Interview

· Chapter 8: Differentiating for Diversity

· Chapter 10: Putting It All Together

Watch Allen’s 2014 video 

Interview With ELL Teacher

Address the following items in your original post.

· Identify how this teacher promotes comprehensible input.

· Explain some of the complications of teaching ELLs that are presented by this teacher.

o   What ideas would you have for a teacher to overcome those challenges, based on what we have been learning?

· Infer some cultural challenges that teachers should be aware of.

o   How can this be impacted by Culture Shock?

· Distinguish the strategies this teacher recommends.

· After listening to the teacher, outline strategies you would recommend.

· Infer and describe how this teacher utilizes BICS, CALP, comprehensible input, silent period, language proficiency, total physical response, assessment, affective filter, scaffolding/differentiation.

197

Learning Outcomes By the end of this chapter you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:

• Argue, providing supporting evidence, for the need for differentiated instruction with ELLs.

• Evaluate the importance of finding and using high-impact strategies with ELLs.

• Assess the usefulness and possible applications of three categories of research based high-impact strategies for ELLs.

• Define action research and propose ways in which teachers can use it to identify highly effective strategies for use with ELLs.

8Differentiating for Diversity

Mikanaka/iStock/Thinkstock

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© 2015 Bridgepoint Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Not for resale or redistribution.

Introduction

Introduction In previous chapters we discussed the characteristics of learners, how to assess them, and the content and language they need to learn. We have looked at curricula, at objectives, at materials, and the kinds of lessons that align with all these. Now that we have learned some- thing about the who, the what, and the why of teaching, it is time to take a closer look at the how. We do this with caution. The most effective teacher is not the one with the biggest bag of teaching tricks, even if those tricks are comprised of well-established techniques; the most effective teachers are those who have many techniques upon which to draw, but who know the importance of using them within a thoughtful, well-organized plan for learning and for monitoring learning. ELL teachers are constantly seeking strategies that will help LTELLs, and indeed, all ELLs, to progress linguistically and academically. The purpose of this chapter is to examine some of the strategies that research has shown to be effective and how they can be adapted for a variety of learners and circumstances.

Experienced teachers know that there is no such thing as a truly homogenous class, and that they will need to take into account the differences among the children they teach. But when the class represents such a wide range of abilities as Candace Marin’s fourth graders, (see A Teacher’s Story: Overwhelmed!), developing a plan and mapping onto it the best methods or strategies for each of them requires even more planning and forethought. Fortunately, as we will see in this chapter, there are many sources and resources to which teachers can turn, based in research, based in practice, and based in experience.

A Teacher’s Story: Overwhelmed!

At the end of my first month of full time teaching, I went home and told my husband that I felt like I had to do everything for everybody when none of those “bodies” needed the same “things”. I had been so excited to get this assignment, a fourth grade class in a well-resourced school in an affluent suburb. As a student intern, I had been in classes as large as 31 in badly maintained schools with few resources in the inner city. So when I found out that I had only 18 children in my class, I was thrilled.

Just four weeks later, I was overwhelmed.

I had six ELLs, one with special needs, and the other five with different levels of language pro- ficiency and different skills. One had amazing spoken English, but he was reading at first-grade level, barely. Another girl had good reading and writing skills, but she wouldn’t read aloud and barely spoke. The native speakers were almost as varied as the ELLs—one appeared to be gifted and another appeared to be dyslexic, although neither had been formally assessed. Still another had attention and behavior problems.

Because I had a relatively small class, I did not have another adult in the room to assist, and the only additional support for the ELLs was an itinerant ESL teacher who came twice a week for 45 minutes.

And then there was the Common Core. Before the start of the school year, the district had held a series of professional development workshops to prepare us, but after a month, I felt less prepared than I had on my first day as an intern.

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Section 8.1 Differentiation for ELLs

8.1 Differentiation for ELLs Today’s pluralistic, inclusive classrooms demand a sharp lens of understand- ing and awareness from our teachers to reach and teach all students. This lens must serve as a microscope to magnify teachers’ understanding of individual student’s talents and skills as well as a stethoscope to listen deeply to their students’ daily experiences, unique interests, and individual dreams. (Oberg, 2010, p. 2)

We know that ELLs learn at different speeds and in different ways, but what do we do with that information? Teaching diverse students is not a “one size fits all” endeavor. On the other hand, no teacher has the time to teach each student individually. Finding an optimal zone between the two extremes that allows us to maximize instructional impact is a daunting task. This sec- tion describes tested strategies that have worked for other teachers coping with classrooms of diverse learners, concentrating on literacy “power standards” (Gregory & Burkman, 2012).

Knowing the Learners In previous chapters we learned a great deal about English language learners. Knowing about our learners, however, is not the same as knowing our learners. We can get some indication of what learners know by using performance assessment tools such as those described in Chapter 4. We can speculate about how learners might learn by revisiting what we discovered about differences in learning styles in Chapter 2. We can further study the research described in Chapter 3 on how the brain learns to refine our ideas about teaching bilingual learners, but ultimately, teach- ers will have to discover how all these factors—and many others such as differences in maturity—interact and help to shape each individual learner. Getting to know a learner takes time and it takes continuous effort. It also takes deliberate actions.

Teachers Need to Be Observant There are tests and exercises that can be administered to learners to find out their preferred learning styles, but the best indicator may well come from observation. To differentiate instruction meaningfully, teachers need a clear understanding of how learning progresses. Observing where learners appear to fall along different dimensions and recording those observations helps teachers to find effective strategies and also to assess progress.

Teachers Need to Know how Learning Progresses Remembering that ELLs learn best when the material is just beyond their current level of competence and comfort, the goal of differentiated instruction is to find the “propellers” for

Monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock

This teacher knows that getting to know her learners will make it easier to plan for their individual needs.

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each learner—what moves them to the next stage in which the new material is no longer new and they are ready for the next challenge. According to Tomlinson (2001), learning is a pro- gression of development along eight dimensions that can be thought of as the tracks on which breakthroughs may occur:

1. Foundational to transformational. This dimension refers to information, ideas, mate- rials, and applications. At the foundational end of the continuum, learners are able to relate to key ideas contained in text or to classify animals or objects on the basis of visible physical similarities and differences, for example. Those who are nearer the transformational stage can handle ideas that are removed from the text or immedi- ate experience and can generalize ideas or skills to different materials or settings.

2. Concrete to abstract. This dimension refers to representations, ideas, issues, prob- lems, skills, and goals. At the concrete stage, learners fare best with tangible objects, hands-on activities, and literal rather than analogic or metaphorical examples. As they progress toward the abstract stage of thinking and learning, they are increas- ingly able to hold images and ideas in their minds, cope with intangible ideas, and with metaphors, analogies, and symbols. They can understand principles indepen- dent of specific events.

3. Simple to complex. Moving along this dimension, learners proceed from a basic vocabulary of common words in texts that are easy to read to a more advanced, academic (and therefore abstract) vocabulary in advanced texts. They progress from being able to work with few if any abstractions to being able to work with multiple abstractions, and from dealing with the idea or skill being taught to the ability to incorporate newly learned ideas and skills into those previously learned.

4. Single facet to multi-facet. Processes or procedures with fewer parts, fewer steps, or stages, characterize the lower end of this dimension, while multiple parts, steps, and stages, characterize the higher end.

5. Small leap to great leap. Early in their learning, learners are able to deal with few unknowns, relate best to familiar elements, and are not likely to be flexible in their thinking. As they progress they are able to tolerate more unknowns and unfamiliar- ity is no longer a barrier. They are capable of more flexible thought and are more revolutionary than evolutionary in their thinking.

6. Structured to open-ended. For learners at the early stages, teachers will need to provide more directions, more precise directions, and more modeling of expected behaviors. As learners grow in their abilities, teachers will need to give fewer direc- tions, do less modeling, and allow learners more choice in how they approach a problem.

7. Dependent to independent. As learners move from dependent to independent learn- ers, they require less guidance and monitoring in order to identify problems, set goals, establish timelines, or to find appropriate resources. They will require more scaffolding in the early stages but will gradually require less as they gain and dem- onstrate their independence as learners.

8. Slow to fast. ELL teachers are admonished always to allow adequate time. In the early stages especially, learners will need more time for almost everything—to read, to practice, to review, to process. As they become more efficient learners, however, they will need less time for all of these; it is as though they gain momentum.

Observant teachers make note of what strengths learners have and what motivates and excites them to participate and to learn. They can do so throughout the day, at the end of the

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day, or whenever they have an opportunity to make a notation of a success, failure, or source of frustration. Observing learners on the playground can also give valuable insights into their social language competency that can be built on in the classroom.

Teachers Need to Build Profiles Over Time These observations should be kept as part of the learner profiles that teachers create to guide them toward providing the best support they can. Teachers who make good notes and collate those notes at regular intervals will find those accounts invaluable as a profile of the learner starts to take shape. For example, a teacher who has observed repeatedly that a learner likes to draw or likes poetry or nursery rhymes will be able to use that knowledge in future work with that learner.

Teachers Can Get Help From ELLs There are two ways of getting help from the learners themselves. Saying something as simple as “Tell me if this seems too hard for you” provides a useful starting place. Asking learners to reflect in writing on tasks, lessons, or assignments, not only provides teachers with useful feedback but also gives learners valuable experience in writing. It is an authentic language experience!

