English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

Karen M. AdriánConnecticut Writing Project

July 2010

“To learn to read is to learn to walk. To learn to write is to learn to rise.” José Martí

Karen M. AdriánConnecticut Writing Project

July 2010

“To learn to read is to learn to walk. To learn to write is to learn to rise.” José Martí

El Inmigrante (Coti)

Agenda:

1. Cognados

2. Introducción a Barack Obama

3. Actividad de Vocabulario

4. Discurso de Obama a los Estudiantes

5. Diagrama/Dibujo

Cognados/CognatesAquellos terminos con un mismo origen etimológico

Words that have a common etymological origin

Educación: Education

Introducción:

Introduction

Lista de Cognados del Discurso de Obama a los Estudiantes

Conocimiento Antecedente: Obama

1. ¿Quién es Barack Obama?

El presidente de los Estados Unidos

2. ¿Cuántos de ustedes eschucharón el Discurso de Obama a los Estudiantes?

Univision 27

Vocabulario/Vocabulary

Cuenten en grupos de tres personas (uno, dos, tres, uno, dos, tres...)

Dividense en sus grupos y tomen una seccion de las palabras del vocabulario

Busquen las palabras en el diccionario de la red: http://www.wordreference.com/definicion/

Completen el Arbol de Vocabulario con las tres (3) palabras mas importantes de su lista

Voy a ir a cada grupo para pronunciar las palabras correctamente

Si necesitan traducir las palabras usen la pagina del red: www.spanishdict.com

Discurso de Obama a los

Estudiantes/Obama Speech to

Students (septiembre 2009)

En sus grupos, cada grupo va a tener una parte del discurso de Obama a los Estudiantes (con la versión en ingles)

Tienen que leer el discurso y presentar un proyecto resumiendo su seccion a la clase en manera de diagrama/dibujo (diagram/drawing)

NOTA: Necesitan usar las tres palabras del vocabulario mas importantes en su diagrama/dibujo

Tienen 15 minutos. ¡BUENA SUERTE!

Diagramas del Discurso de Obama a

los Estudiantes

REFLECCIÓN/ REFLECTION

Please reflect on the activity that we just did: How did you feel about yourself

as a Spanish language learner? What was the most difficult part

of the activity? What observations did you make

about the instruction?

Discussion

Jenny B.“When I couldn’t speak English

and I couldn’t read English and I couldn’t write English, it was like going to school and not learning anything because I couldn’t understand the teachers and they couldn’t understand me. Now that I speak English, I still don’t understand my teachers!”

Joleigh C.

“I know what I need to know and no teacher showed me that. I learned from my friends and from TV.”

“Writing in English is not important because they don’t make me do it since I don’t know the language well enough.”

Statistics (based on the Urban

Institute): 76% of ELLs elementary-age are born in the United

States

56% of ELLs middle- and high school-age are born in the United States

80% of ELL parents are born outside of the United States

80% of all ELLs are Spanish-speakers

“Most ELLs are at risk for poor school outcomes not only because of language, but also because of socioeconomic factors” (Goldenberg 10).

Basic Information:“About a third of children of immigrants and half of limited English

proficient students have parents with less than a high school education... LEP students or English language learners then tend to be highly segregated. That is, as a result of the ongoing racial and ethnic segregation and segregation by income in America’s public schools, we see heavily concentrations of children of immigrants and LEPs in the same schools, mostly in inner city but increasingly in places like Allentown (PA) and suburban areas as well” (Courrier).

“These children comprise the fastest-growing segment of the student population, with the highest growth rates occurring in grades 7-12 (Kindler 2002 as referenced by the Alliance for Excellence Education 2007)

More Information: 42% of the teachers surveyed by the National Center for Education

Statistics indicated that they had ELLs in their classroom, but only 12.5% of these teacher received more than eight hours of professional development specifically related to ELLs (NCES, 2002).

In a study of content-area teachers held by Short (2002), one social studies teacher stated, “I believed that was someone else’s job.”

The Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) holds that in order for ELL students to receive an appropriate, effective, and meaningful education, all school personnel should understand the basic issues of second-language acquisition, bilingualism, the difference between social and academic language proficiency, and the roles that language and culture play in learning (McGraner 6)

Legislation: NCLB, Title III

“The 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (known as the No Child Left Behind Act) prompted an unprecedented focus on the academic achievement of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students” (National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality)

Schools and districts nationwide are now accountable for helping “limited English proficient children meet the same challenging state academic and content and student academic achievement standards as all students are expected to meet (NCLB, Part A, Subpart 1).”

Only 11 states met their accountability goals for English-language learners under the No Child Left Behind Act in the 2007-08 school year, concludes a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education.

Do educators in your school assume shared responsibility for the achievement of English Language Learners, or do they leave up to the ELL/Bilingual teachers and tutors (if there are any)?

School and the English Language Learners

“School is often ELL students’ first point of contact with U.S. culture, and educators must be well poised to ensure this contact results in strong family, community, and academic engagement” (MacGraner 5).

First (L1) and Second (L2)

Language Acquisition “A student’s proficiency in their first language is likely to be more

predictive of how easily they will acquire English literacy” (Thompson 4).

“CREDE (Center for Research on Education) researchers concluded that the longer ELLs received instruction in a mix of their first language and English, the better their achievement in English” (Goldenberg 12).

“In other words, students who acquire literacy skills in their first language are able to transfer those skills to their second language provided that they have received adequate education to exposure to literacy in their first language” (Pappamihiel et al 2008).

“Unfortunately, student who don’t receive the chance to continue to grow in both their languages are often without fluency in either (Hubbard & Shorey 53).

Conversational vs. Academic English

What is conversational English?

“ELLs develop conversational English much more quickly than academic English . Although students typically learn social language through interaction with their peers, academic language must be taught explicitly and takes much longer” (Connecting Research to English Language Learners to Practice 2009).

What is academic English?

“Academic English – the type that is essential for school success – is particularly difficult to master because it is generally not used outside of the classroom and it draws on new vocabulary, more complex sentence structures, and rhetorical forms not typically encountered in nonacademic settings” (Goldenberg 13).

“Moreover, teachers must understand that students may demonstrate a solid command of conversational or social English and may be successful in nonacademic environments without possessing the knowledge and skills required to successfully access and master academic core content in academic environments” (National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (2009).

Mainstream Teachers “Before mainstream teachers can effectively teach ELL students

academic content, they must have a solid knowledge of teaching their subject matter” (Graner & Saenz 7).

“Reading and writing are mutually reinforcing skills for ELLs just as they are for native English speaker (Echevarría, Short & Powers 2006 as referenced by Alliance for Excellence Education)

“The disconnect between the two cultures makes the students feel lost when they return to their mainstream classroom community after being away for one or two periods... To deal with this dilemma and provide effective instruction for ELLs, collaboration models or team teaching between ESL teachers and mainstream classroom teachers are highly recommended by researchers” (Fu 326).

STRATEGIES THAT WORK

“Students learn English when they are immersed in reading and writing” (Custodio & Sutton 1998)

“Educators must have a repertoire of strategies so that they can vary their interactions and curriculum as needed” (MacGillivray & Rueda )

Cognitive Strategies “Curriculum that balances basic and higher-

order skills, explicit skills instruction for certain tasks (particularly in acquiring learning strategies), instructional approaches to enhance comprehension, and articulation and coordination of programs and practices within and between schools” (Olson & Land 2007).

How can we break this quote down instructionally?Directives vs. high-level cognitive and open-ended questions study

(Verpleatse 1998)

Background Knowledge

“Learning builds on previous experience” (National Research Council 2000).

“The languages used by the students and their family members, the students’ cross-cultural experiences, and their [first language] and [second language] literacy history are integral parts of ELLs’ knowledge, skills, and identity” (de Jong & Harper 2005).

“Teachers must either activate what prior knowledge exists and apply it to lessons or explicitly build background knowledge for these students” (Short & Echevarría 2005).

