LLC Annual Student Conference - UMass Amherst STUDENT CONFERENCE P… · LLC Annual Student Conference A Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Furcolo Friday, April

SPONSORED BY STUDENT ADVISORY COUNCIL 1

LLC Annual Student Conference

A

Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies

Furcolo Friday, April 27, 2012

School of Education University of Massachusetts Amherst


Table of Contents WELCOME FROM CONFERENCE CHAIR……………………………………………………………………. 5 2011 LLC CONFERENCE SCHEDULE………………………………………………….……………………... 6

ORAL PRESENTATIONS Style Writing And Education………………………………………………………………………………….. 8 Loucia Adamopoulos, Rafael Canton, Amy Cushing, Eric Mansfield, Brittney Murphy

Emancipatory Literacy Practices In The Classroom…………………………………………………….. 8 Marissa Ball, Pamela Carter, Rachel Kennedy, Brian Soares

The Media Role In Body Image And Perception…………………………………………………………. 8 Joshua Bonanca, Alyssa Kelley, Kelly Malloy, Phyllis Miller, David Smith

A Critical Approach To Using Wikis For Social Justice Education……………………………………. 9 Rachel R. Briggs

Reframing Hegemonic Discourse, (Inter)Textual And Multilingual Uses Of Media In The Struggle Of Chilean Students To Support Public Education…………………………………………… 9 Javier Campos

Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers’ Developing Perspectives On Literacy Within An US-Based Ma TESOL Program……………………………………………………………………………………… 9 I-An Chen

Case Study of an English Language Learner: Centering on his Writing Development…………10 Heonsook Cho

Improving Chinese College English Majors' English Listening And Speaking Abilities……….. 10 Shanshan Deng

The Dude’s Own Words: Appropriation And Recontextualization In Personal Statements…..10 Charles Estus

Exploring Interactions In An Urban High School: What Does It All Mean? How Do Interactions Between Students, Their Peers And Teachers Shape Opportunities To Learn? ……………….. 11 Dawn Fontaine

Integrating Immersion Techniques Into The Teaching Of Foreign Language…………………. 11 Yasir Hamed

Teaching As A Political Act: Enacting A Multiculturally-Based Critical Pedagogy In A Graduate Course For Pre-Service Teachers………………………………………………………………………...…. 11 Kirsten Helmer

“I Would Like To Work At A School Like Grace More For The Students And Not The Faculty”: Pre-Service Teachers’ Voices On Teaching At Urban Public Schools………………………………. 12 Leta Hooper

A Research Project On Community-Based Learning Activities For Immigrant Children In Japan……………….……………….……………….……………….……………….……………….………….. 12 Hiroaki Ishiguro

Examining The Role Of The University Supervisor In The Reflective Practice Development Of Pre-Service Teachers: An Autoethnography…………………………………………………………….. 12 Katie Lazdowski

A Case Study Research Of Systemic Functional Linguistics: Supporting EFL Learner In Writing Electronic Cover Letters………………………………………………………………………………………. 13 Jingyu Li


Our Own Stories In A New Voice……………………………………………………………………………. 13 Chandra Linnell

Chinese-Immersion Program And Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language…………………... 13 Hengjia Liu

My Body My Canvas…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14 Donna Lopp

Improving Chinese College English Majors’ English Listening And Speaking Abilities……….. 14 Shaimaa Hussein Moustafa

Content-Based English Curriculum: Peace Education In Kenya…………………………………….. 14 Catherine Mbenge Nthama

Understanding And Interrupting The School-To-Prison Pipeline…………………………………… 15 Dani O'Brien

Production (Mmp), Dialogized Heteroglossia, And Ventriloquating American Literature For The Liberation Of Voices In The Classroom……………………………………………………………… 15 Lisa P. Oliner

Multicultural Children’s Literature In The Elementary Classroom: Children Learning About Themselves And Other Children.……………………………………………………………………………. 15 Jasmine Robinson

Teaching Semiotic Forms Of Literary Analysis Through Multimodal Critical Social Justice Hip Hop Pedagogy……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 16 Tyson Rose

Transforming Pedagogy Through Embracing Identity………………………………………………… 16 Monika Schrauder

Global Hip Hop Cipha Blog……………………………………………………………………………………. 16 Molly Swanson, Stefanie Lindenbaum, Andrew Keefer, Justin McCarthy, Maria DeRosa

Genre-Based Curriculum Unit On Argument Writing For Chinese Non- English Major College Students…………………………………………………………………………….. 17 Haijing Tong

Integrating Genre-Based Pedagogy To Empower The Chinese Middle School Students’ Narrative Writing: A Curriculum Project In A Chinese As A Foreign Language Classroom….. 17 Zhi Wang

The Amherst Partnership For Parents Learning English……………………………………………… 17 Jonah Kaplan-Woolner, Renata Pienkawa

Write Your Story: The Effect Of Writing Online Dialogue Journals In EFL Contexts………….. 18 Tecnam Yoon

Using Blog Conversations On Racism To Develop New Media Literacies………………………… 18 Yin Yu

The Prism Of Classroom Culture: An Ethnographic Study Of A Chinese-As-A-Foreign-Language Classroom………………………………………………………………………………………………………….18 Ying Zhang


POSTER PRESENTATIONS A Post-Reading Lesson On The Hatchet…………………………………………………………………... 19 Olivia Carreiro

Quantities And Prices Of Foods……………………………………………………………………………… 19 Grace Harris

Enhancing Critical Literacies Through Sociocultural Approaches To Content Area Mastery….19 Erin Hattaway

Private Conversation ………………………………………………………………………………………..… 20 Qintong He

Using The Five Senses To Scaffold An "I Am From" Poetry Lesson………………………………… 20 Rachael Hougen

We Are What We Eat, So What Are They Feeding Us? ……………………………………………….. 20 Antxon Iturbe

A Unit Of Protections In The Whole Unit Of The Animal Adaptations…………………………….. 21 Hyejin Jeon

What Is Social Justice? Facing Social Injustices, Becoming An Ally, And Taking Action…….. 21 Jeremy Jungbluth

Teaching English Writing Class For Second Grade Elementary ESL Students…………………….21 Mingyang Li

The Cookie Jar…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 22 Marise Lyra

Teaching As Learning: Pedagogical Implications Of Intercultural And International Experience In United States Teacher Education………………………………………………………... 22 Aaron Neugeboren

Merging Tradition And Progress In ESL Instruction…………………………………………………… 22 Monika Schrauder

7th Grade Esl Student English Learning Strategies…………………………………………………..… 23 Svitlana Stepanchenko

Body Language: American Sign Language (ASL) ………………………………………………………. 23 Guanchen Wang

Teaching Basic English Grammar In Chinese Efl Classroom…………………………………………. 23 Xiaoshi Wang

Three Types Of Rock…………………………………………………………………………………………… 24 Kat Warder

Effects Of Cross-Curricular And Integrated Teaching In The Public Kindergarten English Classroom In Taiwan………………………………………………………………………………………….. 24 Fang-Yi Wu

Teaching Vocabulary In Reading Class for U.S. Second Grade ELLs………………………………. 24 Lin Wu

Let’s Music…………………………………………………………………………………………………………25 Zhenzhen Fu


Welcome to the LLC Annual Student Conference 2012!