Teachers Can Collect Data From Many Sources Teachers can supplement their own observations with data from a variety of other sources: other teachers, whether previous or concurrent, parents, test scores, the school bus driver, principal, counselor, or even social media sites. There are many sources of information about learners that a teacher can mine to get a better idea of what will work with individual learners.

Setting the Stage for Learning Obviously, teachers do not have time to identify and cater to every learner’s particular mix of experience, skills, abilities, and learning styles for every lesson. Differentiating instruction does not require that. Rather, the starting place is for teachers to:

• Concentrate first on language skills because English, and especially literacy, as we have seen, is the core competency that makes all content learning possible.

• Focus on creating a learning environment in which all ELLs feel comfortable and competent. Finding a way to make each learner feel competent gets to the heart of differentiated instruction.

Gregory & Burkman (2012) offer five suggestions for helping teachers to plan for “multiple modalities in each lesson while incorporating strategies for English language learners” that are based on who, why, what, how, and so what. Letting learners know who they can turn to for information or support tells them that they are not alone and gives them a sense of control over their own learning. Resources might be a bilingual friend, a resource teacher or librarian, or even a website. Letting them know why they are learning a particular skill or why they are engaged in a particular reading or writing task helps them to see relevance. By connecting the lesson or assignment to something they already know or need to know, teachers make the experience more meaningful.

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Giving learners the what by providing them with advance organizers (such as those we saw in earlier chapters) prepares them to focus on what is important and to improve their predic- tion skills. Advance organizers can be tweaked for learners of different skills levels, with more information provided for those who need more help. Telling them the how means giving the learners adequate time for practice and for application—for actually using the literacy skills they are acquiring. Again, making the connection with their existing knowledge helps them to integrate and remember new information and skills. Finally, the so what relates once more to relevance by providing learners with “outlets for creativity and dynamic interaction with the material and skills” (Gregory & Burkman, 2012, Ch. 3), which may involve using their home language or finding their own culturally specific applications. These five general recommen- dations help teachers to set the stage for making adjustments that benefit all learners. To implement any of these recommendations, however, it is useful to have tools. There are three that are particularly versatile.

Three Power Tools for Differentiated Instruction Whether teaching English language or any of the content areas, teachers will find that manipulatives and technology are multi- purpose tools that can be used to adjust instruction for English language learn- ers. Equally important is the power of collaboration.

Manipulatives One of the major benefits of manipula- tives is that the amount and type of lan- guage needed to use them is adjustable; they reduce the significance of language for less advanced learners but can also serve as prompts for more sophisti-

cated language use with intermediate or advanced learners. Objects that can be handled, arranged, and rearranged, can be used to teach colors, shapes, sizes, and also be used to illustrate prepositions such as above, below, around, beside, and so on. Interlocking blocks can be used to build objects around which stories are told and written, and more advanced learners can write or speak directions to less advanced learners on how to build or accom- plish something with objects. Manipulatives also help to make math and science content comprehensible. They give learners a way to test and confirm their mathematical reasoning and help them to solve problems. They also make learning more fun.

Technology Children in school today have never known a world without computers, cell phones, elec- tronic readers, and tablets. Today’s young people are familiar with and like technology, and it can be one of the most valuable tools in a teacher’s kit if it is used wisely. Schools vary greatly in terms of what technology is available, and technology itself changes so rapidly, (hardware

RPedrosa/iStock/Thinkstock

Both the calculator and abacus require less language or language-based thought to use, but the abacus has the advantage over the calculator as an instructional manipulative for ELL teachers. Why?

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Section 8.2 The Importance of High-Impact Strategies

and applications), making it difficult to provide specific recommendations. Nevertheless, there are a few basic directives that apply:

• For math, teach ELLs to use a calculator, if they don’t already know, and have them practice using it.

• Take advantage of the school’s available technology by staying up to date on soft- ware available through the school and at the many online sites for teachers, some of which are listed at the end of this chapter.

• Engage native speakers in recording stories or other passages for ELLs to follow as they read.

• Teach learners to use electronic dictionaries, bilingual if necessary, and to do inter- net research. The CCSS demands high levels of research, analytical, and synthesizing skills in the upper grades, and teaching ELLs to take advantage of all the resources available furthers their content knowledge, language skills, and reasoning abilities.

Collaboration Many program options for ELLs involve more than one teacher for at least part of the day—the classroom teacher and possibly a specialist ESL teacher, or an art, music, or physical education teacher. For example, art can play a very important role in language development (Chapter 7). We have seen that the organization of the CCSS provides incentive and opportunity for teachers to think holistically about the curriculum. The interdisciplinary approach “reflects the crucial role ELA teachers play in developing students’ literacy skills while at the same time acknowledging the impact other subject matter teachers have in students’ literacy development” (Bunch, Kibler, & Pimentel, 2012, p. 1). English language teachers will need to collaborate with other teach- ers and school personnel on teaching ELLs to read and comprehend nonfiction, to use language proficiency standards to support instruction, and to design appropriate assessment instruments to get a fair assessment of ELLs’ knowledge and skills. Just as language proficiency forms the foundation for other learning, so does language arts provide the curricular basis for teaching the other core subjects. Perhaps most importantly, teachers who work together, pooling their obser- vations as well as their skills and knowledge, reach a better understanding of their students and increase the likelihood of finding high-impact strategies that work for every learner.

In the next sections we will see opportunities for applying the five recommendations for diversifying instruction and for applying the three tools described here. Before we turn to our discussion of high-impact strategies that can be adapted for use with English language learn- ers, let’s remind ourselves why it is so important that teachers find highly effective strategies for these learners.

8.2 The Importance of High-Impact Strategies In Chapter 5 we saw the grim statistics for LTELLs: We know that too many ELLs become LTELLs because educational interventions are delayed, ineffective, or even absent. With every year and grade level that passes without ELLs reaching grade-level proficiency in language and content, their chances diminish for ever catching up. The result is an achievement gap between ELLs and non-ELLs. The evidence is abundant that even when other factors are con- trolled for, the ELL population fall behind the mainstream population in achievement, and the gap gets wider throughout the school years unless the ELLs are able to exit developmental English class in a timely manner. The evidence comes in a variety of forms:

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1. “In 2013, the achievement gap between non-ELL and ELL students [in the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) reading assessment] was 38 points at the 4th-grade level and 45 points at the 8th-grade level.” (Institute of Education Sciences, 2013).

2. Researchers studying the educational trajectories of ELL learners in Texas collected data for the years 1990–2009. Their findings tell a similar story: “Whereas 86% of students who exited an ELL program in three years ‘met the standard’ in math in the 11th grade, only 59% of long-term ELLs ‘met the standard.’” Those ELLs “who had been in the program for seven or more years were even less likely to meet standards (44%)” (Flores, Batalova, & Fix, 2012, p. 13).

3. Analyzing graduation data as well as post-graduation trajectories for Texas students in this same period, the researchers’ results showed “that ELL students who started in first grade and progressed ‘on time’ to grade twelve and who exited ELL programs within three years had much better outcomes than other ELL students as well as their non-ELL counterparts” (Flores, Batalova, & Fix, 2012, p. 20). Also, “the data raise serious doubts about the academic success of students whose parents opt out of English language development classes” (p. 21).

Table 8.1: Achievement levels among ELL students, white students, and Hispanic students

Math Reading

Achievement level Grade four Grade eight Grade four Grade eight

ELL students % % % %

Advanced <1 1 1 0

Proficient 11 5 6 4

Basic 43 23 21 24

Below basic 46 71 73 71

White students

Advanced 7 7 10 3

Proficient 40 30 30 34

Basic 42 42 35 43

Below basic 11 21 25 19

Hispanic students*

Advanced 1 1 2 1

Proficient 18 12 13 13

Basic 48 38 29 41

Below basic 33 50 56 45

*Both ELL and non-ELL students are counted in this category.

Source: NAEP, 2005 data

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Below Basic Basic Proficient/Advances

Grade 12 - NAEP Reading (2013) 10

0%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

45%

21%

32%

47%

22% 26%

39%

35%

18%

36%

46%

37%

30%

20%

10%

15%

P e rc

e n ta

g e

o f st

u d e n ts

African American

Asian Latino Native American

White

Below Basic Basic Proficient/Advanced

4. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2005 rated fourth and eighth graders’ proficiency levels in math and reading as advanced, proficient, basic, or below basic. Table 8.1 shows the percentages of ELLs, Hispanic (ELL and non- ELL), and white non-ELLs in each category.

5. According to the Education Trust, the 2013 assessment of educational progress as measured at grade 12 showed the following:

• One in four public high school seniors demonstrated reading skills below the basic level.

• African American, Latino, and Native American students are about one-third to one-half as likely as white or Asian students to be proficient in reading. See Figure 8.1.

• Over the past two decades there has been little change in overall reading scores. • Since 1992, reading scores have risen for Asian students but remained flat for

other groups. See Figure 8.2. • Only one in four seniors demonstrated proficient or advanced math skills (NSF,

2004). • Approximately one in ten African American, Native American, and Latino students

demonstrate proficient or advanced math skills. • Nationwide, math scores have risen only slightly since 2005. • Math scores for Asian and Latino students have risen more than other groups, but

Latinos still lag far behind. See Figure 8.3.

Grade 12 - NAEP Reading (2013) 100%

Figure 8.1: Reading proficiency rates for diverse 12th graders, 2013

A higher percentage of African American, Latino, and Native American students have below basic levels of reading proficiency.

