepts necessary for comprehending content area  material, and teachers tend to draw from  materials  that represent U.S. culture. Lesson  design  and delivery must help
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ELLs to understand English words in the context of their new culture. For  example, ELLs who have never seen snow would be at a distinct disadvantage when learning about the seasons; thus, introducing a  lesson on seasons by having students go outside during the first snowstorm of the year or by showing them a video of children playing in the snow would provide such  students  with  firsthand  experience  and  better  under- standing of the concept.




Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

There are two kinds of vocabulary acquisition: direct and indi- rect. Direct  learning occurs when students are explicitly taught vocabulary  for  a  specific  purpose. Indirect  learning  occurs when students acquire vocabulary by hearing it in  school or at home, or by reading. English language learners don’t learn much of their vocabulary from  indirect learning. At  home, many parents of ELLs either don’t speak English or have a lim- ited grasp of it; at school, many ELLs don’t understand much of  the  conversation that occurs around them. For  example, in Judie’s school, announcements are always prefaced by the phrase “Please excuse the interruption.” Whenever announce- ments  would  come  on  the  loudspeaker,  one  3rd grade  ESL group would parrot the phrase by chanting “peasexcustherup- tion,” having no idea what was being said.


In many kindergarten classrooms, teachers use signals to com- municate specific actions that they want their students to do. One time, Debbie    and  a  group  of  teachers  and  researchers
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 55



wanted to see if the signals had the same meaning for ELLs as they  did for native speakers of English. They  observed a group of  kindergarten teachers who formed the letter L with their  hands. They  also observed a second group who flicked the classroom lights on and off while holding up a hand. Both groups stated that these signals were intended for the same purpose: to have students stop what they’re doing, look at the teacher,  and listen to what the teacher says. Debbie  and  her group asked the students what these signals meant. Whereas most of the ELLs thought that the signals meant simply that they should stop what they were doing, most of the English- fluent students understood that the signals meant they were to stop what they were doing and look and listen to their teacher. The  kindergarten teachers had failed to  explicitly introduce the underlying meaning of their signals in a way that the ELLs could understand.


Students may appear to pick up words easily, such as when they sing the  lyrics that they are taught in music class. However, they  don’t  always  understand  what  they  are  singing  unless it is  explicitly taught to them at their English language level. Although all students need direct instruction in vocabulary, it is especially imperative for ELLs. They must be provided with strategies for figuring out and remembering new words. Also, they need much more exposure to new vocabulary words than do their English-fluent classmates (August &  Shanahan, 2006). English language learners need to learn cognates, prefixes, suf- fixes, and root words to enhance their ability to make sense of new vocabulary. More importantly, they must be given multiple opportunities to use new vocabulary and practice it repeatedly.
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Preteaching Vocabulary and
Key Concepts of a Lesson

There are two schools of thought regarding preteaching vocab- ulary. Those in favor of it feel that the rhythm of a lesson is broken if vocabulary words are explained during the reading of text, whereas those against it feel that they are teaching out of context if they introduce new vocabulary before the lesson begins. It is our belief that essential vocabulary should be pre- taught to ELLs after the key concepts of the lesson have been explained. Too often, teachers use the lesson’s “big idea” as a jumping-off point, but it is our experience the ELLs won’t even understand the big idea if the key concepts and vocabulary have not been taught.



Teaching Students to Recognize
Context Clues

Understanding  context clues, such as embedded  definitions, pictures, charts, and tables, helps ELLs build the blocks (schema) that  they  will  need  to  comprehend  the  text. For   example, learning about exercising one’s right to vote involves learning about the concept of democracy, as well as learning words and phrases that have more than one meaning, such as “exercise” and “right.” Teachers of ELLs must ensure that key words with multiple meanings are not misunderstood.


In one  5th grade  U.S. history  class  that  we  observed,  the teacher,  Mrs.  Dubois, walked her students  through a chapter on the causes of the Civil   War  before the students  read the text. They talked about the key concepts that were noted in the
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 57



introduction to the chapter and linked these to information gleaned  from the previous chapter.  They  read and listed the bolded words, which Mrs. Dubois  asked her students to define using the context of the text. Students worked on defining the vocabulary in small groups. They  constructed a  T-chart  with the headings “North”  and “South” and listed vocabulary that pertained to each heading. The class then studied the pictures, charts, maps, and timelines in the chapter and discussed how each of these visuals was tied to the chapter’s main idea (the widening of the differences between slave and free states before the  Civil  War).  The   visuals  and  small-group arrangements helped the ELLs learn their vocabulary more effectively.


Learning  words out of context, such as from a list of diction- ary definitions, is very difficult for ELLs. Words and concepts can easily be misconstrued in ways that are not at all related to the intended meaning. When ELLs memorize the meanings of words on a specific subject matter list, they may not be able to use the words in their own writing or verbal production.



Building Background Knowledge

Teachers should explicitly link content to concepts that stu- dents have previously learned as well as to students’ life experi- ences. To do this, teachers must first know what their students have previously learned and  experienced. In teaching a unit about natural disasters, for example, teachers might ask ELLs for information about the kinds of extreme  weather condi- tions that are found in their native countries. In Mrs. Clark’s classroom, a student from the Philippines  found an online video clip about the 1991 eruption of Mount  Pinatubo that his
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grandparents had witnessed. Another  student  found a video clip about a tornado that had occurred in her home country of Argentina. Showing students how the subject matter relates to their countries of origin leads to a deeper level of exploration and understanding and also lets students feel that  teachers and classmates are interested in their prior experiences.



The Three Tiers of Vocabulary

It is important to choose the key terms,  words, idioms, and phrases—what Debbie calls TWIPs—that your students need to learn. Too often, the phrases and idioms that we use to teach content are implied rather than directly taught. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) offer a three-tiered model to teach TWIPs:


•     Tier 1 includes basic words or phrases that do not need explanation, are commonly used in everyday conver- sation, and are familiar to most English-fluent students (e.g., blue, pencil, chair).
•     Tier 2 includes words or phrases that are used often and included in a variety of contexts but that need expla- nation because they are more descriptive or precise— conductor rather than the Tier 1 driver, for example, or pleased rather than the Tier  1  happy.  Calderon   (2007) also places such linking words as so, at, into, within, by, if, then, and because in this category.
•     Tier 3 includes words or phrases that are not commonly used, are limited to a particular  context, and are not likely to be used outside the classroom (e.g., photosyn- thesis, quadratic equation, iambic pentameter).
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 59



In classrooms composed of both English-fluent learners and ELLs, teachers must pay attention to all three of the above tiers. Calderon     (2007), Hinkel (2009), and  Short,   Himmel, and Richards (2009) claim that learners need at least  12 practice opportunities using TWIPs in context before they can  fully understand them; mere exposure is not enough.



Using Word Walls

Word walls help teachers visually communicate the words and phrases needed for more efficient understanding of new sub- ject matter,  and also provide the practice opportunities that students need to  move the TWIPs from short- to long-term memory.  We  recommend having two “word walls” in your classroom to help  students practice their words and phrases: one reserved for Tier 1 and Tier 2 TWIPs and another reserved for content-specific Tier 3 TWIPs. Students should help create the Tier  3 wall by selecting  key vocabulary from their text- books by looking at chapter titles, headings, subheadings, and bolded words. Research shows that learning is more effective when students help select the vocabulary that they need to learn  (Echevarria et al., 2008). The  words on the Tier 3 wall should change from unit to unit.


Another technique that we have used successfully is the por- table word wall. Mrs. Clark  used a portable world wall with her students during the tornado lesson (see Figure  4.1). Portable word walls are simply vocabulary lists that students create and keep in their binders, thus allowing each individual student to specifically address his or her particular vocabulary learning
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Figure 4.1
Example of a Portable Word Wall from Mrs. Clark’s Class



New Words

tornado cyclone updraft Tornado Alley wall clouds high pressure low pressure
weather satellite
Old Words with
New Meanings

funnel mass pressure alley
People

meteorologist scientist
storm chaser

Everyday Words to Learn

destruction violent extreme damage
Weather Words to Review

cumulous clouds cold front cumulonimbus clouds warm front








needs. Students can have the list handy when they are doing homework and performing a variety of classroom tasks.


Tablemats  may  also  be  used  as  portable  word  walls  during cooperative work. Small groups composed of both ELLs  and English-fluent students can construct poster-size tablemats of subject-matter vocabulary. Each tablemat can remain in place while groups rotate from one table to the next, examining the differences between the mats, using the words on each mat in context, and so forth.
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 61


Self-Selecting Vocabulary
(Reader’s Workshop)

Reader’s Workshop  is an instructional mode for reading that fosters a love of reading by personalizing instruction for each student. In Judie’s school, we observed the Reader’s Workshop in Ms.  Menzella’s  2nd grade  classroom, where students col- lected their  own new vocabularies from their reading, wrote them on a chart in the room, and explained to  classmates what their words meant. Because the reading materials in the Reader’s  Workshop  were  individualized, ELLs   were  able  to participate fully in the instruction. Ms. Menzella contributed some vocabulary terms herself, such as prefixes, suffixes, and root  words. Students made personal dictionaries to note  the words they want to remember.


Reader’s Workshop is especially beneficial to ELLs. Ms.  Men- zella  remarked  to  us, “My     classroom  represents  a  class  of diverse learners from various cultural backgrounds and learn- ing abilities. I have watched these learners successfully apply the [vocabulary acquisition] strategies as effectively and easily as any other  learner in my classroom. Strategy instruction  is always introduced using the gradual release of responsibility. In this way, I am able to support any learner who may require additional support.”



Teaching ELLs to Pronounce New Vocabulary

It is important for students to practice pronunciation. We sug- gest that teachers take time to pronounce each new word for their students and have students repeat and practice using the
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words in context. Teachers should point out proper names, as well. In one class that we  observed, during a lesson on the Civil   War, the teacher had students pronounce the names of historical figures and battles without specifically defining the words. At  the end of the  lesson, one ELL  asked, “Is  Jefferson Davis  a person?”


Students are more likely to use a word in oral discourse if they feel confident of the pronunciation and understand what the word means. Teachers should point out pictures of people and use  maps  to  show  places  when  teaching  pronunciation. In Mrs. Clark’s class, students practiced pronouncing the names of countries and states as they located them on a map where natural  disasters occurred. They  also practiced the names  of volcanoes. This made it easier for them to discuss and retain the material.



Strategies for Supporting
Vocabulary Instruction

During   a lesson on the Civil   War in Mrs. Wondra’s 5th grade social studies class, ELLs could not understand what a blockade was. Mrs. Wondra selected a student and had him wear a sign reading, “English Ship.” Then she asked him to leave the room. Mrs. Wondra explained that the English ship wanted to bring food into the Confederate  states. She then instructed another student to wear a sign that read, “Union Ship.” She asked him to try to prevent the English ship from supplying the Confed- erate states with food. The  “Union  Ship” student barred his classmate from reentering the class. Mrs. Wondra told her class that the Union  ship had  created a blockade. This  enactment
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 63



helped all of Mrs.  Wondra’s  students learn the meaning of a blockade.

*    *        *


According   to  Howard Gardner’s  (1993) theory  of  multiple intelligences, there are many different  kinds of intelligences, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, musical,  interpersonal,  and  intrapersonal. Broadly  speaking, linguistic intelligence involves the capacity to use and manip- ulate language through listening, speaking, reading, and writ- ing. Gardner notes that this is the intelligence that is measured on  standardized  tests. Although  many  ELLs  have  linguistic intelligence in their native language, they cannot demonstrate it in English. They may not perform well on standardized tests or in  classrooms that do not address their language learning needs. We  believe that such poor performance occurs  when teachers focus solely on linguistic intelligence and emphasize such processes as lecture-driven lessons, student presentations in front of the whole class, and  essay writing, all of which require a high level of English comprehension and fluency. In addition, most of the teaching in U.S. schools is geared toward students who prefer to learn by listening and engaging in oral activities and discussions. This type of learning requires skills that ELLs do not yet have when they are learning English.


We  believe  that  learning  occurs  best  when  teachers  create lessons  that  are  targeted  to  the  various  learning  styles  and multiple  intelligences  of  ELLs.  For   example, some  ELLs  are bodily-kinesthetic learners: they can learn better by touching, molding, and  holding objects than by listening to lectures. They like to play games, set up experiments, and move around
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the room. It is our experience that, during the early stages of language acquisition, ELLs  are  usually visual and kinesthetic learners. Other   ELLs  might lean more toward interpersonal learning:  they  like  choral  reading  and  group  activities  and are more likely to act spontaneously and intuitively. In addi- tion to differences in  learning styles, ELLs  differ in terms of learning  background: some are highly literate in their native languages but familiar only with lecture-based lessons; others have had limited formal schooling; and still others have had their schooling interrupted many times.


Mr. Martinez,  a 5th grade social studies teacher, introduced a lesson on the growth of cities in the United States by telling a simple story using basic vocabulary that all his students could understand. To further help the visual learners in his class, he illustrated his story as he told it by holding pictures: of a sky- scraper, of an elevator, of Jane Addams, of Hull House in Chi- cago, of people living  in  tenements, and so forth.  Then, he had students retell the story by following the sequence of the pictures as he held them up. After  the  lesson,  English-fluent students read the textbook and answered questions, while ELLs practiced new vocabulary by using the visuals and listening to a recording that Mr. Martinez  had made of the story.


Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are visual tools that help ELLs  to under- stand and organize information. They are like mind maps that promote active learning and creativity and help  students to develop  higher-level thinking  skills.  Graphic organizers  are important tools for converting complex information into man- ageable chunks, as content materials often contain text that is
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 65



too dense for ELLs. We believe that all classrooms should use graphic organizers such as webs, diagrams, and charts.