Ever since I chaired my first Annual LLC Student Conference in 2009, I have wished seeing students taking on the ownership and leadership of the conference. In the past years, student volunteers have collaborated preparing the conference with me. They have provided great ideas, edited abstracts dutifully, contacted volunteers and dealt with the logistics of organizing our program to make it always an excellent one. They have reaffirmed to all of us that this conference represents our community coming together intellectually and also humanly. Students have been at the heart of this effort. They have been collaborators to whom I will always be grateful. For the first time, a whole team of students from the Student Advisory Committee, SAC, have taken upon the role of organizing this year's conference. SAC is engaged in a multitude of activities throughout the academic year and their last spring event, the Annual LLC Student Conference is one that meaningfully apprentices student members in the type of leadership that proves useful for their professional future. I could not be prouder of the dedicated work of I-An Chen, Charles Estus, Leta Hooper, Heingia Liu and Siwen Zhang. It has been a pleasure to work with them and to witness the reality of what I have always wished our students do for the Annual LLC Student Conference. Please join me in congratulating each of our SAC student members. I also want to thank my colleagues in the Language, Literacy and Culture, LLC concentration who have always been supportive of the conference organization. I have no doubt in my mind that this spirit of collaboration and support which has preceded my time as conference chair, will also continue in the future. Thank you and welcome to our Annual LLC Student Conference, 2012! Laura A. Valdiviezo

Annual LLC Student Conference Chair


2012 LLC ANNUAL STUDENT CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

ROOM # 3:30

3:50

4:00

4:20 4:30 – 5:20 5:30 – 6:20

6: 20

6: 30

20

Welcome

&

Potluck

Opening Ceremony

Teacher Education

Session Chair: I-An Chen

Discussant: Dr. Kysa Nygreen

1. Katie Lazdowski 2. Leta Hooper 3. Kirsten Helmer 4. I-An Chen

Hip Hop and Literacy Practices

Session Chair: Tyson Rose

Discussant: Dr. Laura Valdiviezo

1. Marissa Ball, Pamela Carter,

Rachel Kennedy, Brian Soares

2. Joshua Bonanca, Alyssa Kelley, Kelly Malloy, Phyllis Miller, David Smith

3. Loucia Adamopoulos, Rafael Canton, Amy Cushing, Eric Mansfield, Brittney Murphy

4. Molly Swanson, Stefanie Lindenbaum, Andrew Keefer, Justin McCarthy, and Maria DeRosa

Closing

20A

Multimodal Literacies

Session Chair: Hengjia Liu

Discussant: Dr. Nat Turner

1. Tyson Rose 2. Yin Yu 3. Lisa Oliner

Multimodal Literacies

Session Chair: Zil Ahmad

Discussant: Dr. Nat Turner

1. Danielle O'Brien 2. Rachel Briggs 3. Donna Lopp 4. (Javier Campos)

21A

Literacy Development

Session Chair: Kathryn Accurso

Discussant: Dr. Meg Gebhard

1. Shaimaa Moustafa 2. Zhi Wang 3. Jonah Kaplan-Woolner 4. Heonsook Cho

Immigrant Education / Classroom Interaction

Session Chair: Ying Zhang

Discussant: Dr. Maria José Botelho

1. Dr. Hiroaki Ishiguro 2. Dawn Fontaine 3. Ying Zhang


ROOM # 3:30

3:50

4:00

4:20 4:30 – 5:20 5:30 – 6:20

6: 20

6: 30

21B

Second Language Writing

Session Chair: Charles Estus

Discussant: Dr. Denise Ives

1. Tecnam Yoon 2. Jingyu Li 3. Charles Estus

Literacy Development and Identity

Session Chair: Leta Hooper

Discussant: Dr. Nelida Matos

1. Jasmine Robinson 2. Monika Schrauder 3. Chandra Linnell

Closing

22A

Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy

Session Chair: Siwen Zhang

Discussant: Dr. Marie-Christine Pollizzi

1. Yasir Hamed 2. Svitlana Stepanchenko 3. Shanshan Deng

Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy

Session Chair: I-An Chen

Discussant: Dr. Theresa Austin

1. Haijing Tong 2. Catherine Nthama 3. Hengjia Liu

Hallway

Poster Session

Session Chair: Dr. Wilma Ortiz

1. Aaron Neugeboren 2. Andy Clark 3. Antxon Iturbe 4. Erin Hattaway 5. Fang-Yi Wu 6. Grace Harris 7. Guanchen Wang 8. Heather Camara 9. Monika Schrauder 10. Qintong He 11. Lin Wu

Poster Session

Session Chair: Dr. Wilma Ortiz

1. Hyejin Jeon 2. Kat Warder 3. Marise Lyra 4. Jeremy Jungbluth 5. Olivia Carreiro 6. Rachael Hougen 7. Xiaoshi Wang 8. Yuting Ni 9. Zhenzhen Fu 10. Mingyang Li

Conference Room Map 22A

Panel Session

Main Hall

(Poster Session)

HALL FOR POTLUCK BUFFETT

22 Instructional Lab

21E

21H 21D

Education Tec Service 21L

Student Lab 21C

Conference Preparation Room 20A

Panel Session 21B

Panel Session 20

Panel Session 21A

Panel Session


ORAL PRESENTATIONS

STYLE WRITING AND EDUCATION

Loucia Adamopoulos, Rafael Canton, Amy Cushing, Eric Mansfield, Brittney Murphy

The various forms of graffiti represent how an entire hip hop culture is passionate about one certain aspect, yet individuals stay true to who they are and where they are from. To learn how one art style on the east coast has similarities and differences to a style on the west coast says a lot about this form of art and its connection to the world of hip hop. Crew R.E.A.L will explore these various forms and how something that is commonly associated with negativity can be incorporated in a beneficial way into the classroom and youth programs. Our crew will show that bringing together young students to participate in expressing their thoughts and feelings through graffiti will be extremely impactful to the community. We will be presenting the viewer with many forms of style writing and what it represents to the various artists from specific locations. We will also focus in on individual Style Writers who have already been making strides to incorporate this form of art into educational. Graffiti is permanent, and it is our jobs to make sure it is not erased. Descriptors: Hip-Hop, Graffiti, Youth Culture

EMANCIPATORY LITERACY PRACTICES IN THE CLASSROOM

Marissa Ball, Pamela Carter, Rachel Kennedy, Brian Soares

This project looks at how Hip Hop literacy practices can be applied in the classroom to create a dialogue among students about current social and political issues. Our group has chosen to focus on how Hip Hop in the classroom not only creates a way for students to become more engaged with their class work, but can encourage students to become more politically and socially conscious of the world around them. We plan to focus on the roots of Hip Hop surrounding social justice and political change in the Caribbean, as well as the U.S. We then explore how current members of the Hip Hop Nation are using Hip Hop practices to voice their opinions and create a dialogue about cultural and social issues in the world today.