The Education Trust, (2014, May 7), Statement From The Education Trust on 12th Grade Reading and Mathematics Results From the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Retrieved from http://edtrust.org/press_release/statement-from-the- education-trust-on-12th-grade-reading-and-mathematics-results-from-the-2013-national-assessment-of-educational-progress/

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Grade 12 - NAEP Reading 330

320

310

300

290

280

270

260

250

240

230

A ve

ra g e S

ca le

S co

re

1992* 1994* 1998 2002

2005 2009 2013

White Latino

Asian/Pacific Islander

American Indian

African American

*Accommodations for students with disabilities and English language learners not permitted

Perhaps the most succinct statement of the issue comes from the Texas study in which researchers concluded, based on their data, those ELLs “who had been in the program for seven or more years were even less likely to meet standards (44%)” than other ELLs (Flores, Batalova, & Fix, 2012, p. 13). It seems to come down to time and how we use it.

Throughout our discussions, time has been a recurring theme; ELLs are already at higher risk in the school system because of their more limited English, and the dual demands of language and content-area learning mean that teachers cannot waste time with teaching strategies that don’t work. And yet, there is so much diversity. Every child is different from the one sitting at the next desk; every class is different from the one next door and from the one that sat in the same room the year before. Only the curriculum and the content are constant. Or are they? The goals and objectives are the same for all learners, but the path for attaining them can vary greatly as we have seen in discussing ELLs in previous chapters. The purpose of the right high-impact strategies is to make the path for ELLs straighter and easier to travel. It is cru- cial that education professionals find ways of more effectively serving the ELL population to prevent their becoming LTELLs and putting at risk their opportunities for career and higher education. Hispanic learners are at particular risk, and as we have seen, they make up the majority of ELLs in the public school system. High-yield or high-impact strategies are, thus, especially important.

Figure 8.2: Reading scores for diverse twelfth graders, 1992–2013

Reading scores of Asian/Pacific Islander students improved beginning in 2005, while the scores of other twelfth-grade students remained constant.

The Education Trust, (2014, May 7), Statement From The Education Trust on 12th Grade Reading and Mathematics Results From the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Retrieved from http://edtrust.org/press_release/statement-from- the-education-trust-on-12th-grade-reading-and-mathematics-results-from-the-2013-national-assessment-of-educational- progress/

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WhiteLatino American Indian Alaska Native

Grade 12 - NAEP Math 200

190

180

170

160

150

140

130

120

110

100

Section 8.3 High-Impact Strategies

8.3 High-Impact Strategies Learn, achieve, and do it fast! That appears to be the take-away for ELLs. The teacher’s job is to make it happen. The education literature abounds with books and articles on high-impact instructional strategies, many of them based on research conducted by Robert Marzano and his colleagues. Titles such as “Nine High-Impact Strategies that Work” or “High-Yield Strate- gies that Get Results” imply that there are easy fixes for complicated situations. Marzano himself recognizes the fallacies implicit in some of the ways these strategies have been implemented. One of the major problems has been to assume that instructional strategies are the only ones that work, when in fact, strategies for classroom management and assess- ment are also important. Marzano has identified high-impact strategies in all three areas (Marzano, R. J., 2009) that have been widely adopted in this country. His strategies do not specifically address ELLs, but they are well-aligned with the achievement goals that ELLs are expected to reach, and so we examine here the applicability of several of these strate- gies for ELLs.

There is a tendency among educators to apply Marzano’s strategies too literally, to assume they are the only strategies that work, or to attempt to apply one set independent of the oth- ers. For example, some educators will adopt the Marzano instructional strategies without

Figure 8.3: Math scores for diverse twelfth graders, 2005–2013

Math scores for Asian/Pacific Islander and Latino students indicate larger gains between 2005 and 2013.

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reference to the assessment or classroom management strategies. But ELL teachers need to understand how the three areas work together and to have in their arsenal techniques or applications for all three. They interact with and support one another, as we see in Figure 8.4 which is based on the categorization in Marzano (2009) and serves as an advance organizer for this section of the chapter. Given the limitations of time and space, not all the strategies will be discussed in this chapter; while they are all applicable to one degree or another, the only ones to be discussed here are those in which the application may not be obvious, or may differ slightly for ELLs, and those which clearly exemplify the communicative approach to teaching discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. The nine strategies are summarized in Robert Marzano’s Nine High-impact Instructional Strategies.

Content Strategies These are the strategies that help students to understand content. More specifically, for ELLs, they include strategies for dealing with the academic language necessary to further their understanding. Strategies in this general category are useful for introducing new content, for

Marzano’s Nine High-Impact Instructional Strategies 1. Identifying similarities and differences. Breaking down problems by creating charts or

by comparing, classifying, and creating analogies helps students to understand complex problems.

2. Summarizing and note taking. Activities that force students to analyze and state what is important and what is not in their own words promotes comprehension.

3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition helps learners to see the importance of effort and allows them to make the connection between effort and achievement.

4. Homework and practice. Providing opportunities to extend learning outside the class- room in assignments targeted to help with difficult concepts, and with a purpose that students can identify, maximizes learning.

5. Nonlinguistic representations. Providing learners with images, graphics, objects, move- ment, or realia, that support the material being learned helps to create additional neural pathways that assist both learning and recall. (Carey, 2014).

6. Cooperative learning. Groups that are formed according to interests and experiences and are not too large allow learners to develop social skills and to learn with peers, thus fostering independence.

7. Setting objectives and providing feedback. Students need direction and they need feed- back in order to learn. Teachers can help students to personalize the goals set to maxi- mize their own learning.

8. Generating and testing hypotheses. Higher-order thinking skills can be developed through using deductive reasoning in all subject areas.

9. Cues, questions, and advance organizers. When students can use what they already know in the learning of a new task, they learn and remember better. Different kinds of advance organizers can help, as described in the fifth strategy above.

Source: Marzano, 2009; Carey, 2014

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Content

Spontaneous Behaviors

New

Practice/deeper understanding

Cognitively Complex Tasks

Goals/Progress/Success

Classroom routines/ procedures

Engaging students

Adherence or non- adherence to classroom

rules

Maintaining relationship with students

Communicating high expectations

1–8

1–7

1–3

1–2

1–9

RoutinesStrategy Type

practicing, integrating and deepening understanding of previously learned content, and for helping ELLs to engage in cognitively complex learning activities.

Introducing New Content How we prepare ELLs for new information, whether linguistic or content-based, sets them up either for success or for frustration and possibly failure. Useful strategies include:

1. Identify critical information. ELLs need a head start on content-area learning. They need to know ahead of time which information is most important in what they are about to read or hear. They also need to be prepared for the new words and the kinds of sentence and text structures used in academic texts, not only so that they can understand what they read and hear, but so that they can speak and write appropriately. For them, then, an important application of this strategy is to explicitly teach the academic language needed to understand the content.

Figure 8.4: High-impact strategies and applications

Though not specifically designed for ELLs, Robert Marzano’s high-impact strategies align well with the achievement goals ELLs are expected to reach.

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Younger learners will likely have had more exposure to and will understand the structural properties of stories better than they will nonfiction. They will need to have simplified materials while they are being introduced to informational text. For example, a starting point for kindergarten or first grade ELLs would be step-by-step directions for making muffins or constructing a kite, accompanied by illustrations or pictures. Teachers point out the sequencing words, then, next, after, and so on, and help them to write directions for another simple task. Sentence frames with high- lighted signal words are useful for teaching other relationships such as cause-effect or compare-contrast: “The snow is melting because _____________________,” and “The sun is shining, but _____________________.”

Another difficulty with academic language is the vocabulary. If learners don’t under- stand key words, they won’t be able to figure out the main ideas. Depending on the subject matter and the level of difficulty, there may be a large number of unfamiliar words in informational text. While a large number of unfamiliar words in a text can increase the reading difficulty initially, they also represent good teaching opportu- nity, precisely because they are contextualized. ELLs can benefit from vocabulary maps such as the one shown in Figure 8.5 which serve to make connections with known words, to introduce new and specialized meanings for familiar words, and to introduce synonyms, related words, and antonyms.

If ELLs are to become proficient independent readers, it is important to teach them strategies for guessing words from context. Remember that reading has been char- acterized as a psycholinguistic “guessing game,” and as learners begin to read less narrative and more informational text, it will be critical for them to have strategies for figuring out word meanings. While useful, dictionaries (preferably English only) should be used only for highly technical vocabulary or if other strategies fail. Over reliance on dictionaries is counterproductive for learners because they need to develop the ability to determine meaning from context in order to become proficient readers.

2. Organize ELLs to interact with new knowledge. ELLs can benefit from working in small groups or dyads when they are learning new content.

Cooperative learning activities promote peer interaction, which helps the development of language and the learning of concepts and content. It is important to assign ELLs to different teams so that they can benefit from English language role models. ELLs learn to express themselves with greater confidence when working in small teams. In addition to ‘picking up’ vocabu- lary, ELLs benefit from observing how their peers learn and solve problems. (ColorínColorado, 2007)

Recall in Chapter 5 (Figure 5.1) that some seating arrangements are more conducive to language learning than others. No one arrangement works for every situation; sometimes a dyad is effective, and other times a task calls for a larger group; sometimes a homogenous group is desirable, while other times more advanced learners can help less proficient learners while gaining meaningful prac- tice. Many teachers, however, find that groups of four work well for many lessons because they allow learners to break into dyads for some tasks and return to the larger group for others.

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Name:

My Sentences

My brother got lost in the crowd.

My sentences

We tried to crowd too many people

into the car.