Graphic organizers are also excellent tools for helping students to interpret and summarize text. For example, when Mrs. Lautz’s
6th  grade students studied a new chapter in their social stud- ies book, they first made a list of all the bolded words, section titles, and proper nouns in the chapter, then categorized them under headings in a simple graphic organizer. Figure 4.2 shows an example of this type of organizer  used for an assignment on the Industrial Revolution in the United States. In the first column, students drew a picture or wrote about an invention from the early 1800s. In the  second column, they wrote the inventor’s name. In the third column, they stated why it was important. The  students  reviewed the information on their
organizers using the following frame:


                                   invented the                                     . It was
important because                                                                .


Figure 4.2
Sample Graphic Organizer for
Lesson on the Industrial Revolution



Invention              Inventor               Why Invention Is Important
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When  they were done, the students shared their  organizers with a small group of  classmates. This  small-group activity gave ELLs have the opportunity to use oral language and review vocabulary.


Strategies for Practicing Vocabulary

English language  learners  should  practice  new  vocabulary every day. During  a 6th grade science unit on the solar system, one ESL teacher we know had students draw and label parts of a planet that they themselves made up. The students used their new vocabulary to expand the creation of their imaginary planets. They then had to present their imaginary planets to the rest of the class, thus exhibiting their mastery of academic vocabulary.


Flash  cards are particularly helpful for ELLs because they can be tailored to individual levels of language acquisition. One side of a flash card should have a word or phrase written on it, and the other side should have a definition or illustration of the word or phrase. Students can create flash cards during class time. As they learn vocabulary, they can sort their cards into two piles: the words and phrases that they have learned, and the ones that they have not yet learned. Students can be encouraged to take their flash cards home and refer to them when engaged in such tasks as brushing their hair, eating snacks, or riding the school bus. They can even play different games with their flash cards, such as word searches or crossword puzzles. Judie has her ESL students work in small groups to design short vocabulary tests at the end of a unit. Each group comes up with a different test; groups then exchange tests with each other and try to answer
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 67



the questions. Some of the student-generated tests are more cre- ative and fun for students to take than those a teacher would have made, and they can even be more difficult. The overall pur- pose of flash cards is for students to internalize and be able to use content-related words and phrases independently and at will.


One of the activities in Judie’s school is an annual science fair. Students traditionally prepare their projects for the fair using the  scientific method, and they must present their  projects via a slide show that includes such scientific terms as question, hypothesis,  materials, procedure,  data,  results,  and  conclusion. Here are some other  strategies that teachers can use to help their students practice vocabulary:


•     Thumbs-Up! The teacher says a definition of a vocab- ulary word. If the students know the word, they raise their  hands  in  a  thumbs-up position. The   teacher then counts to three, and the students quietly say the word.
•     Find  the  Word.  The  teacher  says  a  sentence  but omits a vocabulary word. Each student has  a  pile of cards with a vocabulary word on each and puts  the card with the missing word facedown on his or her desk. On the count of three, the  students turn their cards over.
•     Act It Out. Students take one card each from  a pile of cards, each one of which has a vocabulary word on it. One student is chosen to act out the word on his or her card while classmates try to guess what the word is. Whoever answers correctly gets to act out his or her word next.
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•     Bingo. Each student makes a bingo card that features lines of vocabulary words in place of numbers, writing the words in random order so that all of the cards are different. The teacher reads a definition, and students mark the attendant word on their cards. The first stu- dent to mark all of the words in a line on the card calls “Bingo!” and becomes the next caller.
•     Beach  Ball  Vocabulary.   The   teacher  writes  the vocabulary words on a beach ball and asks the students to stand in a circle. The teacher then throws the ball to a student, who reads the word that is under his or her thumb and defines it.
•     Word Search Vocabulary. The teacher has students create a word search game on graph paper using their vocabulary  words. Instead of providing a list of  the words to be found, the students list the words’ defini- tions as clues. When they are done, the students solve each other’s puzzles.
•     Find the Transition Word!  The  teacher asks stu- dents to find the transition words (e.g., because, how- ever, so, and, if) that link, break, or contrast clauses in a discussion.


Making Vocabulary Stick—Literally

We  have found that younger ELLs  love using sticky  notes, highlighters, Wikki Stix (i.e., wax-coated pieces of yarn), and highlighting tape in class, so any lesson that includes  these materials stands a good chance of sparking students’  inter- est. The  students in Ms. Menzella’s  2nd grade class  collected new vocabulary by marking every new word they came across in their textbooks on a sticky note, which they then used to
Content Vocabulary Instruction for ELLs | 69



mark the page on which the word is found. We have also seen students learn the conventions of nonfiction text by marking and labeling titles, headings, insets, maps, charts, table of con- tents, index, and glossary.


Highlighting is an essential strategy for ELLs. We have our stu- dents mark new vocabulary and find the meaning in the text using a highlighter in consumable books. For  this very reason, we like to use consumable books with our ELLs as much as pos- sible. If students want to highlight words in nonconsumable books, they should use highlighter tape or Wikki Stix. Wikki Stix are reusable, but highlighter tape is not.


Participants  in  Judie’s  professional  development  workshops have told her that their districts buy extra textbooks for ELLs to use. These books are highlighted by the teacher and kept in the classroom library. This is an immense help to ELLs because they can immediately see what is important in the text.



Resources for Teaching Key
Concepts and Vocabulary

Teachers  may wish to use carefully selected educational TV programs (such as those found on the Discovery  Channel), videos from school and town libraries, and Internet resources to introduce units of study. Sixty years of historic news archives from NBC   News are now available free for teachers to use in their classrooms at  http://www.hotchalk.com.  Key academic vocabulary can also be introduced by reading stories  aloud, such as in the case of Mrs. Clark’s read-aloud from The Wizard of Oz.
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In this chapter, we explored the importance of direct instruc- tion  of  vocabulary  for  ELLs.  We   examined  activities  that teachers can use to provide adequate repetition and practice of new vocabulary words and concepts, presented visual and tactile activities that work especially well with ELLs, and noted resources and activities that can be used with the whole class while also benefiting ELLs. In the next chapter, we will exam- ine reading comprehension strategies that are crucial for ELLs to learn.































CHAPTER FIVE

Reading Comprehension
Instruction for ELLs



5













s. Menzella gathered her 2nd grade students on the rug in  her classroom to hear a story entitled The Doorbell Rang. She explained to her students that
they were going to learn how to make pictures in their heads. “When  we make pictures in our heads of what is happening in a story, it is called visualizing,” Ms. Menzella explained. In the story,  two children are  sitting at the dining room table looking forward to sharing a plate  of 12 cookies that their mother had baked. At the end of the first page, Ms. Menzella asked the students to draw a  picture of the plate of cookies and to think about what kind of cookies they were. After stu- dents made their drawings, they examined the picture of the chocolate chip cookies that was on the next page of the book and shared their own pictures with the class. When one of the ELLs, Soon Ji, showed her picture, she sighed, “I was wrong”— she had drawn 12 sugar cookies with red sprinkles. Ms. Men- zella explained to the students that mind pictures do not need to be correct. “The pictures in your heads can change when you get new information. A picture is new information,” she explained. Ms. Menzella  believed that it was especially impor- tant to let her ELLs know this, because they are often product oriented and focused on having a correct response.


*    *        *




73
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As  we noted in Chapter    4, Ms.  Menzella    used the Reader’s Workshop  approach  in  her  classroom. What   we  like  about using Reader’s Workshop  with ELLs  is that it allows the stu- dents to read books that they select themselves and apply strat- egies that they learn in class to their reading. It’s a good idea for teachers to have short minilessons during which they can model comprehension strategies, followed by student practice time (either individually or in pairs) using books at appropri- ate reading levels. As part of the Reader’s Workshop, students should hold individual conferences with their teachers two or three times a week, or more for ELLs.


Teachers should teach ELLs the exact language that they will need to talk about what they have read. We believe that it is highly  motivating to essentially tell students, “This  is  what good readers do, and now you are going to learn how to do it, too.” English language learners also reap the benefits of partici- pating in whole-class instruction while also individually prac- ticing with books that are suitable for  their  levels of English language acquisition.


At the heart of Reader’s Workshop are six reading comprehen- sion strategies that we believe are important to teach to ELLs at all different grade levels, regardless of whether the Reader’s Workshop approach itself is used:


1. Visualizing what is happening in the story,

2. Activating background knowledge by making connec- tions,
3. Asking mental questions to self-check comprehension,

4. Learning how to make inferences about what is read,
Reading Comprehension Instruction for ELLs | 75



5. Determining  the importance of information in a text, and
6.  Synthesizing information that is learned.



Visualizing What Is Happening in the Story

In the example at the beginning of this chapter, Ms. Menzella wanted her students to use visualization to help them under- stand the story  she was reading. She checked her students’ comprehension by reviewing the pictures that they’d drawn. If the drawings didn’t accurately reflect the content of the book, Ms. Menzella  would modify her instructional plans to support better  comprehension. For  example, she might separate the class into small groups of four for the purpose of enacting the story and dividing up 12 chocolate chip cookies.


When Judie first started to teach visualization to her 1st and 2nd grade ELLs, she was reluctant to use the word “visualization,” certain that it was too advanced for her students. One day, when talking to a group of 2nd graders about the mental picture that she had in her head, one of her students said, “Oh, you mean visualize.” We  believe that it is important to  teach the ELLs accurate terminology. It is important for ELLs to learn the same vocabulary for discussing their ideas as their classmates.



Activating Background Knowledge by Making Connections

Keene and Zimmerman (1997), Miller  (2002), and Harvey and Goudvis (2007) have noted the importance of connecting read- ing material to background knowledge.  Activating  students’
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background knowledge helps students to connect their prior experience, or schema, to the learning material. Of course, the schemas that ELLs bring to the classroom may be very different from those of their classmates. Teachers should help students make three distinct types of connections: text-to-self, text-to- text, and text-to-world.



Text-to-Self Connections

A text-to-self connection is a link that readers make between the text that they are reading and something that has hap- pened in their own lives. This type of connection helps them to  comprehend the text and to share their unique schemas with their classmates. English language learners should learn the phrases that help them to frame their thoughts (e.g., “This reminds me of when I . . . ,” “My connection helps me to under- stand the story because . . .”). Drawing text-to-self connections helps students to better understand feelings and behaviors of the figures about which they are reading.


Carolina, a 2nd grade ELL,  came to the United  States from Costa  Rica with  very  limited  English. She  received  reading instruction in both mainstream and ESL classrooms. One day, her ESL class was discussing a passage in the book Pa Lia’s First Day, in which someone refers to the main character as “Four Eyes.” Here is what Carolina  wrote:


I have a text to self connection. My  mom had glasses at
2nd grade. Everyone call her four eyes and they put round things in their eyes to make fun of her. These  make me understand how Pa Lia feels.
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Although   Carolina     had  only  been  in  the  country  for  six months, she was able to make a text-to-self  connection that helped her understand what was happening in the  story.  By contrast, Armando, a classmate of Carolina’s, wrote the follow- ing in reaction to the same passage from the book:


This reminds me of when I got glasses and I broke them. My  mom was mad at me.


Whereas Carolina’s text-to-self connection helped her to under- stand how Pa Lia felt, Armando’s connection was irrelevant to the  story.  His response was a good indicator that additional supports were needed to help him to understand the text.


Text-to-Text Connections

Text-to-text connections are links that students make between the text that they are reading and another book that they have read. It is important to teach students the language of text-to- text connections. When Judie visits elementary Reader’s Work- shop classrooms, she hears phrases such as “This reminds me of another book that I read” and “I have a  text-to-text con- nection.” Teachers may find that they need to prompt the use of this strategy with ELLs by asking, “Does   anyone remember another book where children had to share with their friends?” or, “This story is about sharing. What else have we read about sharing?” Explicit instruction of the strategy accompanied by a lot of modeling is especially important for ELLs.


Text-to-text connections can be explored by using graphic organizers to compare different books. This can happen at any
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grade level—elementary school students might chart similar- ities  and  differences  in  different  versions  of  the  Cinderella story,  for  example, or high school students might draw  con- nections between characters from two different Shakespeare plays. Graphic organizers build on our core belief that learning is best accomplished when accompanied by a visual model.


Text-to-World Connections

Text-to-world connections are links that students make between the text that they are reading and something that has hap- pened in the world. When students from other countries make connections with their homelands, they are  more likely to learn. This is an important strategy for ELLs because, as with text-to-self  connections, they are using their own  schema to understand the text. They  should be taught to use  sentence starters such as “This makes me think about . . . ,” “I remember when . . . ,” and “This is what happened in my country.”


Let’s take a look at a student in a 4th grade ESL class where the teacher, Ms. Hernandez, was beginning a science unit on habi- tats. To jump-start the unit, Ms. Hernandez had put a pile of books on forest habitats at the center of a table. Students were excited to look through the materials:  “Look  at this!” and “I didn’t know this!” they shouted as they examined the books. The  students squirmed  with excitement as they pointed out items of interest to their classmates.


Junya stopped and studied a picture of a raccoon. “Ms. Hernan- dez, you won’t believe what I see on Japanese TV!” he exclaimed. “They have raccoons in Japan! They make big problem.”
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“Hey,”  said Roberto. “That’s  a  connection.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Is it text-to-self or text-to-world con- nection?” After much discussion, the class decided that Junya has made a text-to-world connection.



Asking Mental Questions to
Self-Check Comprehension

Good readers are always asking themselves questions  before, during, and after reading. Because many of her 6th  grade stu- dents did not have sufficient background information about the Underground Railroad before the start of a unit, Mrs. Dan- ahy  developed a question web with her class and provided her students  with picture books and Internet resources,  then helped them to use these materials in groups to generate ques- tions and write them on sticky notes. In front of the class was a large chart. Student placed their sticky notes on the left side of the chart; as they found the answers to their questions in their reading, they wrote these down on sticky  notes  as well and placed the notes on the right side of the chart.