THE MEDIA ROLE IN BODY IMAGE AND PERCEPTION

Joshua Bonanca, Alyssa Kelley, Kelly Malloy, Phyllis Miller, David Smith

This project looks at Hip-Hop and how Body Image and Perception are affected by the Media. Our project will discuss the ideas of Body image and perception in the eye of the media and how Hip-Hop can help us educate and change the way that students view themselves and others. We plan to look at the different elements of hip-hop culture like: Graf writing, breakdancing, and rapping. We will utilize these different elements of hip-hop to not only display the problem (Media portrays negative images and ideas of sexuality and gender roles) but also find a solution for our problem. For example we will discuss: Break Dancing and positive body image and working out, along with gender and Hip-Hop views on women and men and research if students believe that they have to act certain way because of the media. Ultimately we will want to help understand and change how these views affect today’s youth. In order to do this, we will create a Tumblr, a popular blog site that allows people to share anything they want, in which we will include different videos, photos, audio and even quotes from different artists and song lyrics. We hope to inform not only members of the hip-hop community but also youths from all over the world; not only in the US. Descriptors: Hip-Hop, Body Image, Youth Culture. Presenters: Controlled Chaos Crew - Christine Badger, Anthony Biscardi,

Michael Grant, Haley Marshall, Jocelyn Providence


A CRITICAL APPROACH TO USING WIKIS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION

Rachel R. Briggs

This multimodal project (MMP), geared towards social justice educators, employs a critical approach to explore wikis as a potential tool for social justice education. A wiki is a web page in which readers can write and edit content; in other words, they are built, edited, and sustained by the community. This MMP examines the ways in which the construction of a social justice wiki could promote equity through epistemological shifts, undermining notions of authoritative knowledge and authorship, and the development of an online space for community building and dialogue. Wikis are not a panacea, nor are they a neutral tool; this project also explores the challenges and limitations of wikis. Ultimately, I issue a call to social justice educators to work together to utilize the technology of web 2.0 for effecting change. REFRAMING HEGEMONIC DISCOURSE, (INTER)TEXTUAL AND MULTILINGUAL USES OF MEDIA

IN THE STRUGGLE OF CHILEAN STUDENTS TO SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION

Javier Campos In the context of the national demonstrations sustained by Chilean students during the year 2011, hundreds of multi-media productions were created by the students as a way to support, expose and explain the claims that they were pursuing. These multi-media productions quickly turned in one of the main contra-hegemonic strategies implemented by the social movement to develop critical consciousness among citizens. After an analysis of these multi-media productions two phenomena emerged: 1.) The inter-textual references to pop culture as a way to connect and emotionally engage with a broad range of people; and 2.) The re-frame of the common sense reproduced by the hegemonic media, by the appropriation and transformation of multiple discourses (and languages). This video-collage, aims to show how these two phenomena contributed to a critical develop consciousness among citizens.

NON-NATIVE ENGLISH-SPEAKING TEACHERS’ DEVELOPING PERSPECTIVES ON LITERACY WITHIN A US-BASED MA TESOL PROGRAM

I-An Chen

The work of L2 language teacher learning has gained prominence in research on teaching English to speakers of other language (TESOL). This study adds to work by critically exploring how a teacher education program allows non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) to construct their conceptions of teaching L2 literacy. It reports a meaning making process that 3 non-native English speaking pre-service teachers from China deploy within a MA TESOL program in a U.S. university. Drawing on sociocultural understandings of teacher learning, the study offers a Bakhtinian analysis of these pre-service teachers’ oral and written reflections during a 14-week graduate course on literacy development. The findings suggest that theses pre-service teachers developed their conceptions of teaching L2 litearcy by dialogical appropriation of the authoritative course discourses and by recontextualizing their understandings of the authoritative course discourses for their future EFL teaching in China. The study concludes by describing the implications of this research for TESOL teacher education programs housed non-native English-speaking teachers.


CASE STUDY OF AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNER: CENTERING ON HIS WRITING DEVELOPMENT

Heonsook Cho

There has been a great academic gap between English-only students and English language learners (ELLs) in the U.S. and there are a number of studies examining this gap. The purpose of this study is to perform a case study of an ELL student in a new environment of learning English. In order to develop understanding of the student’ language and literacy development and academic achievement in relation to the social context surrounding him, the researcher observed the ELL student in his mainstream classroom and his ELL pull-out classroom. This study analyzed the narratives of the student journal through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and genre-based pedagogy to explore more about the initial development of English writing ability of the student. There were several factors which contributed to his writing development. Analysis of the data revealed that teachers of the focal student modeled what they expected him to do. Interview with the student and field observations showed how much modeling was done in his classes and how effective they were. ELL Teachers’ use of student’s text was also noticeable. ELL reading and writing classes were closely related in terms of themes and activities.

IMPROVING CHINESE COLLEGE ENGLISH MAJORS' ENGLISH LISTENING AND SPEAKING ABILITIES

Shanshan Deng

This is a curriculum-based project focused on the English language development of the English majors at universities and colleges in China. Particularly, this project is aimed at improving English majors’ listening and speaking abilities within the context of daily communication. English teaching in China has been overly concentrating on the development of reading and writing skills at the expense of understating the enhancement of listening and speaking skills. The overly attached importance on the development of academic reading and writing competence at the cost of leaving very limited space for building listening and speaking abilities which are also integral English skills that deserve to be receiving equal attention and developing abreast with the other two skills results in an imbalanced overall acquisition of the four essential skills which are of equal importance. English majors in Chinese colleges and universities constantly lack sufficient target-based training to enhance their English listening and speaking skills, therefore, it’s commonplace that numerous English majors experience difficulty communicating in the authentic context where English is used to achieve daily communication objectives. My presentation will address the rationale of needs being met by project, explanation of significance to the development of equity through education, description of the context of the project, sample lesson of the curriculum unit, as well as the curriculum assessment. Descriptors: Chinese English Majors, English Listening and Speaking Abilities

THE DUDE’S OWN WORDS: APPROPRIATION AND RECONTEXTUALIZATION IN PERSONAL STATEMENTS

Charles Estus

With the growing number of Chinese L1 students attending US universities, increasing attention has been given to this population of students. A growing interest in Chinese speaker’s academic writing and the production of personal statements (PSs) in particular led me to explore the strategies my participant, Claire, used in the formation of her PSs for graduate school using a grounded theoretical approach applied to interview data, online discussion data, and versions of her PSs as they evolved. Informed by Bakhtinian concepts of genre, addresssivity & appropriation and the dialogic nature of language, I explored how Claire drew on others’ voices and input to construct her PS. Touching on successes and missteps in and the subsequent evolution of the recontextualizing of others’ voices highlight the complexity of taking up other’s utterances when expressing one’s meaning. Implication of the complexity of academic composition for ELL’s and nonnative writers of English are discussed


EXPLORING INTERACTIONS IN AN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL: WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? HOW DO INTERACTIONS BETWEEN STUDENTS, THEIR PEERS AND TEACHERS SHAPE

OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN?

Dawn Fontaine

Every day, frequent casual interactions between students, their peers and teachers occur. Often, these interactions go unexamined and leave misunderstandings unaddressed. Other times they are deliberate on behalf of the teacher or the student. This presentation is a preliminary report on an ever-evolving ethnography that aims to explore the nature of these interactions and their meaning for both students and teachers. The research was informed by a sociocultural and sociopolitical lens. Data collection was through observation of and focus groups with high school students in a local city. The structure and verve (Boykin, 1978) of an urban school seemingly does not allow for a pause to ask a question about where language is socially, politically or culturally situated. These unexamined moments and interactions create missed opportunities for teachers to more critically understand the strengths of their students. The central cultural phenomenon examined is the nature of these interactions and how they shape opportunities for learning. While this presentation would benefit anyone interested in urban high school students, the topic is easily applicable to any public school situation. Preliminary findings include, but are not limited to: missed opportunities to connect with students leaves teachers at a detriment when working to motivate students to learn and when teachers can manage the verve of urban classrooms, they can build a community that fosters learning.