“Gibbons suggest many activities to help build students’ background knowledge, including creating a semantic web, wallpapering, creating a list of questions about that students would like to learn, reading about the topic, using cooperative activities (such as jigsaw), using electronic resources, interviewing an expert, watching a video, visiting a museum, and practicing grammatical structures that will be useful in writing about a topic” (Liviant 2006)

Vocabulary and Language

Development “A[n] effective instructional practice is the explicit teaching of academic

vocabulary” (National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality)

“Teachers introduce new concepts by discussing vocabulary words key to that concept” (Alliance for Excellence Education 2005)

2 to 3 receptive and 5to 9 productive vocabulary words are identified for lesson emphasis: “Receptive vocabulary words are those that are low frequency and not necessarily everyday speech, and productive vocabulary words may be new or confusing to ELLs even though they are commonly used (figurative language or phrases without literal translations)” (Avalos et al 2007).

“The language curriculum should include not only instruction in the specialized language of each academic subject area (for example in math, hypotenuse, angle and so on), but also academic cohesion words and phrases (such as thus, therefore, as a result of) and specialized academic process words (such as explicate, enumerate, define)” (Rance-Roney 32).

Supporting ELLs in English-Only Settings

Predictable and consistent classroom management routines aided by diagrams, lists, and easy-to-read schedules on the board or on charts

Graphic organizers

Additional time and opportunities for practice

Visual cues, pictures and physical gestures

Identifying, highlighting and clarifying difficult words and passages

Summarize and paraphrase

Provide opportunities for extended interactions with teacher and peers

Adjust instruction (teacher vocabulary, rate of speech, sentence complexity)

Targeting both content and English language objectives in every lesson

(Goldenberg 2008)

The Education Alliance 1. Teachers demonstrate how writing and reading are connected

2. Teachers demonstrate how writing and reading are tools for thinking and learning

3. Teacher explicitly demonstrate the process of writing

4. Teachers model exemplary writing practices and demonstrate how writers write about topics that are meaningful to them

5. Teachers teach grammar in the context of actual writing

6. Teachers provide varied and increasingly challenging writing experiences

7. Teachers develop a list of core words for their students to use in their writing

8. Teachers regularly integrate spelling into writing and reading instruction

National Comprehensive Center

for Teacher Quality Instruction should be explicit and systematic (scaffolding,

whole-group instruction, supplemental interventions)

Teaching of academic vocabulary (short, explicit segments of class time in which the teacher directly teacher key vocabulary; saying the vocabulary word, writing it on the boadr, asking students to say it and write it and defining the term with pictures, demonstration, and examples familiar to students

ELL students must have the opportunity to speak and hear academic vocabulary in the classroom

Effectively using visuals in teaching academic content

Give purposeful, consistent and systematic feedback

Alliance for Excellent Education

Vocabulary and language development

Guided interaction (listening, speaking, reading and writing collaboratively)

Metacognition and authentic assessment (i.e. portfolio of improved writing)

Explicit instruction, or direct teaching

Meaning-based context and universal themes

Modeling, graphic organizers, and visuals

Writing Assignments

“Immigration Journals”

Journal writing where English words are inserted into the journals that are first mostly in the L1 then progress throughout the year until the majority of the entry is in English (Fu 2007)

Writing with ELLs (Hubbard & Shorey)

Emphasize writing for genuine audiences, student choice, and teacher supported through revision and editing

Write with your students, conferring with them about your own writing as well as theirs, and demonstrating strategies and writing techniques through minilessons

Offer an opportunity to draw

Do not underestimate the power of the first language because it is the language of the heart (PUT ASIDE ENGLISH-ONLY THINKING)

Model writing by reading published immigrant authors

Journaling with Spanish:

Write about a teaching experience you had using the Spanish vocabulary you learned today (it could be a funny, embarrassing, difficult or horrible time).

“But if we understand writing as a medium through which language learners attempt to understand and control the shifting perspectives in their lives, to express and explore new identities, and to position themselves in new ways, writing in a second language becomes a powerfully motivating and potentially transformative force” (Vollmer 2002)

Evaluations

THANK YOU