In a 6th  grade social studies unit on the Civil  War, Mrs. Dan- ahy introduced a lesson on the Underground Railroad using a simple book for students on the subject called If You Traveled on the Underground  Railroad.  She questioned them about the book’s title: “I wonder where people traveling on the Under- ground Railroad in the story will go?”  A student immediately asked what the Underground  Railroad  was. Dmitry,  an ELL at the emerging stage of English  language acquisition, won- dered how a  railroad could really be underground.  He  knew
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the meaning of the words “underground” and “railroad,” but had a lot of difficulty with the  concept. By listening to the questions of other children and reading a book at an adequate reading level, he was able to understand much of the work in the classroom.


English language learners will be more likely to ask good ques- tions if they first read books and practice with a buddy or part- ner. Here are ways to help your students get started:


•     Ask  students to predict what the story will be about based on the title or picture on the cover.
•     Explain that a prediction is a guess—it doesn’t have to be correct; it just needs to make sense. Teach students that their predictions might change as they read.
•     Help students  identify  stopping  places  in  the  text where they should think of questions or make predic- tions. Ask them to mark these places with sticky notes or write about them in their reading notebooks.


Differentiated Expectations

Mrs. Danahy  had differentiated expectations for participation in her  class; students were in the habit of reading different books at  different levels about the same topic. For  example, one of Mrs. Danahy’s ELLs, Daniel, read an entire book about the U.S. Civil   War written in Korean. This background infor- mation gave him the schema that he needed to participate at some level in the social studies lesson. Because differentiation was the norm in Mrs. Danahy’s class, Daniel   and Dmitry did not stick out when they read different books about the same topic. They  were able to follow much of the  class discussion and pose simple questions such as “Why is this family running
Reading Comprehension Instruction for ELLs | 81



way?”  and “Were  the people afraid?” In  addition, they were able to participate fully in the ensuing discussion by drawing from Mrs. Danahy’s modeling and visualizing examples.



Learning How to Make Inferences
About What Is Read

Good readers draw inferences while they read—that is, they “read between the lines”—as much of what authors convey is implied rather than directly stated. English language learners need to learn strategies to infer meaning by making connec- tions to prior knowledge,  visualizing, and  predicting. Infer- ence is very difficult  for ELLs, as they are already struggling with grammar, sentence  structure, and vocabulary.  Teachers must  therefore explicitly teach their ELLs  to infer  meaning, and relay such helpful framing phrases as  “I predict . . . ,” “My guess is . . . ,” “I think that . . . ,” “My  conclusion is . . . , “ “I infer that . . . ,” and so on.


Mrs. Schnee’s 1st  grade ESL students sat on the rug on a cold winter day. They could see a snow-covered field through a win- dow.  Mrs.  Schnee held up a book called The Snowy Day.  She told  her students, “When  I look at the cover of this  book, I can infer that this story takes place in the winter. I infer this because I see snow,  just like outside my  window.”  She then asked students to infer what happens in the  story from the picture. One student,  Karim, said, “I infer that the boy can’t play outside  for  a long time.” Karim used the language that he had been taught to describe what he believed occurred in the story. When  Mrs.  Schnee asked him why he made this inference, Karim replied, “My schema tells me that it is winter and the snow is cold.” Mrs. Schnee asked Karim to point out
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what in the picture made him think that the book was set in winter.  Karim pointed to the snow and to the snowsuit that the boy was wearing.


Determining the Importance of Information in a Text

Good readers can distinguish between important and unim- portant  information  in  nonfiction  text. This  ability  is  key to understanding the content that students must read.  First, teachers  should  introduce  students  to  the  conventions  of nonfiction text, such as by having them scan chapter  titles, headings,  subheadings, picture  captions, maps,  glossaries, and indexes.  English language learners should receive plenty of support before  they even begin to read the text. They need to understand that reading is not necessarily a front-to- back task.


Students in Mr. Hopkins’s 10th  grade history class learned to scan the  title, table of contents, bolded  words, photographs, captions, maps,  headings,  subheadings, and labels in a text- book chapter to preview information for a unit on immigra- tion to the United States. Even though the text as a whole was above the reading level of some of the ELLs in the class, they were still able to access enough information this way to gain important information about the topic.


Ms.  Meldonian    was teaching animal adaptations to her 3rd grade science class. She wrote down the key idea of the chap- ter that the class was reading on the chalkboard: Adaptations are important to an animal’s survival.  She taught  her students
Reading Comprehension Instruction for ELLs | 83



that relevant information is that which is related to the key idea. She gave several examples of information from the chap- ter and asked students to practice deciding what is  relevant and what isn’t.  Students then read the chapter.  When  they were done, Ms. Meldonian  divided them into groups and had them brainstorm what they’d learned. Students in each group wrote a list of information they’d learned from the  chapter and then placed an R next to facts that they feel were relevant. Ms. Meldonian  made a large T-chart and displayed the relevant and irrelevant facts from the groups’ lists in front of the whole
class (see Figure 5.1).



Figure 5.1
Sample T-Chart of Relevant Versus Irrelevant Information

Relevant Information                       Irrelevant Information

Animals have different features and behaviors.

An animal’s body part can be an adaptation.

Adaptations help animals live in their homes.

Adaptations help animals hide from enemies.
Tigers are big animals.

Some adaptations are strange. Vampire bats have a funny name.




Synthesizing Information That Is Learned

Good readers know how to summarize important information and incorporate it into their schema. As they read, they carry
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on  an  internal  conversation, asking  themselves  what  they understand or don’t  understand, whether they agree or dis- agree, and what they wonder.


Mrs.  Cirigliano   taught the students in her 5th grade class to synthesize the information that they read in an expository text about nutrition. She had students work with partners to read the text together. Each pair had to decide how much of the text to read before stopping to review and synthesize information. Most    pairs decided to stop  after  each paragraph. Every time they did so, they took turns sharing one comment about what they had read and responding to their partner’s comment. This comment could take the form of a response to the reading, an interesting fact, or a question  about the text. Students were encouraged to think carefully  about each comment, as they were allowed  only  one comment at a time. Mrs.  Cirigliano modeled the language students could use to make their com- ments  (e.g., “This  reminds me of . . . ,” “I felt that . .  . ,” “I didn’t understand it when . . .”).


Mrs.  Dennis    tells her 2nd grade students that there are two voices speaking when they read: The voice that they can hear is their  speaking  voice, and the other is the one inside their heads. This second voice helps them to think about what they are reading.


When students in Mrs. Dennis’s class synthesize information, they do more than retell what they have read; they also dem- onstrate understanding of the reading strategies that they have used. They retell what they have read from two points of view: that of their own  experience, and that of the authors or of
Reading Comprehension Instruction for ELLs | 85



characters in their reading. True synthesis, however, involves that “Aha!” moment that readers have when they really “get” the text.


Synthesis cannot occur if the reader does not understand the key vocabulary in the text. It requires the reader to make many connections to his or her life in order to find deeper meaning, create mental pictures of what is happening in the story, listen to the voice in his or her head, and ask questions about what the text means.


In this chapter, we examined the six essential reading compre- hension strategies that should be taught to ELLs  in all grade levels. We  discussed how to teach students to visualize  what is happening in the text, activate background  knowledge by making connections, ask mental questions to self-check com- prehension, learn how to draw inferences from the text, deter- mine the importance of information in the text, and synthesize the  information. By using these  strategies, teachers can help ELLs to become better readers. In the next chapter, we will dis- cuss how to provide ELLs with effective writing instruction.
































CHAPTER SIX

Writing Instruction for ELLs




6













imin was a 4th grade student from China   who had been in the United States for three years. She was pro- gressing normally in most content areas but had great
difficulty writing. Her classroom teacher,  Mr.  Klein, referred her to Judie’s  ESL class because he was  concerned about her writing level. He sent Judie the following writing sample, writ- ten in response to the question “If you were an animal, what animal would you like to be and why?”:


I like be eagle becas eagle birds king and he fly very  up. They scard. When they baby, they take off they feather and they squek they claw.


Judie read Yimin’s school records, which indicated that Yimin had been exited from a neighboring school district’s ESL pro- gram after only two years. Judie began to  wonder if Yimin wasn’t exited too soon, before she could become a proficient listener, speaker, reader, and writer in English.


*    *        *


Learning  to write in English is a developmental process that involves being able to





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•     Communicate  meaningfully through writing,
•     Write for a range of purposes,
•     Use culturally appropriate terms, and
•     Use correct form and grammar.


Teaching ELLs to write in all subject matters is as important as teaching them to speak, listen, and read in English. Teachers must offer students direct instruction in how to write for dif- ferent content areas—and must also understand the  writing challenges that ELLs experience.



Determining the Degree of Writing
Instruction That Is Needed

Writing is a particularly challenging language domain for ELLs to master, perhaps due to the lack of intensity and intention- ality  that we devote to it. In some schools,  students are no longer considered ELLs when they have acquired the ability to listen and speak in English. But oral language skills are deceiv- ing; they may make students appear to be much more fluent in English than they are. The  ability to learn  ordinary class- room work in English means that ELLs must be able to write in English at or near the level of their English-fluent peers.


Teachers  should ask the following initial questions to ensure that they are providing adequate writing instruction:


•     Are ELLs given multiple meaningful opportunities for bringing their prior knowledge into learning experiences?
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•     Are  ELLs given explicit opportunities to learn how to write appropriately in the content area?
•     What   supports  are  ELLs   given  for  expanding  their knowledge and usage of terms and phrases?


Let’s  visit what Sophy Pich had to say about the challenges that he experienced learning how to write in English. A teacher in an after-school writing program for high school ELLs  that Debbie led, Pich wrote the following passage to stimulate his students’ interest in writing:


It was, I believe, in the 3rd grade  that I was first taught to write summaries to books. I was never able to finish the assignments correctly. Most  of the time, what I did was go to the sections of the books that I thought that I was under- standing and copy paragraphs that seemed important to be included in the summaries onto my paper. I would do that until I felt that I had accomplished summarizing, and then I would write as the last paragraph, “If  you want to find out more about this book, you have to pick up a copy of your own.” To this day, now a senior in college, I still suf- fer from English  grammatical/pronunciation  syndrome. I still am unable to be sure of how to use my verb tenses and structure; is it “has he learnt it?” or “have he learned it?”


Learning   to write involves being able to communicate and convey  ideas  meaningfully.  In Pich’s  case, it  was  critically important for his teachers to model and conduct a think-aloud about the summary-writing process, as well as to engage him in practicing the process. English language learners need this
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type of deliberate instruction about writing to learn how to become fluent writers.



Using Conventions from the First Language

Students will often translate words directly from their native language  into  English using  conventions  from  their  native language. Because different languages have  their  own rules of grammar, student writing often results in errors. For  exam- ple, a student translating the term “green apple” directly into English from  Spanish  might  write, “apple  green,” because adjectives follow nouns in Spanish. Yimin’s writing sample at the beginning of this chapter is another example of how stu- dent writing often obscures the student’s intended meaning.



Tips for ELL Writing Instruction

Here are some tips that teachers can use with ELLs at the emerg- ing stage of acquisition.

•     Do  not expect ELLs to free-write in English. Why teach them  to  write  incomprehensibly? If you  do  engage ELLs  in free-writing, it might be more  appropriate  to ask them to write in their native languages  and  then translate what they have written for you.
•     Do   not have ELLs write journals every night at home unless  you are going to be reading the journals regu- larly. If translation is available, you may wish to have emerging ELLs  write in their native languages;  other- wise, ELLs should not be writing journals until they are at a more advanced stage of acquisition.
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•     Do  not assign open-ended topics to ELLs (e.g., “If you were an animal, what animal  would you want to be and why?”).
•     Provide students with authentic reasons to  write,  as well as examples of what you expect and a firm idea of how you will be assessing their writing.
•     It is our opinion that ELLs learn to write better if they begin  with  nonfiction  content  area  topics, as  these will include specific vocabulary that they must learn. It is also easier for teachers to differentiate nonfiction writing assignments than fiction ones  in mainstream classes. We encourage you to teach writing in all con- tent  areas  before  exposing  ELLs  to  creative  writing. Graphic organizers  can  be  used  most  effectively  for teaching nonfiction writing, because they provide stu- dents with language chunks that they can then use.



Calkins’s Four Phases of the Writing Process

According to Calkins   (1994), there are four distinct phases of the  writing  process:  prewriting,  writing, editing, and  revis- ing. As we explore each phase, we will be looking again at Ms. Meldonian’s 3rd grade class, where students were researching forest animals for their science unit on habitats. This was their first research project. We will follow the work of Joseph, who was at the emerging stage of English language acquisition.


Phase 1: Prewriting

Ms. Meldonian   first had students brainstorm a list of animals that they thought lived in the forest. She listed the students’ ideas in sentence form on chart paper. Then, she asked her class
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to look for information on the Internet about an animal that interested them from one of the habitats that they had studied. The ELLs in her class could only select articles online that they were able to read. Ms. Meldonian  directed Joseph and other ELLs to  http://www.enchantedlearning.com,  a Web  site that posts articles written at levels suitable for ELLs in the emerging stage.

After  students printed out their articles, Ms.  Meldonian  had them brainstorm questions that they wanted answered about their animals. To address her students’ various stages of English language acquisition, she created different graphic organizers for each, supplying the questions that they needed to answer on the organizer and modifying  the questions for each ELL’s level of English language acquisition. Figure 6.1 shows an orga- nizer suitable for Joseph’s level of acquisition.


Figure 6.1
Sample Graphic Organizer for ELL Use During the Prewriting Phase






What kind of animal is it?
What does the animal look like?


Is the animal nocturnal or diurnal?

What is the animal’s habitat?






Tell an interesting fact about the
animal.
Name of animal






What enemies does the animal have?
What does the animal eat? Is it a herbivore? Carnivore?
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Graphic organizers, charts, pictures, photos, films, field trips, and other visual and auditory experiences are important sup- ports to include at the prewriting stage. Using  complete sen- tences in graphic  organizers  greatly helps ELLs  to learn the language of  content. Further,  encouraging ELLs  to copy sen- tences down is also helpful.