Date:

Crowd

Noun: a large group of people

Verb: to pack or fill to capacity

My sentences My sentences

Synonyms

mass, throng, hoarde,

multitude, swarm

pack, fill, jam

Words I need to look up:

capacity, horde

Antonyms small group,

sparse gathering,

few people

Antonyms scatter,

spread out, separate

3. Preview new content. Remember the passage on Olympic curling in Chapter 6? Although the primary objective is to rely on text, some background knowledge is essential to understanding the text. The language used in social studies might not be as difficult for ELLs as the concepts themselves, since they may have little familiar- ity with some of the topics covered—for example, the different levels of government and how they are structured and chosen—or with the U.S. perspective on the world in general, (for example, the notion of the Far East will have a different meaning to Asians than to North or South Americans). Another kind of background that it is helpful to build for ELLs is the structure of academic texts. Language arts curriculum

Figure 8.5: Vocabulary map for the word crowd

A vocabulary map can help ELLs make connections among known words, synonyms, and antonyms.

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has typically focused on stories, especially in elementary school, and the shift to nonfiction will likely require some advance work with learners on how those texts are structured.

Informational text and literary text have different structures. For younger ELLs who are mostly familiar with story structure, it is helpful to teach the structural differ- ences between literary and informational text. Informational text often involves the development of an argument or line of reasoning. Therefore, teachers need to be able to show how to identify the word cues or signals. (See Signal Words for Five Text Structures.) Although the goal, ultimately, is for ELLs to acquire the ability to extrap- olate meaning from text by learning the structural, linguistic, and mechanical con- ventions, and the vocabulary used in academic writing, the starting place must be with what they already know. By identifying cultural differences that might interfere with comprehension and eliciting what learners already know about a given subject, teachers eliminate some of the barriers and open the doors to understanding infor- mational texts.

4. Chunk content into smaller, manageable “bites.” One of the purposes of advance organizers is to show the major points and the relationships among them. One of the purposes of organizing books into chapters and chapters into sections under mean- ingful headings is to break the content into more easily “digestible” pieces. What is overwhelming in the whole can be made very accessible when reduced to coherent parts.

Signal Words for Five Text Structures Description: above, below, under, beside, down, up, across; color words: blue, green, red, yellow; adjectives: tall, old, short, squat, round, young

Chronological: next, before, then, first, second, third, finally, during

Comparison/contrast: on the one hand, on the other hand, in contrast, similarly, however, but, compared with, different from, similar to

Cause/effect: because, for this reason, since, as a result, therefore, then, in order to, due to, as a consequence

Problem/solution: because, since, consequently, as a result, therefore, solve, solution, resolve, as a consequence

Notice that many of the signal words for cause/effect and problem/solution structures are the same. Although they will have one main organizational structure, many informational texts will also have other logical structures embedded in them. For example, a problem may be stated (“The country of Haiti faces grave economic challenges”), the causes and their effects described (“Its geography makes it vulnerable to major weather events such as hurricanes, its history as a French colony [may involve chronology], its lack of natural resources”), and the solution, or inability to reach one, stated in terms of addressing the causes. Source: Adapted from McLaughlin, & Overturf, 2014.

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5. Process new information as a group. There is great value in “talking through” each “chunk” of information. The teacher helps learners to summarize what they have covered so far. It is also good practice to ask questions in order to gauge ELLs’ under- standing, to identify the source and correct any misunderstandings or fill in any gaps before moving on. Five Ideas for Cooperative Learning lists other ways of using cooperative learning for processing new content information.

6. Elaborate on new information. As we learned in Chapter 6, technical and scientific writing may employ words that look familiar but are used in precise ways. A valu- able way of elaborating and expanding on the new information that is contained in science or other content-area texts is to expand upon the meanings of these special- ized words. Ideally, readers learn to find the meanings of unfamiliar words in the text itself. This is an opportunity to make use of prior knowledge of a subject, where it exists, or if not, to show students how to use textual information to figure out the meanings of technical terms.

Most English words have more than one meaning, some of which are idiomatic. Idioms are words or groups of words used in such a way that the meaning cannot be deduced from the conventional meanings. The English language also abounds with homophones and homographs. As discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, ELL teachers should exploit every opportunity to expand their learners’ receptive and productive

Five Ideas for Cooperative Learning 1. Round robin. Introduce a category such as “state capitols” and have learners take turns

naming the state and its capitol. The category could be birds, mammals, fictional heroes, words that start with “p,” and so on.

2. Writearound. This can be used for summarizing or for creative writing. Begin by pro- viding each learner in each group with the start of a sentence and ask everybody in the group to finish it. They then pass the paper to the right (or left), read the sentence, and add one of their own. Two or three rounds should complete the story or summary. Learners then read each story to the class or “publish” it in other ways.

3. Team puzzle. The teacher divides a text into four sections and gives each person in the group one-quarter of the text. Each learner reads the section and then teaches the others. They collectively put the piece together again and summarize its main ideas and purpose.

4. Literature circle. The teacher makes sets of four books available. Learners choose their own books and groups form on that basis. Learners read the books individually, but the groups are responsible for analyzing and discussing what they read. Learners will need different amounts of guidance, depending on the complexity of the content and their language proficiency levels.

5. Math teams. Pairs of learners can work together on math worksheets. One learner does the first problem while the other acts as “coach”. Roles are reversed for the next prob- lem. After completing the first two (or four) problems, they confer with another group to check their answers and talk through any errors.

Source: Adapted from http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/content/cooperative/

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vocabulary by teaching the full range of possible meanings, so that learners are not surprised or confused when they encounter what they thought was a familiar word which doesn’t make sense in the context. If, for example, they have learned the meaning of clear in the context of “It’s a clear day,” they might not understand “I cleared my calendar” or “There are clear reasons for believing in climate change.”

In general, ELL teachers should make use of any opportunity they can to elaborate on new information in a way that helps ELLs to integrate it into their existing knowl- edge and experience. Asking questions that elicit opinions or judgments or that require them to make and defend inferences is a good way of expanding knowledge.

7. Record and represent knowledge. One of the Common Core standards related to key ideas and details requires that learners from third grade onward be capable of summarizing what they read. Teaching ELLs to take notes on which they can base their summaries helps them to develop better listening skills and to become more adept and efficient readers. One of the ways that teachers can assist is to identify the number of key ideas to listen (or read) for, and list one or two of them, leaving the others blank. Similarly, they can provide one or two support- ing details. It is also helpful to show ELLs that notes need not be in sentence form but can be organized numerically or graphically using arrows or whatever mechanism works, then later they can be written into summary statements in sentence form.

8. Reflect on learning. Once a lesson is completed, it is useful for teachers to reflect with learners on what they have learned. For young learn- ers, the exercise can be as simple as “What new things have we learned about giraffes today?” For older learners, the exercise can be more complex. For example, the teacher might ask each learner before reading a passage to list everything they think they know about a topic—world population growth or the effects of fossil fuels on the planet. After each lesson, the teacher can ask what they have learned, to confirm, raise doubt, or refute each belief. For learners at all ability levels, it is an oppor- tunity for their teachers to do comprehen- sion checks and to probe the source of any misunderstanding.

Practicing and Deepening Understanding of Content Most of the content presented in schools comes from written text, but some of the “standard issue” texts used in school may be too difficult for ELLs. Texts writ- ten for native speakers may need to be supplemented or adapted to make the language easier to understand, while preserving the content. Teachers may look for texts presenting the same material in simpler language

Goodluz/iStock/Thinkstock

This boy is writing a summary based on notes he has taken. Taking notes also involves the ability to summarize ideas, though, because few people can write down every word they hear.

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before introducing the more complex texts, or they may find it useful to provide advance orga- nizers for the more complex texts:

1. Review content. Reviewing previously learned material is always good teaching prac- tice, but for ELLs it helps to solidify the integration of the content and also provides an opportunity to expand vocabulary within familiar content by introducing syn- onyms, antonyms, or other related words and phrases within the review.

2. Organize students to engage in authentic practice. In order to learn to use language, ELLs need ample opportunity to speak it and authentic settings and reasons for using it. Small group work helps ELLs to negotiate meaning with classmates, and they also benefit from the feedback of peers, which may be less formal and more comprehensible than teacher feedback.

3. Practice skills, strategies, and processes. Provide practice by creating text-dependent questions appropriate to grade and language proficiency levels. Learners need prac- tice in finding the answers within the text, and so structuring questions that cannot be answered on the basis of prior knowledge without having read the text provides valuable support. Questions such as “What is the capital of Montana?” or “What is the most populous state in the United States?” require little or no dependence on text. Either the learner already knows the answer or can scan the text quickly for words that match those in the question. On the other hand, questions such as “What are the main factors contributing to poverty in the United States?” require the reader to extrapolate and summarize information from text.

4. Examine similarities and differences. Teaching ELLs to analyze what they read and hear involves the ability to:

• Compare and contrast • Understand and generate metaphors and analogies • Classify and categorize

Very simple exercises such as the one shown in Figure 8.6 begins to teach the obser- vational skills and the language that will be needed later for more complex analysis in academic text.