INTEGRATING IMMERSION TECHNIQUES INTO THE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Yasir Hamed

This presentation integrates three immersion techniques into the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language with the aim to achieve higher levels of language proficiency. The methodology used is based on the Transformational Learning Theory, and it follows the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA), which has been proved to be a valid framework that helps learners to acquire a new language successfully. The three practices employed in a language immersion course are as follows: a) Project-Based: This activity demonstrates that learners could use the language effectively beyond the classroom. It includes a 6-minute skit developed and performed by students fully in Arabic following the CALLA framework. b) Using the language in a real life situation: In this 6-minute (sub- titled) clip from a lively televised program, students were able to interact freely in Arabic, and talk about their cultural experience in Jordan during their 7-week summer program. This activity is viewed as actual language use as well as an evaluation/assessment tool. c) Achieving reading proficiency through Storytelling: This effective teaching methodology aims to help students achieve reading proficiency through storytelling. Activity includes a 5-minute clip where students were able to effectively read the story individually, and participate in a discussion about the segment read in class.

TEACHING AS A POLITICAL ACT: ENACTING A MULTICULTURALLY-BASED CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN A GRADUATE COURSE FOR PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Kirsten Helmer

This ethnographic case study explores the practice of multicultural teacher education. It is the purpose of the study to uncover and critically examine the ways in which multicultural education is framed, conceptualized, and, most importantly, enacted in a foundational teacher education course for preservice teachers that is offered in a graduate school of education at a large public university in New England. The focus of the study is on the pedagogical choices and tools of the instructor and how these reflect multicultural education that is grounded in critical pedagogy and committed to social justice. Through a critical analysis of classroom activities, interactions, and discourse, this study shows how issues of power and knowledge are conceptualized, addressed, struggled with, and interpreted in this graduate course; what this means for the instructor as a critical educator; and how the students make sense of these processes and practices as becoming teachers. Descriptors: Multicultural Teacher Education, Critical Pedagogy, Social Justice


“I WOULD LIKE TO WORK AT A SCHOOL LIKE GRACE MORE FOR THE STUDENTS AND NOT THE FACULTY”: PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ VOICES ON TEACHING AT URBAN PUBLIC

SCHOOLS

Leta Hooper

Teacher education programs have struggled to effectively prepare White middle class prospective teachers for instructing and understanding the diverse student population in urban public school. As a result, many of these novice teachers enter the teaching profession with negative assumptions and biases about culturally diverse learners and their parents. The purpose of this study is to examine how a northeast public university prepares prospective teachers to be conscious and reflective about their beliefs and instructional practice toward culturally diverse students in urban public schools. This study also investigates how additional factors such as dialogic reflections, group meetings, cooperating teacher, program supervisor, and the field placement site standards shape the prospective teachers’ perception about urban public schools and diverse learners. The findings reveal how pre-service teachers make meaning on the process of teaching at an urban public school.

A RESEARCH PROJECT ON COMMUNITY-BASED LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDREN IN JAPAN

Hiroaki Ishiguro

I will present an overview of my latest grant project supported by the Japanese government, beginning this April through 2015. First, I will introduce a brief overview of immigration and educational situations for immigrant students in Japan. Next, our research field will be introduced. Finally, our research agenda and goals will be discussed. Our research agenda is to identify the potential of “the children with diverse funds of knowledge” for enriching the hybrid communities wherein they participate. Our conceptual framework perceives those children as the “reciprocal agents” to create cultural artifacts of practice, but not as the “recipients of unilaterally help”. We will investigate the developmental trajectory of immigrant children and characteristics of after-school programs which contribute to support those children’s development, for the next three year. In this process, we will examine the nature of human development in diverse community. It contributes to design hybrid cultural society.

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR IN THE REFLECTIVE PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

Katie Lazdowski

This presentation disseminates the findings of a university supervisor-researcher’s autoethnography in which she examines the question how do I, as a university supervisor, interpret my role in the reflective practice development of the pre-service teachers with whom I work? Using grounded theory to analyze her language in the post-observation conferences with pre-service teachers, her reflections of the post-observation conferences, and her emails to the pre-service teachers, the presenter uncovers various themes of her supervisory practice. In sharing these findings, the presenter highlights the impact of the research process on her own practice awareness, and concludes with the implications for her continued work. This presentation may be of particular interest to teacher educators, administrators, and those interested in ethnography as a research method. Descriptors: Ethnography, pre-service teacher education, reflection


A CASE STUDY RESEARCH OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS: SUPPORTING EFL LEARNER IN WRITING ELECTRONIC COVER LETTERS

Jingyu Li

This case study focuses on the pedagogical contributions of Systemic Functional Linguistics, SFL, theory to Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching. This study aims at examining writing activities of English language learners and support learners through that process. This study attempts to design an on-line curriculum based on the idea of curriculum circle (Feez, 1998). Data is collected from student drafts (with and without scaffolding) and learners’ feedback concerning the curriculum and their reflection of pedagogy. SFL approach is used through the process of curriculum design and data analysis. The goal is to design an interactive online curriculum to teach writing, and to explore the adaptability of SFL based pedagogy into Chinese EFL writing classes.

OUR OWN STORIES IN A NEW VOICE

Chandra Linnell

This project is an adaptation of a curriculum project that I developed in the Fall of 2011. The purpose of the project was initially to create an ELA curriculum for a 1st grade ELL classroom which gives students access to texts about relevant issues, and teaches them to read those texts critically and from multiple perspectives, to encourage students to learn and tell stories about themselves and their families and to teach them to become makers of their own texts. Since I started working with my current group of students, I have come to understand the current level of multicultural education available to students in the school, and how their multiple identities and selves are received in the school environment. I have adapted this curriculum to be more relevant and accessible for this group of students.

CHINESE-IMMERSION PROGRAM AND TEACHING CHINESE AS A FOREIGN LANAGUGE

Hengjia Liu

This day and age, children in this state are more and more eager to master a second language when they are in elementary school. Children between the age of 5 to 12 are at a golden age in language learning. World language teaching and learning especially Chinese teaching is still at the beginning of a new ear. Based on the common core of learning in Massachusetts, I mean to design a curricular Unit for Chinese learners in a Chinese-immersion Classroom. I would implement a whole semester’s observation in the classroom at a Chinese-immersion school, observing the Chinese class and exploring the existing curriculum. My project will conduct a creative curricular unit for the Chinese learners in a Chinese-immersion context. Specifically, the curriculum is designed for a forth grade social studies class. This project is significant in exploring world language learning and teaching especially under a bilingual context. The curriculum is necessary because with Chinese classes mushroomed in public and private schools, there is in need of a creative and effective curriculum to support the language educators in helping the children from K-12 schools to master a second language and get better understanding of different cultures. My project will be based on a continuous classroom observation, data collection and analysis so as to conduct a more critical and efficient curricular.


MY BODY MY CANVAS

Donna Lopp

This video explores how various art forms are used to investigate, expose and triumph over gender related violence that is direct, structural and cultural. Examples of these forms of abuses are examined by highlighting acts of resistance, conveyed through such media as music, poetry, dance, theater, video, painting, and sculpture. An appreciative inquiry approach showcases the strength and creativity of survivors of gender related violence and advocates for social change. A range of visual and audible texts convey a wide demographic that weaves through the lives of youth and adult women and men from high schools to university settings, and from urban to rural areas across the globe. While the aim of this piece is to create awareness about a pandemic of gender related violence, it is also meant to celebrate the creative individuals who use the arts to convey messages, and to advocate for further exploration into multimodal forms of expression. This kind of discourse is powerfully effective in accessing and leaving an impression upon a wide range of individuals.

