Task 2: Readings – Freeman & Freeman Chapter 8
& 9
Pre-Posting – Read both of these chapers (8-How
Should We Teach Reading to Emergent Bilinguals? & 9-How Can Teacher Help
Ells Develop Academic Language?) and consider what they confirm or add to your
knowledge of working well with English language learners.
Posting – Review
the applications section at the end of each chapter p. 223 & p. 256)
identify 2 you would like to try/explore in the future. Please explain why you chose it, what its
relevance is for you personally, and your plan for the application you chose. Clarify
what you see as the key to English language learners
The first application I would try is the multiple ways to teach academic vocabulary. One way the books suggested was teaching individual words. I saw this done during my spring semester (last year) during student teaching. You only teach a few words a week. My teacher did this by introducing the concepts for example directions and the direction words were forward, backward and sideways. These words were put up on her whiteboard and remained there throughout the week. The students used these words constantly in their movement studies. One thing I might do is the graphic organizer (like the book suggested) and provide the students the word direction and see what they come up with. Support their learning by working in small groups and having opportunities to discuss and clarify understanding.
ReplyDeleteAnother way to teach academic vocabulary is provide rich and varied language experiences. This method suggested students to “read extensively and to develop their oral skills oral skills in both their native language and in English” (p.236). I know I can provide more time in oral skills than in reading extensively in elementary school. In elementary school, students can discuss and work in small groups using both their native language and English. This would be an interesting method to try, especially because in the elementary school that I am student teaching at I will have a variety of English language learners. In middle school or high school there are books in dance, dance magazines and history in dance so I could apply the method of extensive reading when students need it and could benefit from it. Especially when students are learning French terms that go with ballet vocabulary. I could see this being a challenge for English Language Leaners when three languages are involved!
The second application I might try during my student teaching is asking five teachers to explain the difference between social language and academic language in dance or other contents. I would love to hear what each teacher has to say and I could guess that none would have the same answer but hopefully all would be on the same page. To me social language is the everyday communicate that goes on between people and academic language is the language used in classroom, textbooks and tests. This is important personally to me because students come into dance with misconceptions about what dance is and the social language of dance is different from the academic language. Also, ELL students may be able to socially communicate with me what dance is but not able to apply it or understand what it means. So, overall I am curious what teachers would say about the two languages.
Kaitlin,
DeleteI definitely agree with the two applications that you wrote about. You'll see I picked the same two but in our fields I really struggled to come up with what else I could chose! I really agree with what you wrote about teaching individual words. It sounds like our teachers both used similar approaches with this. What grades were the students you were with? I have 4th-6th grade and mostly in 4th grade, it is so important to go over these words since they are all still learning concepts relating to the activities. This is true regardless of if they are ELL students or not I think.
I thought that teaching vocabulary/academic language in different methods would be great to try as well! In dance especially, you have such a great method in which you can do so. Not only filling out graphic organizers and seeing the word up on the board, but putting those words into action and seeing them "first hand." That is interesting that many words are French in dance language--I guess I never thought about that. you are right-- that might be very complicated for ELL students, but at the same time, all of your students kind of become second language learners at that point, so the strategies in this book would all be especially useful.
DeleteI really like the idea of intentionally learning a few key vocabulary words. It can really add depth and meaning, especially in a dance context. I would like to broaden my horizons in terms of this particular method though. I feel like I fall back on it because it is so straight forward. Otherwise, the interview is a great way to get experienced feedback that can be applied immediately.
DeleteBoth of the applications that I chose come from chapter 9. The first one is to interview five teachers and have them explain what they think the difference is between social language and academic language. I think that they would have answers that are somewhat related but yet, still all have different ways of thinking about the two types of languages. The examples would be interesting to see as you talk to teachers from different areas of study. This would be especially true for the teachers of P.E., Music, Arts, etc. when compared to english or math.
ReplyDeleteThe second application that I chose is to try one of the listed ways in the chapter to teach academic vocabulary. The strategy that I chose was to teach individual words. This is really common in the physical education setting because so many of the words we learn relating to a skill or rule of a game have different meanings than the students are used to hearing. The words we are learning are listed on the white board in the gym at my field experience and we go over them every day. Some examples from various units can be "serve" in tennis, "home" relating to bases or "force" as in force out in baseball/softball, and the list can go on and on for pretty much every unit. So going over these terms and demonstrating what they mean are great ways for the younger students just learning the activity to understand how the words have various meanings.
As I noted in Kaitlin's post-- I thought teaching vocab in new ways would be important as well! You bring up a good point that in your content area there are many words the students may already be familiar with (home, for example) though in a different context than used in PE-- so it is important to address those factors.
DeleteTalking to different educators about difference in language would be interesting as well. I wonder how varied answers would be! While we obviously want our students to fluent in both, there are "exceptions" to the rules. Like dancers or writers who were never educated in that field specifically (may be lacking in academic language) but still have excelled in that area. Or perhaps athletes in the area of PE.