Ms. Meldonian   modeled the type of questions that students should answer in their writing: “The question is ‘What  kind of animal is it?’  Let’s  see. My   animal has fur and drinks its mother’s milk, so it must be a mammal.” During prewriting, teachers should provide many such think-alouds. Using terms, words, idioms, and phrases (TWIPs) in context is important at this stage, as it strengthens the  link between oral and writ- ten language. Because many ELLs need to see and experience what they are going to write, teachers should also model the type of writing that they expect to see. Ms. Meldonian   asked Joseph the name of  his animal and wrote, “This  animal is a hedgehog. It is a mammal.” Teachers should spend a good deal of  time at this stage with new learners of English, showing them multiple samples of the type of writing that is required of them.


Phase 2: Writing

Once students’ background knowledge has been activated, the writing phase should  commence. Ms.  Meldonian    asked stu- dents to highlight the information in their online articles that they would need  to know in order to answer the questions in their graphic organizers. Students did this together in small groups. Ms. Meldonian  asked ELLs in the first stage of acquisi- tion to serve as “art experts”—their task was to collaborate with classmates to draw or find pictures of their chosen animals and
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habitats. At this stage, it is important to display a list of con- tent area TWIPs to which students can refer. Joseph was able to answer five of the seven questions on his organizer, as shown
in Figure  6.2.


Figure 6.2
Joseph’s Completed Graphic Organizer












Hedgehog live in the forest of Europe, Asia, and North America.
Hedgehog is mammal.







Hedgehog




Hedgehog roll in ball when hedgehog is scared.
Hedgehog is nocturnal. It hunt for food at night.









Hedgehog eat snails, insects and plants? It is omnivore.





As students acquire more language, they will be able to make their own graphic organizers and write from them. In addition to the graphic organizer, Ms. Meldonian provided Joseph with the following frame for writing:


[Name of Animal]


The name of this animal is [name of animal]. It is a [mam- mal, bird, or reptile]. It lives in the forests of [continent or country].
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[Name of animal] eats [kind of  food]. It is [nocturnal or diurnal] because it eats food during the [night or day].

Something  unusual  about  my  animal  is  that                     
                                .


Here is Joseph’s draft report: Hedgehog
The name of this animal is hedgehog. It is mammal. It live
in North  America, Asia, Europe. It live in desert.


Hedgehog eat insects, snails, snakes, bird eggs and grass. It is omnivore. It is nocturnal because it eat food at night.

Something unusual about my animal is that spines come out when hedgehog is scared. It roll into a ball. It has ene- mies like owl, fox, mongoose and wolf.


Ms. Meldonian   commented on the draft as follows: “Joseph, check the s at the end of third-person verbs.”


Phase 3: Editing

Many  teachers may ask their students to self-edit because they believe that students should be given the opportunity to self- correct their work. However, students who are in the first three stages of English language acquisition will not be able to self- edit, as they will have trouble finding most of their mistakes and may be frustrated in the attempt.


Regularly  conferencing with each ELL  to discuss his or her works in progress is an excellent strategy for building writing
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skills. This is particularly true for students at the early stages of acquisition, as peer editing is not possible for them and may in fact be  counterproductive. When  students are fluent enough to discuss their written ideas and thoughts, the teacher should provide instruction  on  how to peer edit using think-alouds and modeling. For  example, Ms. Meldonian  had Joseph work with a partner to check the s at the end of third-person verbs.


Phase 4: Revising

It is important to tie the type of revision that is possible for each learner to his or her stage of language acquisition. For example, students in the early stages may not  yet  have developed the skills for describing possessives and tenses; they may only just be learning how to write nouns in the plural form and match them  to  the  correct  verb  forms.  When   reviewing  students’ papers, teachers need to provide ELLs with specific details about what they are supposed to do during the revision process. Sim- ply stating, “Add more information here” is too vague; a more appropriate comment would be “Mention    something special that hedgehogs can do here.” If students are a part of the edit- ing process, the revisions will be more meaningful to them.



Presenting a Finished Document

Teachers should encourage students to share their writing with classmates and family. Students can display work in the class- room and hallway or “publish” classroom books. The groups in Joseph’s  class designed habitats for their  animals, which they drew on posters and displayed in the hallway.
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In this chapter,  we examined the writing needs of ELLs  and Calkins’s four-stage writing process. Writing is an essential com- ponent  of  learning  English and  requires  instruction  that is matched to each student stage of English language acquisition. Homework and assessment must also be targeted to the English learning levels of students. In the next chapter, we will discuss how to provide ELLs with appropriate homework assignments and how to assess their content learning.
































CHAPTER SEVEN

Homework and
Assessment for ELLs



7













ne of the students in Mrs.  McBride’s  6th  grade ESL class, Yeon Jae, rested his head on the table. He closed his eyes and nearly fell asleep. He had appeared tired
and inattentive during the class period.


Mrs. McBride asked, “Yeon Jae, are you sick?”


“I don’t go sleep until 2:00  a.m.,” moaned Yeon Jae. “I do work to finish homework for Mr. Fielding.”


When Mrs. McBride questioned him further, she found that he had begun his homework at 5:00 p.m.—meaning he had spent nine hours on one night’s assignments. Yeon Jae assumed that he was required to complete the assignments  written on the board in his classroom. Mrs. McBride reviewed his homework planner (Figure  7.1).


When  questioning Mr.  Fielding  about the homework assign- ments, Mrs. McBride found that he knew Yeon Jae would not be able to complete the same homework assignments as  the rest of the class and just assumed that his ELLs would do the best  that they could. It didn’t occur to him to modify  the homework, and he was dismayed to  learn  how late Yeon  Jae had worked.


*    *        *

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Figure 7.1
Yeon Jae’s Homework Planner



12/7/08

Math                 Do problems 1−10 on page 50.


Social studies     Read pages 71−82 on the causes of the Civil War and answer questions 1, 2, and 3 at the end of the chapter.

English                        Read the sentences on page 56 of your English book. For each sentence, underline the subject phrase with one line and verb phrase with double line.

Science             Read pages 56−74 on reflection and answer questions
1 and 2 on page 74.





Assigning  homework to and assessing ELLs  are often viewed as a dilemma by teachers. Some teachers, like Mr. Fielding, do not think about the difficulty that students like Yeon Jae will have  with  homework  assignments  or  assessments  intended for English-fluent students. These teachers leave it to the stu- dents to do what they can. Other teachers do not assign home- work, tests, or quizzes to their ELLs. Still  others believe that ELLs  should not be treated any differently from  their peers and should complete the same assignments and take the same tests. None of these responses effectively address the challenge of assigning homework to and assessing ELLs.


When  considering appropriate homework and assessment for ELLs, teachers need to first determine the English proficiency lev- els of their ELLs. The teacher’s goal should be to make learning accessible and  meaningful for every student without lowering
Homework and Assessment for ELLs | 105



expectations or sacrificing rigor. Then, teachers must consider the overarching unit objectives and the day’s content objective and assign homework that is directly related to both.



Viewing Homework and Assessment as the Continuation of a Lesson

Teachers  usually  assign  homework  to  extend  the  time  that students have to learn content and apply new knowledge. To help students master new skills, it is important to furnish them with practice and  application opportunities that are not too far beyond their abilities or respective stages of English profi- ciency. Mr. Fielding assigned homework without modeling it or providing his students with practice time. He also did not take into account his ELLs’ stages of English language acquisition.


Using  language to learn content is at the core of appropriate homework assignments. Because most homework assignments require students to read and write, they present a unique chal- lenge to ELLs. For example, students in Mr. Fielding’s class were required to answer questions in their social studies textbook. However, he had not taken time to  preteach the concepts, vocabulary, or types of  questions that were included in the chapter, assuming instead that his students would learn what they needed to as they read the  chapter.  He did not modify the homework assignment for Yeon Jae, who was at the emerg- ing stage of language acquisition and therefore not yet capable of independently reading text without the necessary preread- ing  activities. Explicit  instruction  on  how  to  complete  the homework was sorely lacking in Mr. Fielding’s class. Teachers must select homework assignments that are suitable for ELLs
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to complete independently, but without lowering the expecta- tion that all students can learn the content objectives.


To  begin the process of determining appropriate homework assignments, it is helpful to think  backward about the steps necessary for homework to be accomplished. We believe that homework should be the last of the following five steps:


1.  Introducing the day’s lesson by reviewing the  unit’s overarching objectives and the day’s content and lan- guage objectives
2. Modeling  the day’s activities
3. Having students engage in the same types of activities that they will do as homework
4. Reviewing the day’s content and language objectives to determine if they have been accomplished
5. Assigning homework


Teachers typically provide lessons within the context of a the- matic unit of study. Daily  lessons are intended to help students achieve overarching objectives. The first step of the day’s les- son should be to focus student attention on the day’s language and content objectives and how they relate to the unit objec- tives. When these three objectives are made explicit, ELLs can more readily focus on them. It is a good idea to post the three objectives along with key vocabulary on the board.


Teachers should open their lessons by reviewing the unit objec- tives  and the lesson’s content objectives with students.  It is important to revisit the unit goals often and link them explicitly to all lessons. Mr. Fielding  might have posted the overarching
Homework and Assessment for ELLs | 107



objective for his students in the form of the following question: “How do differences between people lead to conflict?” The day’s content objective might have been formulated as a question as well: “What were the five key causes of the Civil  War?” Because Mr. Fielding expected his students to read a chapter in their text- books about the five main causes of the Civil  War,  he might have discussed one of the causes with his students so that they had an idea of what to look for in the text.


Next, teachers should review the language objectives for the day.  When   considering  language  objectives,  teachers  must keep homework assignments in mind. For example, if students are to solve a word problem  as homework, the teacher must first review  the vocabulary that is used in the problem, how the vocabulary and word problem relate to the unit objectives, and what the process of solving a word problem entails.


As  we noted earlier in this book, it is also very  important to review assignments and ensure that they are connected to stu- dents’ background knowledge and are not culturally biased. For example, many ELLs are not familiar with any U.S. history, so the content and vocabulary must be carefully taught to ensure understanding. Teachers must also be proactive about includ- ing explanations and illustrations of key content vocabulary. Among the terms that Mr. Fielding might explain for his lesson are abolitionist, nonabolitionist, states’ rights, and federal rights.



Modeling

Next, the teacher should model the day’s activities and share how they relate to the overarching unit objective. The teacher
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should conduct think-alouds about the steps needed to com- plete all tasks, including those assigned for  homework, and model the tasks as well. Prior to the lesson, the teacher will need to gather the materials necessary for modeling and for student practice of the tasks. Modeling  is an opportune moment to use authentic  materials. Teachers  should narrate their  modeling with thoughts about the task.

Here is a think-aloud that Mr. Fielding  might have conducted, modeling how to determine one of the causes of the Civil  War:


If I look at our chapter, there is a bulleted phrase that says: abolitionist versus  nonabolitionist. I have to think  about what each term means. I ask myself, “An abolitionist—what is that?”   I know  that an abolitionist was someone who believed that slavery should end. So, a nonabolitionist must be someone who believed that slavery should continue.

I know that there were people who didn’t believe in slavery, the abolitionists, and I know that there were people who did, the  nonabolitionists. When  I  consider our overarch- ing question—How do differences between people lead to conflict?— I can see that the struggle between abolitionists and nonabolitionists was one of the five  major causes of the Civil  War.


Reviewing Objectives and Assigning Homework

Teachers should be sure to give students multiple opportuni- ties to use content language during practice work. One way to do this is by planning different types of practice work accord- ing to the sequence shown in Figure 7.2. At the same time, it is import to continually remind students of the overarching unit
Homework and Assessment for ELLs | 109


Figure 7.2
Recommended Sequence of Lesson Practice Work



STEP 2
The teacher models the day’s activity.

STEP 1

The teacher begins the lesson by reviewing both overarching unit objectives and the day’s content and language objectives, and refers back to these at each
transition point.

STEP 3
Students engage in the activity in pairs.


STEP 4
Students engage in the activity in small groups.


STEP 5
The class as a whole reviews the activity.


STEP 6
Homework reflects the activity done in class.




objectives and the lesson’s content objectives and language objectives (by reviewing the objectives at the start of each new activity, for example). The arrows in Figure  7.2 reflect transi- tion points in a lesson—at each transition, the teacher refers back to the unit and lesson objectives.


Teachers should take the time during the many transitions in a day’s  lesson to focus student attention on unit and lesson objectives and  to  point out the relation between classroom
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activities and the day’s homework assignment. When  assign- ing homework, teachers should ensure that ELLs can complete it in a reasonable amount of time. A  short  but meaningful homework  assignment  will  yield  better  results  than  a  long confusing one.


For  homework, Mr. Fielding  asked his students to answer the questions at the end of the chapter that they had just read. He might have better prepared his students for this  assignment by engaging them in a discussion about the type of questions that they were to answer.  Had he done this, he  would have noticed that the questions were all comprehension based, and he might have had his students work in  pairs  to create and respond to their own comprehension questions.



Assessment

Most  school districts draw from local, state, or federal curricu- lum standards to set student performance goals  and bench- marks. High-stakes testing is used  to measure how well the curriculum standards are being met and to determine whether or not a school is succeeding. Such tests often do not take into account the particular needs of ELLs. For  this reason,  we do not believe that high-stakes tests designed for  English-fluent students should be regarded as an accurate  measure  of ELL ability. To ensure that tests do reflect the learning of ELLs, we suggest that teachers take the following steps:


1.  Identify the English proficiency levels of their students.
2. Review the curriculum standards that they will use to create content and language objectives.
Homework and Assessment for ELLs | 111



3. Select performance indicators that are appropriate for students’ English proficiency levels.
4. Design rubrics that reflect students’ English proficiency levels.
5. Share and provide direct instruction about the rubrics with students.