5. Explore errors in reasoning. Having ELLs retell a story or to outline the argument from something they have heard or read achieves two purposes: It helps to develop their note-taking and summarizing skills, and it helps the teacher to discover any errors in comprehension or reasoning and address the source of those errors. Another dimen- sion of this strategy is to ensure that learners can distinguish fact from opinion. Recall 7 Billion and Counting! from Chapter 7? This is an excellent example of a text that can be used to help ELLs to determine what is fact and what is opinion. Teachers can build this understanding through the use of advance organizers such as the one shown in Figure 8.7 and by incremental questioning such as in the following example:

a. What is the population of the world? b. How many people are born each minute? c. How do we know? Or, who reported it? d. What will the population of the world be in 2030? e. Is the statement “the world is jam-packed” a fact or an opinion? f. How do you know? g. Can you find other opinions in the piece?

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Name: Date:

1. Make a list of all the properties shared by each shape in Set A 2. Make a list of all the properties shared by each shape in Set B. 3. Use the following words in at least one of your lists: a. Monochromatic b. Curve or Curved c. Angle or angular d. Outlined 4. Begin one or more sentences with All of the shapes in Set A 5. Begin one or more sentences with None of the shapes in Set B 6. This shape fits best in Set but could also fit in Set because but it could also fit in Set because

Set A Set B

Some topics that might be used include:

a. Do you think there are too many people on Earth? b. What might cause the population of the Earth to grow faster? Or slower? c. What do people need to live that there might not be enough of if the population

grew too fast?

These techniques can be adapted for use for learners in the upper grades who also need additional content and language support.

6. Use homework productively. Homework is an opportunity for learners to engage with material on their own time and to find its “place” in their own “catalog” of learning. Encourage ELLs not only to complete additional tasks related to what they

Figure 8.6: Categorizing by comparing and contrasting

This type of exercise allows learners to practice observation and language skills that will be required to complete more complex analyses of academic texts.

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“big” news

Earth is jam packed

7 Billion and Counting!

7 billion people on

earth

Population continues to

grow

261 people born each

minute

Population doubled

since 1960

Other? World Population

have learned but to come back with questions about anything they may not have understood or things they would like to know more about. Homework assignments are ideally suited for teachers to provide targeted assistance to individual learners, whether through specific questions or supplemental reading or listening activities.

Homework is a good place in which to take advantage of technology. One of the advantages of the computer for ELLs is that some of the materials intended for

Figure 8.7: Advanced organizer for discriminating between fact and opinion

Teachers can use this type of advanced organizer to help ensure learners comprehend a story by encouraging them to summarize the story, prompting them to distinguish fact from opinion.

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Kerry Kangaroo Hops Kerry Kangaroo was growing up. Mama Kangaroo let him out of her pouch.

“You are getting big,” said Mama. “Big Kangaroo kids need to learn to hop.”

Kerry tried out his strong legs and big feet. He hopped a few times. He hopped and hopped. He hopped away from Mama. He hopped here and there. He even hopped with his eyes closed.

Splash!

(continued)

native speakers are more accessible to ELLs when they can proceed at their own pace, repeat and review as necessary, look up further information, and so on. That they can do all these things away from the judgment and scrutiny of peers and teacher empowers them to become independent learners.

7. Revise and clarify information. Learning is an evolutionary and transformational process. As we learn new things, we figure out how our new knowledge fits into what we already knew. We revise what we previously believed to be true, or we form new opinions. When teachers clarify new information or help ELLs to revise their own understandings, they expand knowledge. Helping ELLs to add to or expand their definitions of words or learn how they are used idiomatically is a very easy but effective way for teachers to build content and language knowledge simultaneously.

Cognitively Complex Tasks The focus of the Common Core standards is for learners to develop abilities to read, under- stand, and undertake progressively more complex academic tasks, and, ultimately, to gener- ate and test hypotheses, especially in science (Chapter 7). For ELLs, the complexity resides both in the language and in the content, and so it is especially important to prepare them in to engage with more complex academic material. Useful strategies for teaching cognitively complex tasks include the following:

1. Organize learners for cognitively complex tasks. Learners may benefit from working in groups to “pool” their knowledge and skills to complete cognitively complex tasks. Students who are linguistically more advanced are often able to help those less pro- ficient, explaining or describing using language that is closer to their comprehension levels. Before group work can be effective, however, teachers may need to analyze texts and ensure that ELLs are knowledgeable about the structure and vocabulary found in complex academic writing.

2. Engage learners in complex tasks. What ELLs find complex may differ from what native speakers find complex because of gaps in language. An activity that works well for young ELLs is to engage them in a discussion of whether a story is true, possibly true, or fantasy, and make them defend their decisions about each. Even first graders can take part in an activity such as the one in Kerry Kangaroo Hops.

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Older and more advanced learners need to engage in problem-solving, decision mak- ing, and experimental inquiry. Math, social studies, and science are all well-suited to these tasks. One math example is shown in Five Ideas for Cooperative Learning, but other subjects also lend themselves to problem-solving and decision making. One effective technique for use in any subject area is to use scenarios. Teachers con- struct in advance scenarios that involve problems to be solved. In A Courtroom in the Classroom (Chapter 7), we can see that this article sets the stage for many problem- solving and decision making activities. It is an ideal vehicle for scenario-based activities that learners could work on cooperatively. Two examples are provided in Classroom Courtroom: Two Scenarios.

Classroom Courtroom: Two Scenarios Chris Crosser has been charged with jay-walking and endangerment of life. His trial begins today.

1. First, be sure that you understand each word in italics and how it is used by explaining what crime has been committed.

2. Define the job of each of the following participants:

• Defendant • Defense attorney • Prosecutor

Kerry Kangaroo Hops (continued) Kerry hopped right into a water hole! Mama Kangaroo helped Kerry out.

“That is too much hopping for one day!” cried Kerry.

He hopped back into his cozy pouch. He was tired. He fell fast asleep.

What is true? What could be true? What is not true?

Baby kangaroos sleep in their mothers’ pouches.

The baby Kangaroo might be named Kerry.

Kangaroos do not speak.

Baby Kangaroos grow up. Kerry might hop into the water.

They get big.

Source: © 2013 ReadWorks®, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

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The second scenario requires learners to think inferentially, to posit and test hypoth- eses, to consider the difference between fact and opinion, and to reach a conclusion. What other judgment, problem-solving, decision making, or hypothesis testing will be required in the two scenarios? Using scenarios for problem-solving and decision making encourages independent learning and also allows the teacher to adopt the role of resource provider and guide.

3. Provide resources and guidance. Perhaps the most important aspect of guidance is to provide scaffolding support so that ELLs at different levels of language proficiency can participate in meaningful conversation and writing using complex text.

We learned in the last chapter that instructional scaffolding builds on existing skills and provides support to move learners to the next level of competency. Because the demands of academic language in the content areas are progressively greater through the grade levels, the kinds of support will vary from learner to learner as well as from year to year. Some learners in the lower elementary years will need highly structured questions to guide them through the text, some will require additional vocabulary support, and others may need the background information mentioned above. Scaffolding activities “include modeling the use of academic or technical language; contextualizing academic or technical language through the use of visuals, gestures, graphic organizers, and demonstrations; and using hands-on learning activities that involve the use of academic or technical language” (Arizona Department of Education, 2011, p. 3).

Classroom Courtroom: Two Scenarios (continued) • Judge • Clerk • Police officer (witness) who wrote the ticket.

3. Choose classmates to play each of the roles. Others in the class will be in the jury pool.

You have heard the case against Chris Crosser, a 21-year-old man accused of endangering him- self and others by crossing the street against the light in busy traffic. Both sides have presented their case, and the case has gone to you, the jury. Please select a foreman and then examine the following evidence:

1. The crime was crossing the street against the light in busy traffic. 2. It occurred at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday in November. 3. Two eyewitnesses testified that the defendant was having dinner with them at their

home six miles away at the time of the crime. 4. One of these witnesses is the defendant’s cousin and the other is the cousin’s girlfriend. 5. One eyewitness, a 45-year-old woman, testified that she saw the defendant commit the

crime. 6. This witness was approximately 25 feet away from the defendant at the time. 7. Security cameras at a nearby restaurant caught images of a man who bore strong resem-

blance to the defendant as he stepped onto the sidewalk and entered the restaurant.

How would you proceed? The fate of this defendant is in your hands! (Additional prompts could be provided if needed.)

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Hongqi Zhang/iStock/Thinkstock

A trophy is one way of recognizing achievement, but success can be celebrated in more subtle but equally effective ways every day.

Establishing and Maintaining Routines Routines are not only of the “housekeeping” variety. The routines that ELL teachers need to concern themselves with relate not only to how they establish and maintain a classroom that is conducive to learning but to how they communicate learning goals and track and celebrate learners’ progress.

Communicate Learning Goals, Track Progress, and Celebrate Success It is easier to get somewhere if we know where we’re going. It is also easier to stay motivated if we can see that we are making progress on the route and if we mark milestones along the way. The three strategies in this category are about setting objectives and indicators for meet- ing them.

1. Provide clear learning goals and scales or rubrics to measure those goals. Effective teachers are those who set high expectations for their students, even those who are traditionally “underachievers”. This music teacher explains his frustration in dealing with misconceptions about innate ability and the low expectations they can cause:

As a music educator, this author battled constantly with student and par- ent misconceptions such as “music is a gift” or “either you’ve got it or you don’t”. Music, like so many other human endeavors, is learned, and the expectations that the teacher holds for each and every student are not only important, but perhaps determinant of out- comes. Teachers must develop their own teach- ing skills (also learned!), believe both in their own effectiveness and in a student’s potential to learn, and act to foster the learning they expect. (Miller, 2001)

2. Track learner progress. Design appropriate assessments for ELLs at each grade and language proficiency level. As we saw in Chapter 5, ELLs require some accommodation when it comes to assessing their content-area knowledge. The language arts teacher needs not only to have an accurate indication of learners’ language ability, but also be able to provide advice to content-area teachers about how to assess learners’ con- tent knowledge independent of their language proficiency.