IMPROVING CHINESE COLLEGE ENGLISH MAJORS’ ENGLISH LISTENING AND SPEAKING ABILITIES

Shaimaa Hussein Moustafa

There is a growing controversy among linguists over the struggle of English language learners (ELL) of facing situations, in which they are not familiar with particular linguistic choices in specific contexts or genres because they are totally different from their first languages. The problem is significantly growing in developing countries, as is the case in Egypt, because teachers always suffer from economic challenges, lack of information and resources necessary for the implementation of effective curricula. The purpose of this project is the implementation of the sociocultural theory of teaching, specifically in the narrative genre, to empower the learners’ critical reading and writing practices in the narrative genre in light of genre-based pedagogy and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) trying to develop the target audience awareness of the issues of human liberation and social justice. The goals are achieved through designing a curriculum for Egyptian eighth graders in public schools. The framework of designing the curriculum is derived from the multiliteracies pedagogy and backward design. This approach includes three main stages: 1-Identifying desired results, 2- identifying assessment evidence, and 3- developing learning plans accordingly.

CONTENT-BASED ENGLISH CURRICULUM: PEACE EDUCATION IN KENYA

Catherine Mbenge Nthama

This Curriculum project proposes a content-based approach, incorporating peace values in the English Language curriculum. This paper advances the idea that content-based instruction has the potential to reach majority of secondary school students, and the inclusion of peace values in the curriculum, has the potential of reducing violent behavior observed in Kenyan schools. Most importantly, it will help students in making informed decisions in issues affecting their lives. Teaching peace values will lead to an enhanced and positive environment; both in and outside of school. Moreover the argument is put forward that peace education has a major impact in enhancing development of peace at local and national communitlevels by encouraging critical thinking and sharpening communication skills necessary for eliminating/reducing ethnic division within secondary schools in Kenya. Peace values enable students to be responsible for both personal and group actions. This project is intended for English language teachers in secondary schools in Kenya.


UNDERSTANDING AND INTERRUPTING THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

Dani O'Brien

The school-to-prison pipeline describes the practices and policies that push students out of schools and into the criminal justice system. Practices such as zero tolerance policies, the policing of schools, and the under resourcing of schools among others have created a system that unjustly targets students of color and poor students. Rather than educating these students they are criminalized and set up for a life with restricted opportunities and access. This presentation will explore the causes and implications of the school-to-prison pipeline and than provide ideas and examples of resistance for those who want fight back.

PRODUCTION (MMP), DIALOGIZED HETEROGLOSSIA, AND VENTRILOQUATING AMERICAN LITERATURE FOR THE LIBERATION OF VOICES IN THE CLASSROOM

Lisa P. Oliner

Integrity and Themes in American Literature are multimodal productions designed to extend literary discussion, promote participation, and deepen content in writing for high-stakes testing and early-onset college readiness preparation in the high school sophomore classroom. These presentations serve three purposes: to review the voices of American authors and artists covered in the course, to expose students to an equitable, multivocal, and polyphonic literary curriculum, and to help students formulate robust ideas supported by evidence and to manifest such ideas in writing. Tenth graders consistently displayed higher-level thinking in essay responses, a greater willingness to express their opinions, more openness to new ideas and ideologies, and the ability to produce their own MMPs as tools for social discourse. I employ Mikhail Bakhtin’s views on writing, dialogized heteroglossia, and ventriloquation to justify my hypotheses and reflexively modernize praxis. I echo cultural critic and critical pedagog Henry Giroux’s belief that teachers must cultivate a “capacity for critical judgment” (2001, 20) in students, to amplify their sense of agency, and to instill in them a commitment to the collective good. The use of MMPs in literary discussion enhances our students’ ability to form and communicate thoughtful, nuanced evaluations of their world.

MULTICULTURAL CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM: CHILDREN

LEARNING ABOUT THEMSELVES AND OTHER CHILDREN

Jasmine Robinson Controversies associated with the objectives of multicultural education has had implications on how it is practiced in schools (Castagno, 2009).My objective is to illustrate how multicultural literature through the use of multimodal and dialogical pedagogy, assists children to construct and deconstruct meaning about their social world. Multicultural literature can be viewed as the representation of the macro and micro hegemonic political and social structures in society. This has implications for all children in terms of self-perception, identity development, and how they perceive others. How does multicultural literature help support children’s understandings about themselves and others? As an active participant observer, I conducted a five month long ethnographic inquiry in an elementary third grade classroom. Applying grounded theory (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) my findings suggest that:1) When children engage with multicultural literature their interest in social activism is aroused.2) Children will think critically about social phenomenon in relation to themselves and others. These findings are supported by Morrell and Morrell (2012).This research may provide educators with information for selecting literacy practices that help all children evolve as critical readers, contributing to their understanding of themselves as members of a pluralistic community. Descriptors: multicultural literature, literacy, ethnography, transformative pedagogy, social


TEACHING SEMIOTIC FORMS OF LITERARY ANALYSIS THROUGH MULTIMODAL CRITICAL SOCIAL JUSTICE HIP HOP PEDAGOGY

Tyson Rose

Currently, there are many programs that utilize Hip Hop and Hip Hop cultural practices in traditional and non-traditional educational settings. These programs employ Hip Hop cultural practices or Elements such Emceeing [rapping], B-girl/B-boying [breaking], Turntableism [deejaying], and Style-writing [graffiti arts] as a way to engage with student interests, as a bridge to support the learning of canonical texts, as a method to develop student confidence, and even as a culturally responsive teaching methodology employed by teachers. Many of these programs have been proven to support students ability to take a more active role in their education and also produce positive results such as improved SAT scores, higher attendance rates and increases in other forms of standardized academic assessments. The question is, do these programs represent a critical understanding of both the methodological ways of doing and the experientially grounded ways of knowing? that are embodied in the origins of Hip Hop culture. Imagined thusly, Hip Hop can represent additional resources for educators and students - a critical social justice Hip Hop pedagogy that supports academic excellence as well as a critical engagement the world an education that signifies more than the use of Hip Hop - but one that is Hip Hop. Using critical pedagogy as guiding theoretical lens, I will discuss the elements of the existing programs, while engaging with a discussion of these programs with respect to the development of an integrated critical social justice Hip Hop pedagogy.

TRANSFORMING PEDAGOGY THROUGH EMBRACING IDENTITY

Monika Schrauder

How does identity impact education for teachers and students. How do identity theory, the identities of teachers and students impact educational approaches? Identity theory has changed perspectives from fixed and unified to dynamic and multiple. Identity is shaped by language and culture. Language and culture are learned at home and in schools. There are two opposing teaching methods: traditional and transformative. Traditionally, schools conformed young minds to the existing social system. As teachers we have a choice: continue to transmit legitimate knowledge, essentially dismissing students’ values and beliefs, or we can transform them into critical thinkers. For immigrants, in particular, to conform means to assimilate, to devalue native over adaptive identity. As transformative educators we must be aware of our view of identity: fixed or dynamic, unified or complex? We must know our own identities, which pedagogical approach we prefer and why, and examine our automatic behavior in and out of the classroom. In this autoethnographic study I am reflecting on my views and practices and identity theories.

GLOBAL HIP HOP CIPHA BLOG

Molly Swanson, Stefanie Lindenbaum, Andrew Keefer, Justin McCarthy, Maria DeRosa

When Crew Funky Fresh first considered our idea from a Hip Hop magazine, some of our first thoughts were: how is it multi-model? How can we create a tangible conversation about Hip Hop culture that is accessible for all kinds of hip hop communities all around the world? We wanted to create a magazine that represented a global embodiment of the "cipha”, or the circle people form when they drop beats and rhymes. This magazine would be made up mostly of reader contributions, which could range from personal stories to poem submissions and even demos collected on a CD insert. In choosing what media forms this magazine would take on, we wanted to ensure that it was accessible in areas with and without internet access, and also in areas where they only sell popular magazines. Considering this, we will have created a sister blog, so that the magazine content and access to contribution are as equal as possible for those interested throughout a range of socio-economic communities. We hope that this magazine will foster discussion inside and outside academic settings about the value of Hip Hop culture, and the way it can teach youth to communicate non-violently and learn from one another through the global conversation and love of the art. Through this paper based and digital cipha, students will be able to communicate and learn from other students worldwide using the language and context of global Hip Hop.