We separate assessment into three different types:


•     In-the-moment assessments, which occur as the teach- ers observe students engaging in classroom activities;
•     Routine  assessments, such  as  teacher  evaluation  of quizzes, journal entries, and homework; and
•     Summative assessments, such as teacher evaluation of student work at the end of a unit (i.e., final presenta- tions, tests, theme projects).


Guidelines for Different Stages of
English Language Acquisition

Here are some guidelines for assessing students at different stages of English language acquisition:


Stage 1 (Starting) and Stage 2 (Emerging)
•     Ask questions that require one- or two-word responses.
•     Have students point to or circle the correct picture in response to questions.
•     Have students illustrate a sequence (e.g., the steps  of a science experiment, or how a  caterpillar becomes a butterfly) to demonstrate understanding.
•     Provide a word bank so that students do not have to generate English vocabulary themselves. Students can
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then label diagrams or fill in charts using words from the word bank.
•     Use visuals or realia to elicit information (e.g., the pic- tures of volcanoes in Mrs. Mahoney’s class).
•     Allow students to use drawings, dioramas, graphs, maps, and charts to demonstrate comprehension.
•     Allow students to gesture or act out responses.
•     Provide cloze activities using sentences straight from the text.
•     Use portfolio assessment for writing.
•     Keep  a file of student writing in order to measure growth.
•     Audiotape the oral output of ELLs on a regular basis so that progress may be noted.


Stage 3 (Developing) and Stage 4 (Expanding)
•     Give short  tests  frequently  rather  than  long  tests infrequently.
•     Base assessments on the previous night’s homework assignment.
•     Use   graphic  organizers. For  example, a  KWL   chart can show what students have learned. Brainstorm the “What I Know” part of the chart with the whole class. At the end of the unit, have ELLs complete the “What I Learned” part by drawing pictures and labeling them. You can also use a graphic organizer with information already filled in: Review the information in class, have students study it at home before the assessment, and then delete key words or phrases from the organizer to test comprehension.
Homework and Assessment for ELLs | 113



•     Have students role-play to show understanding of a topic. Group ELLs with English-fluent students so that they have support for their language use.
•     In place of writing a report, have students show com- prehension by designing a poster, diorama, bookmark, or book cover.
•     Provide simplified study guides and limit assessment to items on the guide. Only key vocabulary and con- cepts should be covered.
•     Allow students to answer essay questions orally.
•     Have students compare and contrast concepts previ- ously taught in class.
•     Reformat the test so that the type is larger and there is more white space.
•     Use  a dialogue journal to discuss specific topics with students. English language learners  respond  to a par- ticular question in the  journal, and the teacher com- ments on the response in an ongoing discussion.
•     Simplify the language of essay questions or break them into manageable parts. Read questions aloud, modify- ing the language as you do so.
•     Limit multiple-choice questions to two possible answers.
•     Tell ELLs in advance exactly what they are required to study for a test.
•     Allow  more time for ELLs  to take a test, or ask them fewer questions.
•     Highlight key words or clues on tests for ELLs. (This works especially well for math.)
•     Scaffold student responses to essay questions through discussion, brainstorming, and webbing. Allow students
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to use a translation dictionary or electronic translator when writing essays.


Stage 5 (Bridging)
•     Identify student gaps in listening,  speaking, reading, and  writing, and deliver lessons that are  specifically geared toward closing the gaps.
•     Identify how students should show understanding of subject  matter  through  listening,  speaking, reading, and writing.
•     Continue   to support student writing and vocabulary development.


Assessment Rubrics

Teachers should create assessment rubrics by selecting no more than two or three of the bulleted suggestions for each stage of English  proficiency noted above. For  example, to assess stu- dents at the starting and emerging stages of English language acquisition, a teacher might require them to respond to “what” and “where” questions with one- or  two-word responses or through gestures. For the same lesson, students at the develop- ing and expanding stages might be required to retell or recount a story.  Teachers  can use the assessment rubrics to conduct in-the-moment assessments as students engage in  classwork. These rubrics can help teachers to determine what adjustments they might need to make to lessons as  they are occurring. Teachers should share these rubrics with students and model what  in-the-moment  assessment  will  look  like. Monitoring charts are useful for this purpose. For  example, Mrs. Kim used a monitoring chart to observe four ELLs in her science class as
Homework and Assessment for ELLs | 115


they engaged in small-group tasks (see Figure  7.3). She created the monitoring chart based on the students’ stages of English language acquisition. For   each  student, she wrote down the stage he or she was in, the tasks that she expected to observe, and whether or not she observed the student engaging in the task. She referred to the chart while monitoring the students’ interactions, marking it with a check each time she observed a student engaging in the expected tasks.


Figure 7.3
Mrs. Kim’s Monitoring Chart



Students                 Expected Task               Task
Observed
Task Not
Observed

Claudia
(Stage 1 – Starting)
Pointing to correct sequence in scientific method

Stephan
(Stage 2 – Emerging)
Using short phrases to describe steps of the scientific method

Yosef
(Stage 3 – Developing)
Using a graphic organizer to explain the scientific method

Eduardo
(Stage 4  – Expanding)
Describing the steps of the scientific method using sentences

Hoa Lia
(Stage 5  – Bridging)
Synthesizing information about the scientific method
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Once teachers have modeled the monitoring process, they can conduct in-the-moment checks for understanding by circulat- ing the classroom, carefully observing student interactions, and providing additional modeling, clarifying, and direct instruc- tion for individual and small groups of students. In addition, students should be asked to assess their own classwork periodi- cally using a rubric such as the one shown in Figure  7.4.


Memorization

Many   ELLs manage to get by in school by memorizing mate- rial, especially for quizzes and tests. But memorizing material is by no means the same as understanding it. Yeon Jae was able to get ahead by memorizing large chunks of material because Mr.  Fielding’s  tests  were  taken  directly  from  a  study  guide designed for native English speakers. A  few  weeks after Yeon Jae received a B  on a test about the U.S.  government, Judie asked him what the House of Representatives was. It was obvi- ous to her that Yeon Jae did not retain the information that he had memorized.


Teachers  should  modify  assessments  so  that  ELLs   are  not encouraged to memorize and regurgitate material that they really  don’t  understand. Assessment   of  ELLs   should  focus on the students’ growth rather than on comparisons to their English-fluent  classmates. Assessments   should  increasingly become more challenging as students acquire a higher profi- ciency level in English.


*    *        *



Figure 7.4
Sample Student Self-Assessment Rubric




Student Name:                                                                                                          Date:

Subject:                                                                                          Topic:


Paired Work                I did not understand. I asked questions. I shared a few ideas. I under - stand some of the content and how to talk about it.
I contributed many ideas because I understand most of the content and can talk using it.

Group Work                 I did not understand. I asked questions. I shared a few ideas. I under- stand some of the content and how to talk about it.
I contributed many ideas with my group because
I understand most of the content.

Whole-Class Work       I did not understand. I asked questions.      I shared a few ideas. I under- stand some of the content and how to talk about it.
I contributed many ideas with the whole class because I understand most of the content.
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After  learning about Yeon  Jae’s  difficulties with  homework, Mr. Fielding  took the time to learn about his level of English language  acquisition  and  determined  his  limitations. Dur- ing class, he  provided a handout to students explaining new vocabulary. He had each student write a definition of a term and illustrate it. Knowing  that Yeon  Jae was at the emerging stage of English language  acquisition, he asked him to draw additional  pictures illustrating new terms for homework and told him to spend no more than 45 minutes on the assignment. When Yeon Jae began the assignment, he felt confident that he could complete it—and after 45 minutes, he almost had.


In this chapter,  we discussed techniques for assigning home- work  and  creating  assessments  that  are  appropriate  for  the stages of English language acquisition of the ELLs in your class. In the next chapter, we will look at ways to conference with the parents of ELLs and include them in their children’s education.































   CHAPTER EIGHT          

Communicating Effectively with Parents of ELLs

8













s. Ramon, a 3rd grade teacher,  was  concerned about the progress of one of her ELLs, Yuki, so she held a conference with Yuki’s parents in October.
Yuki had moved to the United  States from Japan 18 months ago, and although she was able to complete some of her sci- ence and social studies work, she was not making the progress that Ms. Ramon expected.


Ms.  Ramon  explained to Yuki’s parents that the girl needed to spend  more time completing homework and studying for tests.  She outlined a homework plan and asked the parents to help her  implement it. The  parents nodded in apparent agreement.


In the  weeks  after  the  conference,  Yuki’s  efforts  did  not improve, and Ms. Ramon was at a loss to understand why. She was unaware of some  important  cultural considerations.  In many Asian countries, to nod in agreement means, “Yes, I hear you,”  not,  “Yes,  I agree.” Ms.  Ramon was  also unaware that Yuki spent a few hours each day completing homework from her  Japanese Saturday  school.  Yuki’s  mother  was  very  con- cerned that if her daughter didn’t keep up with her Japanese studies, she would  be  at a great disadvantage when she ever returned to Japan, as she was expected to do.


*    *        *

121
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Parent–teacher conferences are shaped by the beliefs and back- ground knowledge of their participants. Many parents of ELLs are not familiar with the practice of meeting with their  chil- dren’s teachers and thus are not sure what to expect of them during the meetings. Similarly, many classroom teachers have never communicated with parents who do not speak English and who are not familiar with U.S. public school practices. The increasing population of ELLs  poses  a unique challenge for classroom teachers,  administrators, and guidance  counselors, all of whom need to learn how to better communicate with lin- guistically and culturally diverse families. The goal of this chap- ter is to help school personnel hold productive parent–teacher conferences by engaging in meaningful communication.


Translators

The  first step in planning a conference with the parents of ELLs is to determine whether a translator is needed, as many parents do not speak English well enough to understand what the teacher is saying. It is crucial to the success of a conference to contact a translator for the parents who need  one. Most parents are asked to complete a Home Language  Survey  (see Appendix  3) when they enroll their child in  school. On this survey, parents should be asked for the language in which they would prefer oral and written communication from the school. Although the survey is crucial, it should not be the only means used to  determine whether or not families need a translator; because some parents may not understand what they are being asked and others may not feel comfortable letting the school know that they are not fluent in English, a high level of sensi- tivity is needed to complete this task well. A parent once told Judie that when she first came to the United States, she faked
Communicating Effectively with Parents of ELLs | 123



her way through her child’s conferences without understand- ing a word. If your school does not provide  translators, ask parents to bring a bilingual family member along to the meet- ings (not counting the actual student). It is best to meet with translators before  the conference to ensure that they under- stand the purpose of the occasion.


When  a translator is used, we suggest doubling the length of the conference to account for the extra time required for trans- lation. During  the conference, teachers should speak in short, uncomplicated sentences and stop periodically to let the trans- lator translate. If a teacher goes on too long without stopping, his or her whole message may not  be  accurately translated. Teachers should refrain from using educational jargon, as nei- ther the translator nor the parents are likely to understand it, and should avoid speaking directly to the translator. We have been present  at conferences were parents felt so superfluous that they took phone calls right in the middle of the conversa- tion while the teacher and translator spoke with each other.


Welcoming Parents

Schools often find it challenging to engage parents in attend- ing school functions, including conferences. Parents may not attend  because they do not have transportation or may feel embarrassed by their lack of English or literacy skills. They may also come from cultures where parents are not welcomed into the school. To address such obstacles, teachers must believe in the importance of becoming familiar with  students’ families and think of ways to involve them in their students’ education in a welcoming and nonthreatening manner.  Schools  need to consider that parents may not be able to read the notices
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that come home, even those that have been  translated. An oral invitation issued in the parents’ native language may be helpful. Arranging for transportation and child care as well as translation services may also  encourage parents to come to school.



Guidelines for Preconference Planning

Here are some guidelines for planning a successful conference:


•     Prepare a short, simply worded description of the con- ference  that  includes  the  date,  location, anticipated start and end  times, and goals. Have the  document translated if necessary and mail it to parents.
•     Assemble samples of each student’s work to share with his or her parents.
•     If possible, have report cards and rubrics translated.
•     Prepare an outline of the conference agenda to show to parents and make sure that it includes topics that they will want to discuss.
•     Try  to schedule the conference so that both parents can  attend. In some cultures,  no important decisions are made without the father’s agreement.


Teachers may also want to have visuals and manipulatives ready for use during the conference, particularly if no translator will be present. Judie once sat in a conference with a kindergarten teacher who illustrated a student’s issues with math by using the math manipulatives from her  classroom  to explain what the child was able to do and what he needed to work on.
Communicating Effectively with Parents of ELLs | 125



Greeting Parents

Teachers should be sure to have their body language reflect a warm and receptive attitude. They should greet parents just as they would greet guests in their homes—that is, at the door, not from across the room behind a desk.


There  are diverse cultural norms about whom it is appropri- ate  to touch in different cultures. For  example, in some cul- tures,  shaking hands is not an acceptable greeting. In  many Asian cultures, a nod and slight bow are preferred; many Mus- lim males will not touch or shake  hands  with women; and people in Thailand and India often greet each other by clasp- ing their own hands together.  It is  a  good idea to wait and see if the parent offers his or her hand first. Even in cultures where handshaking is customary,  the  manner in which it is done may differ from the U.S.  norm. In most of the world, a simple  handclasp is considered more appropriate than the more  vigorous, hand-pumping style common  in the United States.


Body Language

Because the conference is serious business, the teacher’s body language (including demeanor and  dress)  should convey as much. Teachers should sit up straight in their chairs and not fold their arms in front of them. They should also refrain from using hand gestures, as these may have unintended meanings in different cultures. Male  teachers should not sit with the foot of one leg on the knee of another.  Here are some additional concerns to keep in mind:
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Personal space. Teachers  need to consider how  close they stand to people of other cultures. It is customary in the United States to stand at arm’s length from others. In Asia, people stand a little farther away; in Latin America   and in the Middle  East, they will stand closer. A U.S. teacher’s impulse might be to step back when someone stands too close, but this impulse should be controlled during conferences, lest the teacher offend stu- dents’ parents. It is better  instead for the teacher to take the opportunity to move toward the conferencing area.