3. Acknowledge and celebrate student success. One of the exciting things about teaching young ELLs is being witness to the progress they make daily. Acknowledging this progress is both motivating and affirming. Some successes will be celebrated by the entire class or even the school, but others

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will be more private—the quiet acknowledgement to the learner of the progress a learner has made in reading or math, or in a note on a returned assignment that can be taken home for parents to see. Learners who receive positive feedback for their accomplishments are more likely to accept constructive criticism or error correc- tion in the helpful spirit in which they are intended.

Establish and Maintain Classroom Rules and Expectations While it is important to motivate learners with interesting and even fun activities and to wel- come some spontaneity, a classroom that is orderly, without being oppressive, and where learners know what to expect, is more conducive to teaching and learning.

1. Establish classroom routines. Elementary students are more free to concentrate on language and learning when classroom routines are familiar. Knowing what to expect in the science curriculum and being able to see in advance how it is orga- nized will help learners make connections between topics, relate to prior knowl- edge, and reinforce the sense of familiarity; it also helps parents or others who may help with homework to understand what broader objectives are being served by a particular lesson.

At the lesson level, outlines or graphic organizers provide an overview or roadmap of the lesson’s objectives and key concepts. Effective lessons are planned and have structure and flow that make them easier to follow. They also make the class more predictable (in a good way!) and comfortable for learners. Lesson flow maps may vary in some details from teacher to teacher, but the one shown in Figure 8.8 has the main elements of a lesson and is adaptable for different teachers and subject areas.

2. Organize the classroom layout for learning. A classroom that is organized for learn- ing is rich in resources, visually engaging, and inviting. Furnishings should be easily moveable to allow different size groups to work on different kinds of proj- ects, and there should be ample space for displaying student work. Traffic patterns should be established for ease in movement without distracting or interfering with work.

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Statement of Title

or Topic

What We Know (active Background

Knowledge)

What We Think We’re Going to Learn

(Prediction)

Presentation (Chunk of Material)

Summarize

What we learned (Review)

Facts Opinions

Follow-up (Practice)

Homework (Individualized

Instruction, authentic practice...)

What we want to find out

Discussion

Comprehension Check

How? (Sources)

Figure 8.8: Sample lesson flow diagram

This type of flow diagram can be adapted according to the specific subject area and lesson the teacher wants to cover.

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Table 8.2: Strategies and applications for dealing with spontaneous behaviors

Engage learners. Deal with learners who adhere and do not adhere to classroom rules.

Maintain relationships with students.

Communicate high expectations.

Monitor attention and participation. Notice and react when learners are inattentive or not participating.

Demonstrate awareness of variations in learner behavior. Marzano calls this “with-it-ness.”

Understand stu- dents’ interests and backgrounds.

Demonstrate value and respect for “low- expectancy” learners. Low expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Respect learners who struggle and set high yet attain- able goals for them.

Use academic “games” to re-engage learners.

Apply consequences. Use behaviors that indicate regard for learners. Respect for ELLs as individuals and for their cultures makes them more comfortable and willing to take linguistic risks.

Ask questions of “low- expectancy” learners. Tiered questions allow these learners to participate actively in lower-level questions and passively in higher- level questions.

Manage response rates. Give ELLs adequate time but do not allow time for attention to wane.

Acknowledge com- pliance with rules and procedures. Positive feedback serves not only to motivate but to rein- force the rules.

Display objectivity and control. Teachers, like parents, have a role other than “friend”.

Probe incorrect answers to determine the source. It is easier for teachers to correct a misunder- standing or fix a prob- lem if they understand why it occurred.

Use physical movement. Having ELLs move to different groups or learning centers or using activities that require some movement helps to maintain interest and focus.

Responding Spontaneously Careful planning does not require that every moment of classroom time be scripted; in fact, it would not be possible to have much authentic language use if it were. Students do not always respond in the way that would be ideal for moving the lesson forward; sometimes students are slow to respond or do not respond at all. Other times, students may not follow classroom rules or may even be disruptive. Teachers need to be able to respond to whatever happens in the classroom to maintain focus on the learning outcomes they are trying to achieve. Table 8.2 summarizes the strategies involved in this category.

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Section 8.4 Action Research: Learning from Practice

8.4 Action Research: Learning from Practice The strategies we have examined so far have been research based, relying extensively on the work of Robert Marzano and his colleagues. Their own research was synthesized with the work of countless other researchers who have investigated effective practice for many decades. Adapting and using strategies that research and practice have shown to have a high impact is an excellent starting place for ELL teachers, but ultimately, every teacher needs to adapt those strategies to learners’ particular needs. As much as we rely on the experience of others, we also know that our own practice and experience as teachers is also a valuable resource.

Beginning teachers sometimes despair when a lesson doesn’t work or when learners seem confused; more experienced teachers know that not every strategy works with every learner, that many instructional ideas need just a little tweaking to make them more effective, and that some should just be discarded. Even though they may not document what they have learned in their own classrooms, throughout the years, teachers learn from experience what works and what doesn’t. They adapt, improve, and expand what works, and abandon what doesn’t. They are, in a very real sense, action researchers.

Action research is “a disciplined process of inquiry conducted by and for those taking the action. The primary reason for engaging in action research is to assist the actor in improving or refining his or her actions” (Sagor, 2000, Ch. 1). Why is it important? Much of the literature on action research focuses on school improvement as the ultimate goal, but it is also appli- cable for individual teachers because “no group of people are more emotional and passionate

Maintain relation- ships with students.

Present unusual infor- mation (or information in an unusual way).

Maintain a lively rhythm. ELLs are less likely to get bored or lose focus when a lively pace is maintained.

Demonstrate enthusi- asm and intensity.

Encourage and use friendly controversy.

Provide opportunities for learners to talk about themselves.

Table 8.2: Strategies and applications for dealing with spontaneous behaviors (continued)

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about promoting universal student success than classroom teachers” (Sagor, 2011, Ch. 1). Action research, as its name suggests, leads to strategic actions, but before teachers can engage in research leading to actions, they need to determine a focus, and in order to do that, they need to reflect. Reflection is, thus, a very useful precursor to action research. What sets action research apart from other kinds of research is that it has immediate applicability to the person conducting it.

Sagor suggests using written narratives as a means of reflection and has found that the out- comes teachers usually envision in their narratives fall into three categories: performance tar- gets, process targets, and program targets. Performance targets focus on the learners—what they know, what they can do, what they choose to do, and how they feel about themselves and the situations they are in. Program targets are school-level outcomes (2011, Ch. 1) affected by factors such as the accountability movement. As we have seen in the past seven chapters, the high performance targets for ELLs and the expectations set for school performance put a great deal of pressure on teachers. Process targets focus on the teacher and especially those techniques and strategies that are “keepers” because they have been found to be successful. Succinctly put, every day, the ELL teacher is confronted with the task of figuring out, not only for each class, but for each learner, what the most appropriate strategy is for teaching the content in order to meet the learning objectives.

Action research is conducted by practising language teachers because they themselves are valuable sources of knowledge regarding their own classroom situations, and as a result change can be implemented more credibly because practising teachers will find the results more credible and valid for their needs. (Farrel, 2007, p. 94)

The literature on the use of action research by ELL/ESL teachers indicates the following characteristics:

• it involves collecting information about classroom events (in the classroom), through observation or through collecting information in other ways, such as through inter- views, questionnaires, or recordings of lessons;

• it involves careful and systematic collecting of that information; • the research involves some kind of follow-up action; • this action involves some change in practice, and monitoring the effects of such

change; • the results are owned by teachers, rather than the research community; • the results of the research can be reported at a staff meeting or through a written

report; • it seeks to build up a knowledge base about teaching based on practitioner’s knowl-

edge, rather than expand the knowledge base developed by academics and theoreti- cians outside of the school context;

• it develops research skills useful for classroom inquiry; • it brings about changes in classroom teaching and learning; • it develops a deeper understanding of teaching and learning processes; and • it empowers teachers by giving them the tools which they can use to further impact

changes within the profession in that they work. (Farrel, 2007, p. 95)

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Action research is not a teaching approach or method; rather, it is a philosophical and psy- chological mindset that characterizes how teachers reflect upon their work and engage in the building of learning communities. It is empowering for teachers because they are identifying and working on problems that are immediate and relevant and because they are participating in their solutions. It is empowering for learners because it engages them as active partici- pants in their own learning. In contrast to teachers who view research as something done by others, evaluated for its relevance and applicability, and then used in the classroom, teach- ers engaging in action research are always pursuing a relevant question that has immediate applicability and which can be evaluated and modified continuously.

Figuring out what works best with ELLs is usually left to the individual teachers, although there is much to read on the subject. “Although there is no question that teacher instincts and judgment play a significant role in instructional decisions, research has shown that they’re not enough.” (Syrja, 2012). We all know intuitively, and research confirms, that some practices simply work better than others. Teachers who are adapting mainstream strategies for use with ELLs need to be able to evaluate the effect of their adaptations—this is action research. Keeping a record of what has worked, what hasn’t, and what adaptations have been made, is part of the process, but it is also just good practice.

We conclude the chapter with the words of a teacher. In her second year of teaching, Martina Fernandez discovered the power of action research and collaboration.