Chris,
DeleteI feel we are on the same mind set! I agree that students bring their own prior knowledge to a certain word or content and you might have to change the misconception because it is different in P.E. or in dance. When I teaching dance specific vocabulary it was in elementary school. It was interesting to see what the students thought the word meant and what the word is actually defined as. I do think it is very important to undertsand the base before moving forward to more complex idea.
We both picked the interview and I think for good reason. One of my methods teachers said that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. I think this method can give us insight on the students we are teaching, in addition to experienced teaching advice.
DeleteThe first application I would chose is to interview five teachers and have them explain what they think the difference is between social language and academic language. As we found out last week, we have differing ideas about what different word in education mean. These obviously being syntax and discourse. I for one had been using the term discourse to mean one thing, and this was not entirely in line with what the TPA wants. This same phenomena happens across disciplines and the interview can not only sharpen the definition of academic language, but also identify areas of academic language that need to be addressed in different, or possibly unified ways.
ReplyDeleteThe second question I would look at is how can we use different ways to teach academic vocabulary. This is an important tool for any teacher's toolbox regardless of ELL student in the classroom. I find myself going back to explicitly defining the vocabulary when I am planning lessons and using varied techniques for instruction. Two techniques that caught my eye where using reference tools and fostering word consciousness. Both of these techniques are things that I do subconsciously and I can see how powerful they are.
It seems we all thought many of the same applications would be especially effective to try in our classrooms! Great connection to syntax in discourse in terms of the academic language... even within our own cohort there is a lot of different ideas so it would be interesting to see across disciplines/ other teachers what their thoughts would be.This might be a good strategy to do within the same content area in a school to reassure that all teachers are on the same page. For example, if 3 different teachers are all teaching general English 11, they should have the same general sense of what academic language is and how they are going to teach it to the students.
DeleteJoey,
DeleteWe all seem to have the same idea.... I wonder why? Its interesting.... Anyway, I would also want to interview the teachers. I feel we all have different ideas and I wonder what these veteran teachers would say. Hopefully like I said before all these teachers would hopefully we on the same page but bring a fresh meaning to the terms.
I think that Kaitlin said it best. It would be great to talk to veteran teachers and see what they all think and ideally they would all have similar meanings but have different ways of explaining it. A teacher in each field would hopefully be able to give examples that are somewhat similar to examples given by a teacher in another field.
DeleteA point I found very important from Chapter 8 was that teachers should use books that have the characteristics of texts that support reading. It was interesting, while reading this chapter, that many of the concepts tied to reaching ELL readers were the same that I learned about connecting with reluctant readers of any kind during my English Teaching Methods course. As chapter 8 explained, students are more likely to be interested in a book if they can relate to the character, the setting, or a situation of a book. An example given was of Elementary Students who were engrossed in a book about Mexico because it was a place they were very familiar with, and excited to talk about. Pg 213 lists other characteristics of texts that support reading, such as if the material is authentic, if the language is natural, and if the text is culturally relevant. These are characteristics we should be looking for in any book for our students, but especially for ELL students. Just because the students are emergent readers does not mean that they should be stuck reading books at a severely low reading level. Teachers should strive to find material that matches these characteristics and therefore engages the readers.
ReplyDeleteAn application I would like to try is teaching academic vocabulary in different ways. We have already discussed how difficult it is for students to learn academic language in general, none the less if English is not your first language. Trying out different ways to teach the vocab would be interesting to see what strategies work best for different students. A tactic I have used in the classroom is diving a piece of paper into four sections and having the students write the word in one and definition in one box, a picture of the vocab word in another, a synonym for the word in the third, and use the word in a sentence in the last box. This chapter discussed using cognates for ELL students, which is something I could incorporate in the future as well!It is critical that students understand academic language/vocab so that they can comprehend the material as well (avoid becoming word callers.")
Keenie,
DeleteI agree with finding books that have characteristics of texts that support reading. I had a friends that struggled with this in dance. For example, she choose Cinderella as a book to show emotions. My teacher told her to not use the book because it was too white. My class was going to a school that was not predominately white. So, she ended up picking a great book called How are you peeling? Which was still about emotions but shown in different types of vegetables and fruits. This book was a better choice because it connected all the students together. Each student could relate to the book and like you said the text was culturally relevant!
Keenie,
DeleteI also agree with finding books that the students can relate to or will have an interest in. When this happens they will be much more inclined to read the material and learn from it. I think this also goes off of what Joey, I believe, said in task 1 post about getting to know the students rather than just teaching the material. You can combine these two concepts and get to know the students, what they are interested in, choose a reading material that peaks their interest, and then use that to teach the material with them being more engaged in the lesson now!
I have reservations about selecting readings based on student interests, at least in history. The basic tenant is to understand a different viewpoint from its own perspective, not as an outside observer. I must stress that this is from a general perspective, but still applies. I find it much more useful to apply this calculus to the topic and not the readings themselves. A digression, but one I find worthwhile to myself, at the least. I think early on, we need to experiment to find out what works. Some will fail, but we will be better teachers for having tried.
Delete