GENRE-BASED CURRICULUM UNIT ON ARGUMENT WRITING FOR CHINESE NON-

ENGLISH MAJOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

Haijing Tong

This curriculum project explores how to support teachers with writing instruction to design argument writing curriculum to Chinese non-English major college students related to Genre-Based Pedagogy and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Theory. The project touches on the Sociocultural Theories, Genre-based Teaching Pedagogy and Systemic Functional Linguistic as the basic theoretical framework to help to improve the student’s academic literacy development. The purpose of this project is to implement Genre-based Pedagogy and SFL theory, specifically in the Argument genre, to empower learners’ critical reading and writing practices in the Argument genre. To achieve the purpose of this project, firstly, a relevant theoretical framework will be provided. Secondly, the paper describes the local and educational contexts of the project. Thirdly, writing samples of argument are analyzed from an SFL perspective to illustrate linguistic and lexical features of Argument. Finally, based on the text analysis and findings, a Teaching-Learning Cycle Curriculum will be construed explicitly to students through modeling analysis, joint construction, and independent construction to address the purpose of the project.

INTEGRATING GENRE-BASED PEDAGOGY TO EMPOWER THE CHINESE MIDDLE SCHOOL

STUDENTS’ NARRATIVE WRITING: A CURRICULUM PROJECT IN A CHINESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Zhi Wang

The purpose of this presentation is to share about the implementation of a curriculum project that applied Genre-based pedagogy and Systemic Functional Linguistics to a Chinese narrative writing class in January, 2012. The presentation will first give a brief overview of the current situation of teaching English writing in Chinese middle schools. It will then introduce the context in which the curriculum has been carried out. After that, the theoretical perspectives and the structure of the curriculum unit will be presented. Finally, it will discuss and reflect on the implementation of the curriculum. The curriculum project focuses on improving Chinese middle school (Junior Stage) students’ narrative writing skills and preparing them for the Senior Middle School Entrance Exam in Harbin, China. It is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics, which is one perspective on genre—genre as social purpose. In this perspective, linguistic choices are influenced by the writer’s social purpose. By following the curriculum circle, the project will scaffold students to deepen their understanding of narrative.

THE AMHERST PARTNERSHIP FOR PARENTS LEARNING ENGLISH

Jonah Kaplan-Woolner, Renata Pienkawa

This session will explain how, starting with just an idea and a recognition of a need in the community, we have been able to grow from the ground up a free weekly ESOL class for adults that also serves a vital role in bridging the culturo-linguistic gap between the Amherst public schools and the ELL families they serve. The project began as a BEM leadership project last semester but has since taken on a life of its own, operating entirely on volunteer labor and donated materials. With our staff of childcare volunteers and spread of donated refreshments, we are able to give busy parents a break so they can focus on learning the skills that will allow them to be advocates for themselves and their families in an English-dominated school system. Ultimately, we seek to recontextualize the student within the family, and redefine the smallest unit served by schools as the whole family, not just the child. Our presumed audience for this presentation is education administrators, or indeed anyone interested to find out how to create community and grow English proficiency with zero budget impact.


WRITE YOUR STORY: THE EFFECT OF WRITING ONLINE DIALOGUE JOURNALS IN EFL

CONTEXTS

Tecnam Yoon

English writing instruction has been emphasized to be practically used in the EFL context. However, to teach writing in L2 is a still complicated process at English class in Korean elementary schools. In this sense, dialogue journals are believed to positively influence EFL students’ linguistic competence, understanding of course content, and ability to communicate in written English. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how dialogue journal writing using online blog affects writing skills and writing apprehension in novice writers of L2 English. Nine sixth-grade ELL students of a low English proficiency participated in a 13-week online writing interaction session with their teacher. To examine two research questions, data have been collected from students’ writing samples, teacher’s feedback, interviews, and artifacts. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to measure students’ attitude change toward writing in English. The results showed that online dialogue journal writing can be an effective technique to teach writing in the EFL classroom because it provides more communicative opportunities to practice writing in English. Compared to the traditional writing practice, students wrote differently, which revealed their real voice in writing online journals. The target audiences for this study are young ELL learners and ESL teachers.

USING BLOG CONVERSATIONS ON RACISM TO DEVELOP NEW MEDIA LITERACIES

Yin Yu

As the underlying cause of inequalities in law, employment, health care, housing, and education, racism is deeply rooted in the structure of schools. This encourages educators to integrate antiracist concepts into all subject areas and attempts to reveal the adverse effects of racism on student learning and development. In addition, the high-tech tools have created an environment for the new language forms in current IT age. Thus, we need to broaden the concept of literacy to include having the ability to decipher and use the new language varieties. This Multimodal media production (MMP) aims to develop critical/new media literacies by using blog conversations in the US urban high schools to foster critical awareness and promote socioeconomic equity. The target audience of this project are school teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers.

THE PRISM OF CLASSROOM CULTURE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF A CHINESE-AS-A-FOREIGN-LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Ying Zhang

This ethnographic study is a thick account of classroom culture of an elementary intensive Chinese-as-a-foreign-language (CFL) classroom at university level at a large public university in the Northeastern part of US. Using grounding theory under the sociocultural framework, this study attempts to uncover the patterns of the social interactions in a CFL classroom and how a classroom culture is jointly constructed together by both teacher and students. By using qualitative data collected from participant observation, interviews, field notes, focus student interaction as well as survey, this study investigates the inner workings of the CFL classroom like the routines of action, shared values and beliefs, and the roles of the various classroom participants, and group dynamics as well as how they affect learning. The main purpose of this study is to provide a holistic picture of the evolving history of a Chinese language classroom culture and to contribute to the awareness of the value of what the students can bring to the classroom culture and of sharing the authority among the members of the learning community. With a deepened understanding of joint effort of classroom culture building, it is hoped that students’ foreign language development will be effectively facilitated by building positive classroom culture.


POSTER PRESENTATIONS

A POST-READING LESSON ON THE HATCHET

Olivia Carreiro

Stranded was created to serve as a post reading lesson that provides students with the opportunity to reflect on their reading of The Hatchet and apply their understanding through a series of meaningful literacy activities. The focal environment was a 3rd grade class at a two-way immersion school in Boston, Massachusetts that serves a predominantly low-income Hispanic population. The lesson is designed in accordance with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and the Boston Public Schools Citywide Learning Standards and offers modifications to support a range of English proficiency levels in line with the TESOL Standards and the WIDA English Language Development Standards. Methodology was theoretically informed by Freirean critical pedagogy and the New London Group’s call for multimodal instruction that provides students with agency in their learning. The lesson includes assessment options, opportunities for parental involvement, ways of incorporating technology, and suggestions for connecting with different content areas.

QUANTITIES AND PRICES OF FOODS

Grace Harris

This lesson is part of a larger unit on ordering food from a cafe, deli or restaurant. The class will engage in various scenarios in which they are asking or responding to questions concerning foods and their amounts and prices. In this lesson we will focus on prices of various foods and phrases of amount and quantity of foods e.g. a piece of, a slice of. The students will have just studied and or reviewed countable and uncountable amounts of food and studied new food vocabulary. The focus of the lesson is the integration of the various skill sets needed to order food. The intention of the lesson is to further familiarize the students with varied scenarios in which they might need to ask or answer a question concerning the amount and or price of food item or dish.