Why I Teach: Martina Fernandez Very little about my first year of teaching was easy. I had a third grade class in my small Ari- zona town. Although all of my 22 children spoke some English, there were only four or five who were at or near grade level in reading. Every day with every lesson, I struggled to find the middle, that place where I thought most of them would be able to keep up and to learn. By the end of the first quarter, I could see that was working for five or six of them, but I wasn’t reach- ing three-quarters of the class—several were just bored and starting to act out and the others were really struggling. One day in the staff room, the art teacher was talking about a course she had taken on using art to teach other subjects. I asked her, begged her really, to come and work with my kids. She spent a morning in my class, and I learned more from watching her than I had learned in college about dealing with diversity. She spent a few minutes talking with the whole group about what kinds of art they liked to create, and then she divided them into groups. With one group, she used her few words of Spanish to get them to teach her, and I watched fascinated as together they negotiated a drawing of a scene inspired by a story she told them. I worked with her and another group on a project that had one child look at a pic- ture and then use words to direct another child to draw it. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to make notes of what she did and, at the end of the day, to reflect on why it had worked. The note-taking habit was one that I continued through the year as I built on the half-day les- son I had learned from my colleague. The year improved, and as I began my second year of teaching, I did so with more confidence, having started to build my own tool kit of ideas and techniques that worked for me. That kit and the colleagues who help me add to it are the rea- son I keep teaching.

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Summary & Resources

Summary The key take-away of this chapter is simply this: When it comes to teaching, one size does not fit all. Diversity in a classroom requires differentiation. Differentiation is, by definition, impossible to codify in advance for every teacher, class, or learner. Instead, teachers must find their own way based on knowledge about learners and the multitude of factors that influence how they learn and on knowledge of each individual learner. Fortunately, there are principles to guide teachers and tools for them to use in finding the high-impact strategies that help to move ELLs to succeed academically. We have seen that the strategies that work for mainstream learners can also work for ELLs if we take care to consider and adjust for their particular needs. As important as they are as a starting place for teachers, high-impact strategies have to be tweaked, tuned, and incorporated into teachers’ own repertoire of teaching skills through reflection and action research. Differentiation for diversity and good practice require it.

Key Ideas

1. Teaching diverse students is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. 2. In order to differentiate instruction effectively, teachers need to get to know their

learners through formal assessment, observation of a number of dimensions of learning, and by collecting data from a variety of sources.

3. For differentiating instruction, manipulatives, technology, and collaboration are the three most essential tools in an ELL teacher’s “kit”.

4. For ELL learners, time is of the essence. With every year and grade level that passes without ELLs reaching grade-level proficiency in language and content, their chances diminish for ever catching up.

5. It is essential that teachers use high-impact strategies for teaching ELLs, to keep them from becoming LTELLs, for whom the prognosis for academic success is poor.

6. High-impact strategies address how teachers approach content, classroom routines, and spontaneous behaviors.

7. How we prepare ELLs for new information, whether linguistic or content-based, sets them up either for success or for frustration that might result in failure.

8. Adapting and using strategies that research and practice have shown to have a high impact is an excellent starting place for ELL teachers, but, ultimately, every teacher needs to adapt those strategies to learners’ particular needs.

9. Teachers are empowered when they are identifying and working on problems that are immediate and relevant and when they are participating in their solutions.

Key Terms achievement gap Any significant and persistent disparity in academic performance or edu- cational attainment between different groups of students.

action research “A disciplined process of inquiry conducted by and for those taking the action. The primary reason for engaging in action research is to assist the actor in improving or refining his or her actions” (Sagor, 2000, Ch. 1).

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cooperative learning A teaching strategy in which small teams comprised of students with different levels of ability use a variety of learning activities to increase their understanding of a subject.

tiered questions Questions organized in a progression that begins with an easy-to-answer question and in which each subsequent question builds on the answer to the previous one.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. How does the notion of communicative competence relate to the need for differenti- ated instruction?

2. What is the relationship between differentiated instruction and the action research that ELL teachers are encouraged to do?

3. Why is predictability and structure important for ELLs? 4. Why are advance organizers important for ELLs? How might they differ for beginner

and advanced learners? 5. Read Classroom Courtroom: Two Scenarios again and suggest a follow-up lesson

using another scenario. 6. Why is it important for ELLs to be able to summarize what they read (or hear)?

What transferable cognitive skills will they build? 7. What does the label “overachiever” imply about expectations that others may have

of the learner labeled in that way? 8. Why is practice important and how can it be made consistent with authentic lan-

guage use?

Additional Resources For greater detail about teaching in a standards-based environment and about differentiated classrooms, see http://www.nycteachingfellows.org/fellows/June%202004%20Guidebook

An excellent article on differentiating instruction for middle school ELLs can be found at http://www.amle.org/BrowsebyTopic/WhatsNew/WNDet/TabId/270/ArtMID/888/ ArticleID/350/Differentiating-Instruction-for-ELLs.aspx

For further information on action research, see http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/100047/chapters/What-Is-Action- Research%C2%A2.aspx

An excellent discussion of the importance of teachers having high expectations for learners, supported by research findings, is available at http://www.greaterexpectations.org/briefing_papers/improvestudentlearning.html

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265

Learning Outcomes By the end of this chapter you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:

• Articulate the major themes that influence the teaching of English language learners.

• Apply the themes to a lesson plan in social studies for a class of diverse learners.

• Describe how emergent digital media can be used in the planning and delivery of curriculum and instruction.

• Compare traditional assessment tools with those made possible by digital media and evaluate their useful- ness for the classroom teacher.

• Explain why professional learning communities are valuable to teachers, especially teachers of dual language learners.

Putting It All Together 10

Oki_SwanOmurphy_/iStock/Thinkstock

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© 2015 Bridgepoint Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Not for resale or redistribution.

Section 10.1 The Synthesis: Twelve Takeaways for Teaching ELLs

Introduction This chapter has three purposes. The first is to synthesize the key ideas that shaped the last nine chapters into the dozen major themes that best capture the information and discus- sions that have emerged. The second is to apply that synthesis by examining how the 12 ideas are represented in practice by peeking over the shoulder of one practicing teacher. The third purpose is to examine how teaching practice can be enhanced by two emergent trends: the growing use of digital technologies and the establishment of professional learning communi- ties (PLCs).

We begin by identifying the topics that have recurred again and again as we examined them from a variety of perspectives, and then we see how these topics relate to an ELL teacher’s classroom practice. More precisely, we will work through a real exercise—a teacher’s intro- ductory lesson plan for a social studies unit for his diverse sixth grade class. Actually, you will see only part of the teacher’s plan, a skeleton that provides you with the opportunity to add flesh by applying what you have learned by completing and supplementing the plan with ideas of your own. In completing the plan, it is likely that you will look for ideas. Where you look and how you plan will likely mirror what highly effective teachers do regularly—look for digital resources and find out what others are doing. The last two sections of the chapter rec- ognize the fact that the demands placed on teachers today necessitate a greater and broader pool of resources. Being able to adapt to and to use newer technologies effectively to plan, teach, and evaluate is part of a teacher’s professional skill set, and particularly, as schools commit to meeting the high standards set by the Common Core, the ability to work coopera- tively and collaboratively with other educators is also an essential tool.

10.1 The Synthesis: Twelve Takeaways for Teaching ELLs We have covered a great deal of material in the previous nine chapters, and as we have seen, certain topics recurred again and again as we examined many of the same issues from differ- ent perspectives or through different lenses. For example, we first visited the topic of culture in Chapter 1 in a description of the demographics of the United States and how an increas- ingly diverse population is impacting our classrooms. But culture was also a dominant topic for discussion in Chapter 2 in our discussion of the relationship between language, learning, and culture. Because this relationship underlies every decision we make about ELLs, whether in placement, program and curriculum planning, instruction, or assessment, we revisited cul- ture multiple times. Culture emerges, then, as the first of 12 themes that emerge from the previous chapters:

1. Culture shapes how we see the world, and culture shock, which occurs when a person moves from one culture to another, can affect ELLs’ adjustment to school- ing as well as their success in learning the language and making progress in school. Teachers must be open to learning about new cultures and sensitive to the different perspectives ELLs have on the world.

2. Learners commonly referred to as ELLs are an extremely diverse group. These learners don’t all arrive conveniently in kindergarten, learn English in two years, and continue in mainstream classes until graduation. They arrive at different ages speaking different languages, (although according to the Center for Public Education,

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79% of ELLs in the United States speak Spanish), and take different lengths of time to become proficient in English. Some will have language or learning impairments and others will be gifted. They will arrive with different levels of education, first language literacy, and with different attitudes toward Americans and schooling. This diversity is what makes teaching ELLs such a challenge and such a joy.

3. The four language domains (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are inextrica- bly linked in the school context. In an informal setting, it is perfectly possible for a person to learn to speak the language without learning to read and write it—infants do it, as do the nearly 800 million illiterate people in the world, 67 million of them children, who do not have access to schooling (Cree, Kay, & Steward, 2012). We have also seen that it is possible to acquire a “reading” knowledge of a language without having much oral proficiency. Neither condition is ideal, of course, and in the school setting it is impossible. All four skills can and should be taught together, although some degree of oral language usually comes first.

4. Background knowledge and linguistic and educational experience profoundly affect success in both language and content learning. No learner of any age is a tabula rasa. What ELLs bring in terms of prior education and literacy not only influences the speed with which they will learn English, it affects the program options available, and teaching methods and techniques used, and can ultimately influence their suc- cess in school.