If possible, teachers should set up the  conference area with adult-size chairs. Because a direct face-to-face arrangement may come across as too confrontational or intimate for some par- ents, it is best to arrange chairs so that the teacher is at a 45- degree angle from the parents. If a translator is present, he or she should sit next to the parents, not the teacher.

Eye contact. In the United States, avoiding eye contact sug- gests untrustworthiness. In Asia, however, too much eye con- tact  is  considered  rude  and  confrontational. It is  therefore important for teachers not to take avoidance of eye contact personally and to keep eye contact intermittent. (Sitting at a
45-degree angle helps to ensure that this is done.)


Smiling. The  U.S. custom of smiling  when greeting some- one  is  not  universal.  Teachers  should  smile  when  greeting parents and throughout the conference, but they should not become alarmed if a parent doesn’t smile back. Also, teachers should keep in mind that smiles may indicate embarrassment or even anger; they should not assume that they always signify agreement.
Communicating Effectively with Parents of ELLs | 127


Names

The Western custom of given names followed by surnames and of changing surnames upon marriage is not followed in some cultures. For example, many Korean and Chinese women do not take their husbands’  names. A  teacher may say to a mother, “You are the mother of Se Hung Lee. What name should I call you?” In general, children from Spanish-speaking families have a given name followed by two surnames: the first surname is the father’s family name, and the second one is the mother’s family name. It is also traditional in all Spanish-speaking coun- tries for women to retain their  family  names when they get married—so  the  mother  of  Carolina  Rodriguez  Hernandez, for example, might be called Mrs. Hernandez, and her father, Mr.  Rodriguez.  In Argentina  and some other South American countries, most women either take their  husbands’ names as they do in the United States or keep their last names but follow it with the preposition “de” and the husband’s last  name. In such a case, Carolina’s  mother would  be Mrs.  Hernandez  de Rodriguez.


To avoid unnecessary confusion, teachers should review their students’ school registration forms to see how  parents sign their names. Judie once had a Japanese student who had a dif- ferent family name from his parents and older brother. When she asked the parents about this, they told her that their sec- ond son was given the mother’s family name because her par- ents only had female offspring and they didn’t want the name to die out.
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Low-Context and High-Context Cultures

Cultures   such as the United  States, where verbal communi- cation is usually direct and there is little need for nonverbal cues in order for people to understand each other, are consid- ered low-context cultures. Other characteristics of low-context cultures include favoring individual rights over duty to one’s family and not taking umbrage at simple differing viewpoints. High-context  cultures, by  contrast, generally  place  greater value on group harmony and family loyalty. They are also very often hierarchical and traditional and give much more impor- tance to such concepts as shame and honor than low-context cultures do. In high-context  cultures, words tend to be cho- sen more  carefully,  as are expressions conveying respect and courtesy.


Most   U.S. immigrants come from high-context cultures such as Latin America, Asia, and the Middle  East. Parents from such cultures may be silent when considering responses to teacher questions, and they may also avoid expressing  disagreement out of a fear of disharmony.  We  know of many  incidences where parents have moved rather than express their disagree- ment with a school! Too often,  U.S. educators feel that they have reached an agreement simply because parents have not voiced disagreement.


We have noticed that teachers use a lot of circuitous language when  bringing  a  student  problem  to  attention.  Although English-fluent  parents are able to read between the  lines in these situations, the parents of ELLs often are not. For this rea- son, it is best to be as clear and direct as possible.
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Let’s look at an example of miscommunication between a fam- ily  from a high-context culture and the educators at a U.S. school. Amal, a 6th  grade boy from Egypt, is  frequently in trouble because he constantly touches other boys on the play- ground and hallways of the school. He never hurts anyone, but his classmates are uncomfortable with his behavior and begin to taunt and bully him. His father is called into the school for a conference but doesn’t  understand  why the principal and teacher are upset.

Amal doesn’t change his behavior. One day his classmates gang up on him after school and beat him up. Amal’s enraged father returns to the school this time with an adult nephew who had gone to high school in the United States. The nephew immedi- ately knows what the problem is and tells his uncle that in the United States, boys do not touch each other very much unless they are involved in sports or are  fighting—unlike in Egypt, where boys constantly touch each other while playing.

The students who ganged up on Amal are punished. After the meeting, Amal learns to keep his hands to himself and begins to make some friends. From   this  incident, the school learns that it is important to  make an effort to understand the cul- tures of their students and their families.

Let’s  consider another example. Mrs.  Miller   is an  exemplary
4th grade teacher who excels at conferencing with the parents of her ELLs. She requests a conference with the parents of one of her ELLs, Marguerite  Castellanos, because she is concerned that Marguerite is having trouble with science and social studies and does not complete her homework. Before the conference,
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Mrs. Miller   checks the school records and finds that Margue- rite’s parents both use the surname Castellanos.


At  the beginning of the conference, Mrs.  Miller  greets Mar- guerite’s parents and their translator, Nita, at the door of her classroom. She invites them to sit at a table in the back of the room, where she has assembled all of Marguerite’s work sam- ples. She has an agenda for the meeting that she shares with Mr. and Mrs. Castellanos  and Nita. Mrs. Miller  speaks in short sentences and enunciates her words  clearly.  She is careful to speak directly to the parents rather than  Nita, and she stops frequently so that Nita  can translate what she has said.


Mrs.  Miller   begins by showing the parents evidence of Mar- guerite’s strengths using samples of her best work. She praises Marguerite’s  grasp of spoken English and explains how she sometimes  translates  for  other  children. She  then  demon- strates to parents the areas on which she wants to focus with Marguerite   during the upcoming weeks. She shows  the  par- ents examples of the types of activities that Marguerite  will be engaging in and the vocabulary that she will need to learn. She shows them an example of the upcoming test and of home- work  assignments. She  states  her  expectations  clearly  and explicitly, not expecting the parents to read between the lines, but also tactfully, so that the parents don’t feel as if they’re los- ing face. She doesn’t say that Marguerite   is not doing well in science or social studies but, rather, explains her expectations for 4th graders and invites the parents to suggest ways to help Marguerite   succeed. She  focuses on what can be done in the future instead of placing blame for what has not been done in
Communicating Effectively with Parents of ELLs | 131



the past. She discusses the importance of homework and how long it should take.


Mrs.  Miller   ends the conference on a positive note by shar- ing a story about how kind Marguerite  was to a new student. She gives the parents a piece of paper enumerating the main points  that she made during the meeting, so that they  can review the information with the translator. After  the confer- ence, whenever Marguerite  shows progress, Mrs. Miller  writes her parents celebratory letters.  (Although some teachers will routinely telephone parents, Mrs. Miller   realizes that Mr. and Mrs. Castellanos  do not have a sufficient command of English to hold a meaningful conversation on the phone.)



Differing Views on Time

In the United  States, Canada, and Northern   European coun- tries, time is expected to be highly  structured, efficiency is revered, and people generally focus on one event  or  interac- tion at a time. These countries are monochronic. By contrast, the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle  East, Southern  Europe, and  Africa  are  by  and  large  polychronic: Time is less structured, and people may more readily attend to many things at once, hold several conversations at the same time, or talk over each other in conversation.


In monochronic countries such as the United States, punctual- ity is valued and tardiness is considered disrespectful. In poly- chronic countries, however, appointment times and deadlines are seen more as approximations, so tardiness is not considered
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that big a deal. This difference in attitude toward time poses a problem for schools that have a conference schedule to meet. One school that we know changed the wording on  the con- ference reminder so that it included an end time as well as a beginning time (“Your conference will begin at 2:30 p.m. and will finish at 3:15 p.m.”). Teachers in this school are encour- aged to keep their appointments on time so that parents who leave work or hire babysitters are not kept  waiting. Another school has a bilingual staff member  write a letter in Spanish to explain how the conferences are scheduled and how impor- tant it is to be at school on time. One teacher told us that she schedules a chronically late parent for the last appointment of the day.


Teachers  often  tell  us  that  their  students  from  polychronic cultures are often late or miss school. We believe that strong, continuous communication with parents will help administra- tors and teachers address these cultural  differences. In many cultures, family unity is the most important  value. Children will miss school, often without warning, for a myriad of family reasons. One 11-year-old student we know  of—a boy named Miguel,  who was originally from Mexico—missed   13 days  of school because his grandmother was hospitalized and he was responsible for translating for his family when they talked to doctors and nurses. He was the oldest English-speaking mem- ber of his family. Miguel’s parents never notified the school to explain why he would be absent, so he was declared truant. If the parents and teachers at Miguel’s school had been commu- nicating on a regular basis, Miguel’s parents would have been more likely to explain his absences, and he would have been able to make up for the worked he missed. As a truant, how- ever, he received a failing grade for the work.
Communicating Effectively with Parents of ELLs | 133


Building Relationships That Extend
Beyond Parent Conferences

According to research by Scribner, Young, and Pedroza (1999), when parents are actively involved in the education of  their children, the children are more likely to do  better in school, attend school regularly, graduate, and go on to college. For this reason, school administrators and teachers need  to  take the initiative  in  establishing  meaningful  communications  with parents from diverse cultures.


Effective parent  communication  involves  building  relation- ships with parents and families that extend beyond parent– teacher conferences and are directly linked to what is occurring in the classroom and school. We believe that teachers should actively seek ways to connect the curriculum to students’ fami- lies so that parents and other caregivers can be active partners in their children’s education.


There are many ways for parents of ELLs to be engaged, regard- less of their levels of  literacy,  prior schooling, or fluency in English. First, teachers should create lessons that require stu- dents  to  routinely  gather  information  from  their  families, perhaps by interviewing them or by inviting family members to visit the class. Bloom,  Katz, Solsken, Willett, and Wilson Keenan (2000)  note that parental visits to the classroom can prove beneficial to students. Envisioning the parents of ELLs as assets or partners with something important to offer can prove very  helpful. For   example, Debbie    worked  in a district that provided an after-school Spanish enrichment program in one of its elementary schools. The purpose of the program was to foster more bilingualism and cross-cultural awareness among
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English-fluent students and ELLs. The students in the program wrote a play entirely in Spanish and performed it before, dur- ing, and after school. The ELLs enlisted their mothers, some of whom were  seamstresses, to make the play’s  costumes. Each of the performances had a fully packed auditorium of parents, including all of the parents of the ELLs in the district, many of whom had never come to their children’s school.


Teachers,  administrators, and  other  stakeholders  must  take time to welcome and encourage parent involvement in ways that are respectful, honoring, and valuing. This includes tak- ing the steps needed to employ translators, prepare for meet- ings, design and implement activities for involving  parents, and encourage parent  involvement. When  this is done  well, teachers and parents become active partners in their children’s education. In our next chapter, we will demonstrate how the strategies from this book can be applied to a math lesson.































CHAPTER NINE

Effective ELL Instruction in Action



9













s. Frechette   was teaching  a middle  school  math unit  on similarity. She knew that her ELLs  were at different stages of English language acquisition
and that she needed to provide them with in-class practice geared to their levels of English proficiency.  She also knew that  she had to provide her ELLs  with step-by-step instruc- tions for homework assignments that explicitly connected the assignments to her overarching objective (that students will understand the concept of similarity). Ms. Frechette had taken time to learn about the English proficiency levels of her ELLs and had created the day’s lesson with them in mind. Let’s look closely at two of the ELLs in Ms. Frechette’s class and the ways in which she addressed their respective proficiency levels.

Maria  had been in the United States for six months. She was in Stage 2 (emerging) of English language acquisition, so she was building  understanding of vocabulary and content through a good deal of visual support. She was able to provide one-word responses  to  questions  and  could  participate  actively  when Ms. Frechette used body language and illustrations to describe the activities that were required of her. She also relied heavily on the information that Ms. Frechette  displayed on the board and  in  the  class  handouts. Ms.  Frechette   usually  called  on Maria  when she expected a yes/no, either/or, or same/different




137
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response. Maria’s strength was in naming key vocabulary words and writing very simple sentences to go with the key words.


Li arrived from Beijing 15 months ago. She was in Stage 3 (devel- oping) of English language acquisition, so she understood and could  work  with modified content that allowed her to make connections  with  background  knowledge  and  provide  brief descriptions and summaries of content material.


At the beginning of class, Ms. Frechette  shared her objectives for the lesson with students by posting them on the board and passing them out in a handout (see Figure 9.1). (The objectives would remain on the board for the duration of the two-week unit.) She read the overarching unit objective aloud, followed by the day’s content and language  objectives, and told her students that they would be learning about ratios to describe similarities. She wrote the word similarity on the board.


Next, Ms. Frechette divided her class into pairs, assigning Maria and Li  to partners whom she believed would support  them. She asked each pair to discuss the meaning of the word simi- larity and then to share its ideas with another pair. Once this task was completed, she asked each pair to agree on a defini- tion that it believed best describes the word. Each pair shared its definition with the whole class, after which Ms. Frechette asked the class as a whole to agree on a single definition. Each student voted for one of the definitions. The definition with the most votes was as follows: “Similarity refers to the ways in which people, places, and things are the same.” Ms. Frechette asked the students to write the chosen definition next to the word similarity on their handouts and to draw a picture illus- trating the term. She then conducted a think-aloud as to what her own drawing might look like and drew it on the board.
Effective ELL Instruction in Action | 139


Figure 9.1
Ms. Frechette’s Handout


Unit Objective           To understand how to describe things that are similar mathematically

Content Objectives        1.  Listen to a definition about ratios.
2.   Write a ratio as a fraction.
3.   Solve ratio problems using fractions.
4.   Prepare for homework assignment about ratios.

Language Objective   To learn to compare the relationship between two quantities using ratios

Word                           Definition                    Example

Similarity Ratio Quantities
Fractional Ratios



Activity: With a partner, describe a quantity that can be measured using a fractional ratio and percentage.