ENHANCING CRITICAL LITERACIES THROUGH SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACHES TO CONTENT

AREA MASTERY

Erin Hattaway

In this conference I will present my curriculum project and reflection paper based on observations of a Freshman Seminar class at Catherine Thomas Business School (pseudonym), a vocational school for adults in Berkshire County, MA. The content of the lesson covers legal and ethical topics in the school and workplace such as FERPA, discrimination, and harassment in the classroom or workplace. The lesson creates a forum for enhancing critical thinking skills and a variety of literacies for adult students with little formal literacy training. In reflecting and redesigning the lesson I employed my sociocultural framework and focused on three key points and goals of my methodology: 1) Assess and validate the students’ funds of knowledge through a group discussion of the reading (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 2001). 2) Scaffold the students through a group-based exploration activity in which they apply the knowledge gained from the lecture/reading (Peregoy & Boyle, 2008). 3) Guide the students through a genre-based pedagogy activity in which the students engage in joint-construction of a piece of writing (Hyland, 2004). Descriptors: Adult basic education, sociocultural approach to literacy, contextualized literacy.


PRIVATE COVERSATION

Qingtong He

My curriculum is in EFL area. The context of classroom is Chinese middle school English classroom. All the students are Chinese and the course is required. I will use sheltered instruction as my teaching methodology. First, I will use brainstorming to help students to build up the background. Then, I will use scaffolding, to explain new vocabulary and the text. Third, I will have students discuss the questions based on the text in small groups, which will help them have a deeper understanding of the language and content. The forth step is to give students several minutes to memorize the content of the text and have them retell the text using their own words. This is a process learning language. The fifth step is grammar teaching. And lastly is the homework. I will have students write something about the grammar and the content we have learned in the class. This is a collaborate part. In conclusion, my curriculum is designed to help develop students’ ability to grasp basic vocabulary and grammar language application in writing.

USING THE FIVE SENSES TO SCAFFOLD AN "I AM FROM" POETRY LESSON

Rachael Hougen

The purpose of this presentation is to describe a multi-modal lesson based on the “I am from” poem, as well as the five senses. The context of the classroom I have geared the lesson toward is an urban fourth grade class containing English language learners of varying English proficiencies as well as native speakers. I have used the Curriculum Cycle according to Beverly Derewianka, a theoretical framework based on the work of Vygotsky, namely the zone of proximal development and scaffolding, as well as the Massachusetts State Standards and English Language Proficiency Benchmarks and Outcomes to inform the lesson. I have also designed it with sheltered and differentiated instruction in mind. Not only does the lesson meet the language and content objectives derived from the state standards and ELPBO, but it can be used to cultivate community and empowerment, allowing students to share their cultural capital.

WE ARE WHAT WE EAT, SO WHAT ARE THEY FEEDING US?

Antxon Iturbe

This lesson plan is designed for Level 4 and 5 English Language Learners in a High School setting. The lesson is intended to be implemented at the end of a curricular unit on nutrition and its main focus is to expand the students' development of English language while empowering them to critically analyze 3 separate issues. Class activities include a mini lesson on reported speech; a linguistic skill widely used in the scientific discourse and present in high stakes testing. Furthermore, Students will be exposed to a series of essential questions to help them connect the importance of a balanced nutrition for academic achievement, the nutritional value of lunches being provided in their schools, and the high rates of obesity among minority populations. The intent is to engage students with high order thinking questions so they can analyze if the nutritional value of school lunches could be partially responsible for the current achievement and health gap in our society. Ultimately, students will be asked to determine what advocacy power they might have regarding school lunches in their schools.


A UNIT OF PROTECTIONS IN THE WHOLE UNIT OF THE ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS

Hyejin Jeon

Based on research, I provide teaching methods through this mini lesson plan. The primary focus of this presentation is students’ second language development, especially oral and writing skills in a content area, by using thematic instruction. Also, Differentiated Instruction, comprehensible input, and literacy scaffolding are utilized for the theoretical framework. This mini lesson is designed for 3rd grade science class. From this mini lesson, students will improve their social and academic language skills orally and in writing while learning about content, science. For homework, students write theme-based interactive dialogue journals. The lesson will include the following activities: 1) Bananagram game in pairs for practicing spelling vocabulary, and 2) a Carousel activity in groups by categorizing animals and insects. This activity was chosen for several reasons. The practical reason is that these activities motivate student learning in an enjoyable way. The second reason is that they are an activity that students are able to participate in, regardless of their language proficiency level in that they do not require a lot of language to do. Also, while second language learners interact with other peers to learn about content in class, they will improve social and academic language simultaneously.

WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE? FACING SOCIAL INJUSTICES, BECOMING AN ALLY, AND TAKING ACTION

Jeremy Jungbluth

This lesson is set within the context of an urban middle and/or high school intermediate ESL classroom through a social justice education lens. The poster presentation will discuss how English language development can be taught through a multimodal activity that includes current, authentic, and socioculturally relevant issues. The lesson will include the content areas of English Language Arts and Social Studies. The lesson will teach students the importance of social justice and how to become an ally. The classroom will be an equal and safe environment where students can openly reflect on the injustices they have personally faced [or someone they know or have heard about through print/online media] and how an ally could have been a support. Through critical reading, independent writing, class discussion, and group collaboration students will gain insight on the importance of taking action, in a thoughtful manner, to support others who face particular injustices, while continuing to develop their reading, writing, listening, and speaking proficiencies. Descriptors: Social justice education, the missing element in classrooms. Providing student-centered learning, giving students the reins to lead classroom discussion through reading critically and analyzing thoughtfully on socioculturally relevant issues. Developing language proficiencies through authentic and student led instruction.

TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING CLASS FOR SECOND GRADE ELMENTARY ESL STUDENTS

Mingyang Li

My mini-lesson is to teach the English writing class for second grade elementary ESL students. My focal topic of my teaching is how to write a successfully description of a person. My class plan focuses on the adjectives to describe a person and try to help ESL students use more diverse vocabulary to describe a person’s appearance, personality, job and so on. In my class design, I use multimodal theory and visual aids to make the class more interesting and attract the elementary students. I will use many cartoon pictures to help them understand the new vocabulary. Also, I will show them a video about some useful and basic sentence structures to describe a person. In the activity part, first, I will have the students draw a picture they want to describe and describe that person in pairs with the vocabulary they have learned in the class. In addition, I will use a word wall, that means when students go home, they will review the new vocabulary they learned in class and collect them. In the next class, the students will put those new words on the Word Wall.


THE COOKIE JAR

Marise Lyra

In my lesson students will practice geometry, multiplication, addition, measurement, language, and nutrition using a chocolate cookie package. I will introduce my lesson by singing the Cookie Jar song, and the children will be encouraged to work in groups on hands on activities in order to find out who is mystery person keeping the cookies that disappeared from the cookie jar. It will be a sample of a sheltered instruction in a regular third grade classroom with ESL students in the intermediate and advanced levels. In this lesson, I will use a mix of methodology including demonstration, explanation, group discussion, and collaboration.

TEACHING AS LEARNING: PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF INTERCULTURAL AND INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN UNITED STATES TEACHER EDUCATION

Aaron Neugeboren

I will present my research paper entitled Teaching as Learning: Pedagogical Implications of Intercultural & International Experience in United States Teacher Education based on my experiences as an American living, studying, and teaching in Bangkok, Thailand. These experiences serve to demonstrate the benefits of lived intercultural student teaching and international experience and to advocate for the need for all U.S. educators to gain similar experiences in order to better allow all students equal access to subject matter in their classrooms. Throughout this learning process I placed myself, as educator (and in this context, as a culturally and linguistically diverse student) in the position of second language learner in a foreign country in order to better view my own language and culture, and my own learning and teaching abilities and style(s) from different perspectives. This process allowed me the opportunity to learn to know and understand myself better in order to be able to become more aware of my own needs as a student and teacher. Ultimately, this allows for a personal and professional reflective learning process that assists in one’s ability as a teacher (and is vital to the education and professional development of all U.S. teachers) to be more aware of students’ needs within a United States public school classroom. This project targets an audience of teachers and administrators, teacher educators, and policy makers, but has been created with students, parents, and communities in mind.

MERGING TRADITION AND PROGRESS IN ESL INSTRUCTION

Monika Schrauder The project presented is a Mini Lesson with the theme Family. The primary focus is the English language development of adult ELLs at the high beginner to low intermediate EL proficiency level. The language objective is to practice reading, writing, listening and speaking of Family vocabulary, for pronunciation it utilizes the Behaviorist choral drill. The content objective is to learn context-based grammar of gender and singular/plural pronouns using Constructivist based sheltered instruction. This includes building on students’ background knowledge (family is a familiar concept), group work (interaction) and individual completion of cloze pronoun exercises. For comprehensible input students are shown overhead images and provided with handouts. Assessment is informal, review of completed exercise handouts and collecting them to check for students’ understanding to inform class instruction.


7TH GRADE ESL STUDENT ENGLISH LEARNING STRATEGIES

Svitlana Stepanchenko

My presentation is a lesson plan for the seventh grade intermediate level ESL class. The topic of the lesson is Different Strategies to Learn English. This is an introductory lesson in which different strategies and approaches to learn English are discussed. In this presentation, I described the theoretical framework and methodology used in the lesson, materials and key vocabulary. There is also a podcast where six native speakers of English from different countries share their ideas about what they think is the best way to learn their language. A comprehension quiz and vocabulary quiz are included in the plan. The main goal of the lesson is for students to come up with their own strategies to learn English by the end of the lesson.

BODY LANGUAGE: AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE (ASL)

Guanchen Wang

This is a curriculum project focusing on foreign language teaching and learning for a college English class in China. All the students are Chinese and in high English proficiency level. The purpose is this course is to develop student’s English skills (reading, writing, speaking and listen) as well as understanding of American culture. The main theme of this curriculum is American Sign Language. Based on sociocultural theory, scaffolding and constructivist theory, this curriculum utilizes sheltered instruction as a teaching methodology. Using video, posters, website links and texts as materials to assist students’ understanding, including building background knowledge (watching video and in class writing), reading with skimming strategies, rewrite sentences (as a way to evaluate new words as well as practice rewriting) and practice ASL in groups. The after-class homework focus on the comparison of Chinese sign language and ASL, from which students have a deeper understanding of culture difference.

TEACHING BASIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR IN CHINESE EFL CLASSROOM

Xiaoshi Wang Teaching grammar is a tough task to do in China. How to use an effective and interesting way to make the grammar teaching more efficient is a hot educational topic in Chinese EFL teaching. This presentation will focus on how to teach basic English grammar in a Chinese Junior High School. Based on the collection of background knowledge and the comparison of Chinese and American English proficiency level, I will practice the theories into the real classroom teaching, such as scaffolding, behaviorist instruction, thematic instruction and Krashen’s five hypotheses. Within the vivid explanation of grammar and different levels of exercises that they will do on class, students will get a complete idea of how to use this grammar point in real life, instead of reading certain rigid grammar books. This teaching and learning process will be helpful to improve the serious grammar teaching style in Chinese EFL classroom.


THREE TYPES OF ROCK

Kat Warder

I am presenting a lesson designed for a 5th grade science class. The lesson is meant for intermediate English proficient students. Following the Massachusetts department of education's frameworks, I am teaching the three types of rock: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. I will be using Krashen's I + 1 theory to scaffold students in order to understand the necessary vocabulary for the content-specific language. The lesson involves a computer-based, interactive program to reinforce new concepts and vocabulary.

EFFECTS OF CROSS-CURRICULAR AND INTEGRATED TEACHING IN THE PUBLIC KINDERGARTEN ENGLISH CLASSROOM IN TAIWAN

Fang-Yi Wu

Recently, educators have been encouraged to view curriculum integration as a vehicle for significantly reshaping the nature and content of schooling, as a response to various problems of failure in traditional programs (Marjorie Y. L. 1993). Educators emphasize through learning in the different subjects areas, students’ language skill and knowledge will be improved. In an meaningful learning environment in which students have authentic purposes for reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and representing. Thus, this project will focus on Cross-curricular and integrated teaching based on the collection of observational data. The purpose of analyzing of a cross-curricular topic web which focuses on “the butterfly” in a second grade classroom at a regional elementary school are: (a) to present how a teacher develop a framework and strategy for cross-curricular and integrated learning, (b) to present in this “butterfly” topic how mathematics and science curriculum can be linked with language learning, (c) to identify how implementing an integrated curriculum for culturally and linguistically diverse students, (d) to investigate what restrictions and differences in implementing an integrated curriculum in the public kindergarten for English education in Taiwan, (e) to present a proposal to support and develop an English language curriculum in the public kindergarten in Taiwan.

TEACHING VOCABULARY IN READING CLASS FOR U.S. SECOND GRADE ELLS

Lin Wu

This mini-lesson focuses on teaching farm vocabulary in the reading class for second grade ELLs in the United States and aim to enrich students’ vocabulary by connecting to the real situation and develop student’ ability to use language to express ideas with supported evidence. The text selected for this lesson is Green Eyes, which is a simple narrative story. Students in my class are all English language learners at the beginning level. They can communicate orally well, but are weak in reading comprehension and academic writing. This lesson is designed following the SIOP model, including preparation, scaffolding, whole class joint conduction, group work, application and assessments. The teaching methodologies in my class are sheltered instruction, thematic instruction and scaffolding, while in order to support them, sociocultural theory, performance-based instruction and multimodal teaching frameworks are used. In the mini-lesson activity part, visual pictures, on-line video, audio sounds of farm animals will be integrated to scaffold students better learning of these vocabulary and use them in the real context. Then, a matching game with pictures and incomplete words will be used in groups as an informal assessment and at last, peer assessment is involved to check the answers and correct them


LET’S MUSIC

Zhenzhen Fu

Nowadays, English language education in China is still defined as an independent course in almost all the public schools. Teachers design their class content with the total focus on improving students English language skill and proficiency and making sure that those students can obtain high scores in some high-stake examinations. This teaching model definitely increases the competitiveness of Chinese students in English exam, but also leads some opposite consequences. And one of the conspicuous consequences is the low interest in English language learning of lower grade students. The reason why is mainly due to the subject matter of the class in which they learn the English. The English education in China start at second or a litter higher grade and the children in this period are hard and also reluctant to pay their attention to some insipid things, but the fact is, the early stage of English learning is usually filled with knowledge should be memorized. I will display a mathematic class and the target students are 3rd grade Chinese children who have learnt English in their English class for two semesters and can understand some simple sentences.

Documents

LLC Annual Student Conference - UMass Amherst STUDENT CONFERENCE P… · LLC Annual Student Conference A Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Furcolo Friday, April