Part                     Total                    Fractional Ratio       Percentage

7  girls           Out of 25 students                   7/25                               27%
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Ms.  Frechette   told her students that they would be learning about ratios to describe the relationship between similar peo- ple, places, or things. On the board, above the word similarity, she  wrote, “Vocabulary words about ratios.”  Beneath similar- ity,  she wrote, “ratio =  comparing two or more quantities.” She  then explained that quantities could be either numbers or  measurements. Beneath the definition  of ratio, she wrote, “quantity = numbers or measurement.” She then explained that a fraction is used to compare the part-to-whole relationship of a quantity. Beneath the definition of quantity, she wrote, “the ratio of girls in our class.” As  she wrote this, Maria’s  partner shared the meaning of these words with Maria  by pointing to the girls in their class. Maria nodded to her partner, indicating that she understood. Before moving on, Ms. Frechette revisited the overarching unit objective and discussed it with the class.


Next, Ms. Frechette conducted another think-aloud. She noted that in order to determine the ratio of girls in the  class, she must first find out the total number of students. She counted aloud and stated that there were 25 students in the class. She wrote this number on the board. Then, she counted the num- ber of  girls  in the room and wrote the number 7  above the number 25 on the board, placing a line between the two num- bers. She told the students that the ratio of girls in the  class could be described as a fraction: 7/25. “There are 25 students,” she said. “For  me to describe a fraction of the students, I have to write a ratio statement. My   ratio statement is that 7/25ths of the students in our class are girls.”


Ms. Frechette  asked each pair of students to discuss different ideas  that  they  had  for  measuring  ratios  of  similar  people, places, or things in their  classroom. She told them to select something from the classroom to measure. On the board, she
Effective ELL Instruction in Action | 141



used the same chart as in the activity section of her handout to spark students’ thinking about comparing. Under the word “part,” she wrote “7  girls,” and  under the word “total,” she wrote, “out  of 25 students.” Ms.  Frechette   moved to where Maria   and her partner were seated and listened to their dis- cussion. Maria’s partner pointed to her eyes and commented that their eye color was different. On a piece of paper, Maria’s partner wrote, “Maria’s  eyes are  blue, mine are brown.” She then wrote  the number 2 and handed her pencil to Maria. Maria  wrote the number 1 above the number 2, placing a line between the two  numbers to form a fraction, next to which she  wrote the fraction again. Nodding   her approval of their work, Ms. Frechette  asked Maria  and her partner to find some- thing else in the room that could be compared through mea- surement. Maria   noticed that some  students had brown hair and some had blond hair.  She said “brown  hair and yellow hair” to her partner.  On their  handouts, they wrote “10  yel- low hair” under “part” and “out of 25 students” under “total.” Ms.  Frechette   affirmed their actions by saying,  “Good, note the difference on your chart, and we  will use this to form a fractional ratio.”


Ms. Frechette  then moved to the other pairs in the classroom and responded to their ideas. She then asked each pair to work with another pair to discuss the ideas that they had generated for this task. She watched Li and her partner share their ideas. Li  rapidly engaged her classmates in a discussion of the types of fractional ratio measurements that she and her partner had made. She also observed as Maria    and her partner  engaged with another pair in the same task. She listened  carefully to Maria    and noticed that she used simple phrases to describe what they had chosen for their ratio example. Drawing from the various examples that the pairs had created, Ms. Frechette
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next asked each pair to create a descriptive statement using the following frame:


(Number) out of a total of (number and  noun) in our class
= (ratio). This represents (percentage) of the total.


Next, Ms.  Frechette   reviewed the content objectives for the lesson with her students and asked if they thought they had achieved it. All nodded in agreement, including Maria  and Li. Once this was done, Ms. Frechette asked her students to review the homework assignment with her. She read the assignment aloud as she wrote it on the board: “Measure   the number of similar people, places, or things in your home using ratios. Dis- cuss this assignment with your family and ask them for help finding items to measure.” She told the students to come up with four examples and to use the handout they used earlier in class to form their answers.


When     Maria arrived home, she decided to tackle her math homework. After  explaining the assignment  to  her mother, the two of them found many objects in their home that Maria could measure using fractional ratios. Using the handout from Ms.  Frechette  and the notes that she copied from the  board during class, she identified four examples of ratios. She wrote the examples down and illustrated them. She believed that she understood the process of determining fractional ratios because Ms. Frechette  had provided so many examples in class.


At the end of the week, Ms. Frechette had her students take an exam that required them to answer questions using the same type of language they used in their class activities and home- work  assignments. We  believe that  test-taking skills can and
Effective ELL Instruction in Action | 143



should be taught while teaching content. For example, rather than simply describing to students what an open-ended ques- tion is, teachers should  have them conduct a content-based task that requires them  to answer an open-ended question, and  they should provide students with step-by-step  instruc- tion in doing so.


*    *        *


Here are some ways in which Ms. Frechette  ensured that her lesson would be successful for the ELLs in her class:


•     She introduced the lesson by reading the unit and les- son  objectives out loud, and she reviewed the  objec- tives again during each transition point to ensure that her students were aware of the purpose behind every activity. She also posted the objectives on the board and included them in her handout. At the end of the lesson, she revisited the objectives once more.
•     She wrote key vocabulary on the board and had her students explore what they mean.
•     She took care to ensure that her lesson did not include examples that might reflect cultural bias.
•     She modeled the day’s activities and homework assign- ment, and she provided students with several practice opportunities using diagrams.
•     She divided her class into pairs, assigning her ELLs to partners  with  whom  she  believed  they  would  work well, and asked each pair to come up with  examples of fractional ratios. She supported  them in this pro- cess, providing them with the time that they needed to complete the task.
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•     She asked each pair to share ideas with another pair,   then  with the whole class—a sequence that allowed students  to  begin  their  assigned  activity  within  the safety of a small learning community and also allowed for multiple practice opportunities.
•     She drew from her students’ lives to create activities with which she believed her students could relate.
•     She  closely  observed  her  students  during  each  task, assessing their progress all the while.
•     She made sure to ask her ELLs questions that matched their levels of English proficiency.
•     She  regarded  the  students  as  rich  resources  for  one another and provided them with ample opportunities to work together.
•     She required her students to provide one another with feedback, thus allowing them to make  sure that they understood the material.
•     She assigned homework that related directly to the day’s lesson, engaged family members, and provided students with a frame for their answers. Because the assignment required students to use the language of ratios and per- centages to describe their mathematical understanding about people, places, and  things that are similar, Ms. Frechette  was able to immediately assess her students’ understanding when she reviewed their homework.


An effective instructional environment is one in which teachers


•     Identify and post the core unit and lesson objectives;
•     Provide authentic and compelling tasks that connect with students’ background knowledge and experiences;
•     Use charts, diagrams, or graphic organizers;
Effective ELL Instruction in Action | 145



•     Match    learning  activities  to  students’  English profi- ciency levels; and
•     Provide multiple in-class guided practice  opportuni- ties  that  are  similar  in  structure  to  the  homework assignment.


The ways in which we design and deliver instruction and orga- nize our classrooms must continuously be focused on support- ing students to be active learners in and engaged members of the school community.
































   APPENDIX ONE          

Suggested Verbs to Use When Composing Language Objectives
1














Listening

•  Listen for
•  Look for
•  Pay attention to
•  Think about
•  Focus on
•  Concentrate on
Speaking

•  Retell
•  Summarize
•  Discuss
•  Share
•  Tell
•  Persuade
•  Argue
•  Report
•  Recite
•  Describe
•  Comment
•  Explain
•  Sing
•  Echo
•  Repeat
•  Read aloud
•  Present
•  Talk
•  Say
•  Whisper
•  Chant
•  Announce
•  Ask
•  Answer


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Reading


•  Sort

•  Read

•  Find

•  Look for

•  Predict

•  Confirm

•  Infer

•  Sequence

•  Identify

•  Match

•  Unscramble

•  Find information about

•  Review

•  Organize
Writing


•  Write

•  Draw

•  Copy

•  Compare

•  Contrast

•  Draft

•  Type

•  Label

•  Edit

•  Sort

•  Summarize

•  Print

•  Fill in

•  Illustrate

•  Color

•  Record

•  Collect

•  Graph

•  Diagram

•  Create

•  Make































APPENDIX TWO

Lesson Modification
Worksheet




2












Teacher:                                                        Grade Level:

Subject:                                                        Unit or Chapter:

Acquisition stages of the ELLs in my class:


1. What are the ELL or content area standards?











2.  What key concepts will students learn, and what strategies will be used to teach them?









3.  What background knowledge will students need? How will it be activated?











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4.  List key terms, words, idioms, and phrases (TWIPs) to be pretaught.
Include simple, student-friendly definitions. Identify words that are likely to be used outside class as well as academic words that are content- specific.


1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


8.




5.  Design one or more of the following activities for TWIP instruction:

•  Matching vocabulary with definitions

•  Drawing and labeling

•  Labeling maps

•  Filling out simple charts

•  Sequencing activity

•  Group vocabulary activities and games

•  Student-generated word walls
Appendix 2 | 155



6.  Check which of the following strategies you will use in class:

□  1. Buddies

□  2.  Cooperative groups

□  3.  Graphs, charts, photos, drawings

□  4.  Graphic organizers

□  5. Hands-on  activities

□  6.  Taping explanations and photocopying notes

□  7. Highlighting,  sticky notes, Wikki Stix

□  8. Using body language, skits, storytelling, music, videos

□  9.  Vocabulary box wherever possible


7.  How will you modify text for beginning learners of English?









8. What kind of homework will you assign? How does it explicitly connect to and provide additional practice for the day’s lesson?








9.  How will you modify assessments for ELLs?
































APPENDIX THREE

Home Language Survey






3













Dear Parent/Guardian,


In order to help your child succeed in school, we ask that you please fill out the following form for each child you are regis- tering. Your answers will help us to provide the best possible educational program for your child.

Student Name: Date of Birth:


Current  Grade:
Country of Birth:


Date  of family’s most recent entry into the United States:



What language did your child first understand or speak?



What language do you use most often when speaking to your
child at home?


What language does your child use most often when speaking
with you at home?




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What language does your child use most often when speaking with other family members?


What language does your child use most often when speaking
to friends?


Does  your child read in English?  □ Yes  □ No


Does  your child read in a language other than English?  □ Yes  □ No If yes, what language?


Does  your child write in English?  □ Yes  □ No


Does  your child write in a language other than English?  □ Yes  □ No
If yes, what language?


At what age did your child start attending school?


Has your child entered school every year since that age?   □ Yes  □ No
If no, please explain:































APPENDIX FOUR

Glossary







4













Accommodation: Modifying  spoken or written language to make it comprehensible to second-language learners


Adapted: Modified     for  English language  learners;  usually refers to materials that have simplified language without water- ing down the content


Background knowledge: Experience and knowledge that a  student brings to classroom learning; also known as prior knowledge


Backward design: The process of designing lessons by first determining what students should be able to know and do at the conclusion of the lesson; also known as thinking backward


Basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS): The skills required for verbal face-to-face social communication


Big ideas: Core  concepts in a school’s curriculum


Bilingual: Having the  ability  to  communicate  in  two languages

Chunk: A grouping of words that are usually used together as fixed expressions (e.g., “Hello, how are you?”)



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Cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP): The academic language of the content classroom, which takes 4–10 years for ELLs to acquire

Communicative competence: The ability to produce lan- guage appropriately both orally and in writing

Competencies: The  least amount of language necessary  to get by in social situations

Comprehensible input: Communication  that is just above the learners’ level of English ability

Content-based ESL instruction: The  process of teaching language through content area subject matter

Content objectives: The  material that teachers want their students to learn by the end of a lesson

Cooperative  learning:  The   process  of  students  working together in small groups

English for speakers of other languages (ESOL): A pro- gram of English language instruction for non-English speakers; also known as English as a second language (ESL)

Formative assessment: The process of assessing whether or not learning is occurring during the course of a lesson

Graphic organizer: A chart or table used to organize infor- mation and ideas
Appendix 4 | 165



Language acquisition: The process of learning a language through meaningful, informal conversation


Language objectives: The  language learning that teachers want their students to achieve by the end of a lesson


Learning style: The manner in which a given student learns


Mainstreaming: The   practice  of  placing  ELLs   in  classes designed for English-fluent speakers


Mentor texts: Texts that demonstrate different writing genres for writers, often used by teachers as examples of high-quality writing for students


Native  language: The  first language that a person  learns; often the language that ELLs use at home; also known as heri- tage language, home language, and primary language


Sheltered English: The process of simplifying the language of instruction to teach content area material


Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP): A strategy for describing instructional practices that help teach- ers make content accessible to ELLs


Stopping places: Places in a text where students should stop to ask themselves questions or make predictions
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Summative assessment: The  process of assessing whether or not learning has occurred during a lesson or unit, such as through a quiz, test, or exam


Target language: The  language that a learner is trying to acquire


Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL): An international professional organization for those concerned with the teaching of English as a second or foreign language and of Standard English as a second dialect


Text-to-self connection: An association that students make between the text that they are reading and something that happened in their own lives


Text-to-text connection: An association that students make between the text that they are reading and another text that they have read


Text-to-world  connection: An  association  that  students make between the text that they are reading and something that has happened in the world


Think-aloud: The   strategy  of  modeling   problem-solving thought processes by narrating them for students


TWIPs: An  acronym referring to terms,  words, idioms, and phrases that reflect the key concepts and vocabulary of a les- son or unit















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INDEX









The letter f following a page number denotes a figure; page numbers in italics indicate definitions.

accommodation, 163
Act It Out, 67 adapted, 163
assessment. See also self- assessment, student
appropriate, ensuring,
110–111
bridging-stage ELLs, 114 classroom example,
142–143
developing-stage ELLs,
112–114
emergent-stage ELLs,
111–112, 118 expanding-stage ELLs,
112–114 formative, 164 memorization, modifying
for, 116
assessment (continued)
monitoring charts,
114–115, 115f
planning, 31
starting-stage ELLs, 111–112 summative, 166
types, 111
assessment rubrics, 114–116,
117f

background knowledge connecting content to,
28–29, 51–54, 57–58,
75–76 defined, 163
text-to-self connections,
76–77, 166
text-to-world connections,
78–79, 166


173
174 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas


backward design, 25–26, 163
basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS),
14, 163
Beach Ball Vocabulary, 68 big ideas, 163
bilingual, 163
Bingo, 68
body language, 10–11, 125–126 brain, building connections,
12–13
buddy system, 10–11

Choral  Reading, 10–11 chunk, 163
classroom, arranging for small- group work, 40–41
classroom work, ordinary, 9 cognitive academic language
proficiency (CALP), 14, 164 collectivism, 40 communication. See also parent
conferences
comprehensible input, 164
culture and, 125–127 home language survey for,
157–160
in low-context vs. high- context cultures, 128–131
nonverbal, 54–55, 125–126 communicative competence,
164 competencies, 164 comprehensible input, 164 content
connecting to background knowledge, 28–29,
51–54, 57–58, 75–76 teaching test-taking skills
concurrently, 142–143 content-based ESL instruction,
164
content objectives defined, 28, 164 example, 28
handout example, 139f
homework in relation to,
106–107 posting, 17–18 reviewing, classroom
example, 142 reviewing at transition
points, 109f
sharing, classroom example, 138–140,
138f
context clues, teaching recognition of, 56–57
cooperative learning, 39, 41,
164. See also small-group work
core content ideas, 17, 30 culture
communication and,
121–122, 125–126 low-context and high- context, 128–131
role in learning, 13–14, 16,
23–24, 40, 53–54
and time, differing views of, 131–132
curriculum, socially relevant,
15–16

English
competency defined, 9 sheltered, 165
English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), 164
English language learners
(ELLs)
assessment, stage- appropriate, 111–114
defined, 9
Index | 175


English language learners
(ELLs) (continued)
federal education regulations, 9
group activities, stage- appropriate, 45–46
experience. See background knowledge
eye contact, cultural norms,
126

Fan   &  Pick activity, 46 field trips, 30
Find  the Transition Word!, 68
Find  the Word, 67 flash cards, 66–67

graphic organizers defined, 164
examples, writing process,
94f, 96f
recommendations for using, 30–31
text-to-text connections,
77–78
for vocabulary instruction,
64–66, 65f
group work
assigning roles, 42–43 basic premises of, 39–40 classroom example, 138,
140–142
creating expectations for,
41
cultural element in planning, 40
engagement strategies,
43–47 example, 32
for learning language, 19 participation, ensuring,
42–43, 46
group work (continued) reasons for not using, 39 reflection and self-
assessment, 48, 48f
teaching the skills for,
41–42

hand signals, 54–55 highlighters, 69
history, U.S., challenges for
ELLS, 27
home language survey, 157–160 homework
appropriate, determining,
104–106, 104f
introduction, 103–105
the lesson’s relationship to,
106–107
reviewing, classroom example, 142

individualism, 40 inferences, making, 81–82 instructional environment,
effective, 144–145 intelligence, linguistic, 63

Jigsaw activity, 47

key activities, describing, 18,
149–150
key concepts, 56, 69

language
chunk, 164
first, conventions in writing instruction, 92
native, 165
nonverbal, 54–55, 125–126 social vs. academic, 14–15,
164
target, 166
176 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas


language acquisition. See also
second-language acquisition defined, 165
language learning vs., 9–10 learning styles and, 63–64 stages for ELLs, 10–12
language learning
cultural understanding and, 13–14, 16
group work and, 19 language acquisition vs.,
9–10 language objectives
defined, 28, 165
example, 28
handout example, 139f
homework in relation to,
106–107 posting, 17–18
verbs to compose, 147–149 learning
cooperative, 39, 41, 164 direct vs. indirect, 54 socially relevant, 15–16
learning environment, effective characteristics of, 16–17 core content ideas, posting
for an, 17
daily content, posting,
17–18 introduction, 7–9 language objectives,
posting in an, 17–18 participation, supporting
high-level active learning with, 19
vocabulary, teaching explicitly in an, 18–19
learning styles, 63–64, 165
lesson modification worksheet,
151–155
lesson plans/planning adequate, steps in, 25 assessment planning and,
31
assigning group roles,
42–43
content area challenges for
ELLs, 26–27 field trips, 30
graphic organizers, 30–31 introduction, 23–25 modifying for ELLs, 33f, 40,
151–155
open-ended questions, 30 practice, providing
opportunities for, 31 supplementary materials,
29
thinking backward, 25–26,
163
lesson practice work, 108–110,
109f
lessons, daily
effective, example of,
137–145
homework in relation to,
106–108
instructional environment, effective, 144–145
modeling in, 107–108 ordinary classroom work, 9 purpose, informing
students of, 18
transition points, 109–110,
109f

mainstreaming, 165
mathematics, challenges for
ELLs, 26–27 memorization, 116 mentor texts, 165
Index | 177


modeling, 107–108 monitoring charts, 114–115,
115f

names, cultural difference regarding, 127
Numbered  Heads Together activity, 47
ordinary classroom work, 9 paired work, 19
parent conferences
body language in, 125–126 building relationships to
extend beyond, 133–134 directness, importance in,
128–131
eye contact in, 126 greetings, cultural
differences in, 125 introduction, 121–122 personal space, cultural norms of, 125–126 preconference planning
guidelines, 124 smiling in, 126
time, cultural differences regarding, 131–132
time requirements, 123 translators for, 122–123
parents
home language survey for,
157–160 involving, ideas for,
133–134
welcoming, methods of,
123–124 participation
differentiated expectations,
80–81
participation (continued)
ensuring in group work,
42–43, 46 supporting high-level
active learning with, 19 personal space, cultural norms,
126 practice
lesson practice work sequence, 108–110, 109f
providing opportunities for, 31
prior knowledge. See
background knowledge pronunciation, teaching,
61–62

questions
mental, for self-checking comprehension, 79–81
open-ended, 30

Reader’s Workshop, 61, 74 reading, challenges for ELLs,
26
reading comprehension background knowledge
connections for, 75–76 differentiated expectations,
80–81 inferences, 81–82 information’s importance,
determining, 82–83, 83f
introduction, 73–75 self-checking, 79–81 strategies, 74–75 synthesizing, 83–85
text-to-self connections,
76–77
text-to-text connections,
77–78
178 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas


reading comprehension
(continued)
text-to-world connections,
78–79 visualizing for, 75
reflection component in group work, 48, 48f
relationships, building with parents, 133–134
Round Table activity, 45

science, challenges for ELLS, 27 science fairs, 67
second-language acquisition.
See also language acquisition building connections for,
12–13
core elements of, 13 proficiency, time required
for, 14
social role in, 14–15 stages of, 10–12
self-assessment, student, 48,
48f, 79–81, 117f
Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP model), 17–18, 165
Showdown activity, 44
small-group work. See group work
smiling, cultural norms, 126 social element of learning,
15–16
social facilitator, 42–43 social studies, challenges for
ELLS, 27
sticky notes, 68–69 stopping places, 165 students
involving their parents,
133–134
self-assessment, 48, 48f,
79–81, 117f
supplementary materials, 29 synthesizing information,
83–85

Talking Chips  activity, 46
T-charts, 83f
teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL),
166
test review, 44
test-taking skills, 142–143
text-to-self connections, 76–77,
166
text-to-text connections, 166
text-to-world connections,
78–79, 166
think-alouds, 108, 140, 166
thinking backward, 25–26, 163
Think-Pair-Share activity,
45–46
Think-Pair-Share/draw activity,
45–46
Three-minute Review activity,
45
Thumbs-Up!, 67
time, monochronic vs. polychronic, 131–132
Total Physical Response,
10–11
translators, using, 122–123
TWIPs, 58–59, 166

unit objectives, 107–110, 139f

visualizing for reading comprehension, 75
vocabulary
practicing, strategies for,
66–69 preteaching, 56 pronunciation, 61–62 self-selecting, 61
vocabulary acquisition, 54
Index | 179



vocabulary instruction additional resources, 69 classroom example,
140–141
content area challenges for
ELLs, 26
context clues, teaching recognition of, 56–57
explicit, 18–19, 54–55 introduction, 51–54 materials effective for, 68–69 strategies for supporting,
62–69
TWIPs, 58–59, 166
word walls, 59–60, 60f
Wikki Stix, 68
Word Search Vocabulary, 68 word walls, 59–60, 60f
writing, challenges for ELLS, 26 writing instruction
adequate, ensuring, 90–91 emergent-stage ELLs, tips
for, 92–93
finished documents, presenting, 98
first language conventions, using, 92
introduction, 89–90 writing process, phases of,
93–98, 94f, 96f
















ABOUT THE AUTHORS









Judie  Haynes  is  the  author  of  Getting  Started  with  English Language Learners: A Guide for Educators (ASCD, 2007). She has written 25  columns on elementary education issues for the Teachers  of English  to Speakers of Other Languages  (TESOL) publication  Essential   Teacher  and  has  published  numerous books for English language learners over the past 15  years.

Judie has taught elementary ESL  for 29 years, the  last 23 of which in River Edge, New  Jersey. She holds a master’s in lan- guage education (French) from Fairleigh Dickenson  University and certifications in elementary education,  ESL,   and super- vision. An  active member of New  Jersey Teachers of English to  Speakers  of  Other Languages    and   Bilingual  Educators (NJTESOL/NJBE), Judie was formerly the  editor of the orga- nization’s quarterly  publication, Voices,  and is currently vice president and conference chair of the group. She has also been content editor and writer for the Web site,  http://www.every

181
182 | Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas



thingesl.net, which she cofounded with her  son, Charles, in
September 1999.


Judie served as chair of the Elementary Interest Section of inter- national TESOL  from 2000  to 2003 and is currently chair  of the Literacy  Committee. She was elected to the TESOL Nomi- nating  Committee    in  2007. In  addition, she  served  on  the National   Board for Professional Teaching  Standards Commit- tee from 1994 to 1998.


Judie presents professional development programs and work- shops  throughout  the  United   States. She  has  presented  at TESOL and at NJTESOL/NJBE every year for the past 17 years. She is the recipient of the New Jersey Governor’s Teacher Grant (1989) and TESOL’s Newberry Award for Excellence in Teach- ing (1993). She was also chosen as the New  Jersey ESL Teacher of the Year in 1992 and the Cherry Hill School Teacher of the Year in 2006.


Debbie Zacarian is an award-winning educator, the found- ing director of the Center  for English Language Education, and the founding and current director of the Center  for Advancing Student Achievement at the Hampshire Educational Collabor- ative in Northampton, Massachusetts. The two centers provide professional  development, licensure  programming, and con- sulting  services for educators of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Debbie  has been a columnist for TESOL’s Essential Teacher publication since 2003 and has written  25 columns on secondary school issues. She holds a doctorate in educational policy and research from the University  of Mas- sachusetts. As  a clinical faculty lecturer at  the  University  of Massachusetts  at Amherst for over a decade, she taught courses
About the Authors | 183



in the theories of language acquisition, language policy, assess- ment and  evaluation, research on language  acquisition, cur- riculum development for language and content learning, and educational administration. Debbie  was also the director of the Amherst  Public Schools’ English Language  Learners  Program for over 20 years—a program that has been noted as a state and national model.


Debbie  has been an educational consultant at the local, state, and national levels in English language education, closing the achievement  gap, special education as it relates to students from diverse populations, and educational leadership. Recog- nized as a leading  authority, Debbie   served as an ESL certifi- cation reviewer and member of the Commissioner’s Bilingual Advisory  Committee     for  the  Massachusetts     Department  of Education. She has delivered many papers and research  pre- sentations at the national level, including at the  American Educational Research Association and TESOL.


In 1991, Debbie  was cited by the Massachusetts  Department of Education for her work in multicultural education, and in 1994 she was named Administrator of the Year by the Massachusetts Association of Bilingual Educators. She currently serves on the board of the Massachusetts Association of Teachers to Speakers of Other Languages.




Related ASCD Resources: English Language Learners

At  the time of publication, the following ASCD  resources  were available (ASCD stock numbers appear in parentheses). For up-to-date information about ASCD resources, go to www.ascd.org.

Networks
Visit the ASCD  Web site (www.ascd.org) and search for “networks” for in- formation about professional edu cators who have formed groups around topics  like  “Language, Literacy,  and  Literature.” Look   in  the  “Network Directory” for current facilitators’ addresses and phone numbers.

Online Courses
English Language Learners in the Mainstream  (#PD09OC37)

Print Products
Classroom  Instruction That Works with English Language Learners by Kathleen
Flynn  and Jane Hill (#106009)
Getting  Started with English Language Learners:  How Educators   Can  Meet the
Challenge by Judie Haynes (#106048)
Meeting the Needs of Second Language Learners: An Educator’s Guide by Judith
Lessow-Hurley (#102043)
The Language-Rich Classroom: A Research-Based Framework for Teaching English
Language Learners by Persida Himmele and William Himmele (#108037)

Videos and DVDs
Maximizing Learning for English Language Learners (three 35-minute  video- tapes with facilitator’s guide) (#403326)
Raising the Literacy Achievement of English Language Learners (one DVD  with facilitator’s guide) (#606122)
A Visit to a Classroom  of English Language Learners (one 45-minute videotape with viewer’s guide) (#404447)

The  Whole Child   Initiative helps schools and communi- ties create learning environments that allow students to be
healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. To learn more about other books and resources that relate to the whole child, visit www.wholechild education.org.

For more information: send e-mail to member@ascd.org; call 1-800-933-2723 or 703-578-9600, press 2; send a fax to 703-575-5400; or write to Information Services, ASCD, 1703 N. Beauregard St., Alexandria, VA 22311-1714 USA.

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