5. The goal of language teaching and learning is communicative competence, which must include both social and academic language facility. To help their ELLs to achieve communicative competence, teachers need to ensure that the language they hear and see (in print or other visual forms) is challenging but comprehensible, but they also have to take into account the affective variables of motivation, attitude, anxiety and self-confidence. The quality of interaction is extremely important for achieving comprehensible input and for lowering the barriers that may be pres- ent due to learners’ uncertainty or anxiety. The result should be communicative language teaching that is learner-centered, does not focus on errors, emphasizes listening and speaking, and does not rely (heavily, if at all) on any use of the home language.

6. English should be viewed as an additional language, not a replacement for the home language. This is an extremely important viewpoint for teachers of ELLs to hold and to embody in everything they do. Everything an ELL has learned in the past is impor- tant to the learning that will occur. Moreover, as we saw in Chapter 3, there is strong research evidence that bilingualism may confer significant cognitive advantages. Any indication on the school’s part that English is somehow more important or is meant to replace the home language is not only ill-conceived; it is counterproductive to learners’ motivation and adaptation.

7. The interdisciplinary focus and organization of the Common Core standards accords with communicative language teaching (CLT) because CLT emphasizes authentic, purposeful language use and practice.

8. Literacy is at the heart of learning English and content simultaneously. All content learning in school is dependent on the ability to read and the ability to demonstrate that learning is dependent on the ability to write. In order for ELLs to succeed in acquiring all the curricular content and to demonstrate their understanding, they have to be able to read and write at progressively higher levels of proficiency. The Common Core State Standards focus primarily on literacy precisely because it is foundational to all content learning.

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Section 10.2 Applying ELL Teaching Techniques

9. In Chapter 7, we saw that the CCSS are centered on reading and math skills, with the expectation that reasoning and comprehension skills advance each year. Care- ful planning is needed to build language and content skills incrementally, and it is important to know the abilities and skills of each learner in order to know when and how to adapt reading or writing tasks to the appropriate level without compromis- ing the content. One way of accomplishing this is the use of educational scaffolding.

10. ELLs are overrepresented on the rolls of special education programs and are under- represented in gifted programs. One of the reasons for this disproportionality is the fact that few measures exist that can assess language or learning impairments both in English and the ELL’s home language.

11. The entire issue of assessment is problematic for ELLs. Standardized tests, school or district tests, classroom tests, are all language dependent and thus run the risk of not truly representing what ELLs know. Accommodations need to be made to ensure fairness and accuracy of results.

12. Diverse learners require diversified instruction (one size does not fit all). Based on the information they gather from a variety of sources, teachers use knowledge about learners and the multitude of factors that influence how they learn to create high-impact strategies or adapt strategies for mainstream learners in order to help ELLs to succeed linguistically and academically.

These 12 points summarize the breadth of the business of teaching English to dual language learners. Developing depth as a teacher, however, requires experience, but it also requires ongoing effort. Teaching ELLs is a joy but it is also a huge challenge, and so it is incumbent on us as teachers to keep current through ongoing professional development (PD), and to exploit all avail- able resources. In the remainder of this chapter, as we continue to synthesize what we have learned so far, we will also discuss the use of those resources from the per- spective of one teacher, Alejandro Sanchez, a sixth grade teacher in a suburban school.

10.2 Applying ELL Teaching Techniques Just as the four language domains, or skills, are not acquired independently. nor independent of critical thinking skills, the techniques used in teaching should not be one-dimensional. They must be varied and tailored to the task and to the learner. We know that there are many differ- ent ways in which students learn and that certain learning styles, or preferences, respond better to certain kinds of input than to others—some learners need to see print or other visual forms, while others are able to recall well after hearing the material once or twice. Some people learn more readily on their own, but others learn more effectively in groups, and there are several other dimensions along which learners may vary. The teacher’s goal is to make input compre- hensible to all.

Monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock Diverse children require diversified instruction. Computer-based technologies make it easier for teachers to individualize learning plans.

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To make input comprehensible to diverse learners, teachers must take advantage of the wide range of media available to them. For many years, teachers have used realia, gestures, pictures, drama, captioned video, and a whole host of other media, in addition to print. In recent years, they have also been able to take advantage of content available electronically and accessible by computer or other electronic devices. Although the term multimedia is often used with particular reference to information that is created, played, displayed, or accessed by computer or other electronic devices, here we use the term in its original meaning: content that uses different forms of media.

We have seen throughout this book that it is possible to work on all four language skills even when the focus is on content and one particular skill, such as social studies content and read- ing comprehension. Rather than reiterate what we have already seen, let’s look instead at how one teacher integrated the four language skills content using a variety of media for ELLs and native English speakers in the same class.

An Extended Example: Mr. Sanchez’s Sixth Grade Lesson Alejandro Sanchez is in his third year of teaching in a suburban elementary-middle school. At the beginning of the school year, his roster of sixth grade students included 13 native speak- ers of English and 10 English language learners. He knew that most of the ELLs were Spanish speakers because he had supervised them in lunch room and recess the previous year. Two ELLs were new to the school according to the notes the principal had attached to the roster. One was a newly arrived Argentinian boy named David and the other was Elena, a Russian girl who had been adopted a few months earlier by a U.S. family. The principal noted that Elena appeared to understand some English and that it was likely that she had had limited educa- tion in Russia; she had attended school “in the orphanage.” Mr. Sanchez had done sufficient reading to know that was code for very basic or no formal education. The other eight ELLs were Spanish speakers, and although Mr. Sanchez hoped that in sixth grade they would be fully bilingual, he knew that was not always the case.

Even before he met the class, Mr. Sanchez was concerned about Elena. He knew that she would likely need an intensive English language program of some kind if she were to have any hope of catching up with her classmates. Unfortunately, the school did not have many options, but before he could consider what might be available, he needed a clear picture of her language proficiency in English. He also needed to know more about her literacy level in Russian, how much schooling she had had and what deficiencies she might have. He decided to test David and Elena together on English language proficiency using the instrument that the district approved for ELLs, the LAS Links, a test intended to test proficiency in all four language domains in order to determine the correct placement of newly arrived ELLs, (see Chapter 4). Unfortunately, this test would not be given for several weeks and he would be meeting his class in ten days. What would he do?

He wasn’t too worried about David. Bilingual himself, Mr. Sanchez was confident of his abili- ties to learn a great deal about David’s abilities by talking with him and his family and by administering an informal reading inventory (IRI), which he could administer in both Spanish and English, if necessary. He was more concerned about Elena because he knew less about her background and nothing at all about the Russian language. He called the district office and talked to the consultant who said that they had no resources in Russian, but that she would consult with her colleague in another district. A few days before students were to begin, when he still had not heard from the district office, he decided to proceed with Elena in the same way as with David. If he later had reason to suspect any kind of learning disability or language

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impairment, he would worry about finding a way to assess her in Russian then. In the mean- time, he called the families of the two children and learned as much as he could about them.

Planning for Diversity After much thought, Mr. Sanchez decided to begin by conducting an informal reading assess- ment. For the IRI, Mr. Sanchez chose this passage from ReadWorks that was appropriate for fifth graders in content and at a reading level that would be accessible to many third and most fifth graders:

Earth Science: Earthquakes

One summer I was in Las Vegas with my family. Our hotel room was on one of the top floors of a high-rise building. There was a morning of that vacation I will never forget. We woke up around 6:00 a.m. The building was shaking and swaying back and forth like a pendulum. It was an earthquake. Las Vegas is in the western state of Nevada, which is right next to California. The epicenter was actually in California, but we still felt it over 100 miles away.

Earthquakes occur when plates in the Earth’s crust rub together. This friction causes the surface to shift back and forth. It also makes huge cracks in the ground, sometimes miles long and several feet deep.

Luckily, that summer in Las Vegas, my family got out of the building safely. I was never so scared in all my life. Others in history have not been so fortunate. On Jan. 17, 1995, an earthquake struck in Kobe, Japan. It caused over 6,000 deaths. In 1906, a huge earthquake hit San Francisco, killing over 3,000 peo- ple and destroying over 25,000 buildings. (Grade 5, 185 words, Lexile 710)

© 2012 ReadWorks®, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

The boldfaced words had definitions provided (in English) at the bot- tom of the page. Working with each student separately, Mr. Sanchez gave them as much time as they needed to read the brief passage, and then asked them a series of questions orally. His assessment of David confirmed what the boy’s parents had told him, that he was a good student and a fast learner. David’s answers were brief and awkwardly phrased, and he resorted to Spanish occasionally to make himself understood, but it was clear that he had been able to understand the passage. He had understood, for example, the inference that being on a high floor in a hotel was scarier than being on a lower floor, although he had to explain it in Spanish.

Elena was a different matter. Mr. Sanchez knew that Russian has a different alphabet, but her adopted family had assured him that she had learned the English alphabet already and could “read a little.” When he gave her the passage, she stared at the paper for two or three minutes before looking up. When Mr. Sanchez asked “Where is Las Vegas?” she shrugged her shoul- ders. When he pointed to the paper and asked her “What is this about?” she replied, “Story.” “What is the story about?” he asked. She looked at the page again and then said, “Family,” and then continued, “Family go trip.” “Where?” he asked. “Japan,” she responded. At this point, Mr. Sanchez realized that she had some decoding and word recognition skills (Chapter 6) but she was a long way from being able to cope with the sixth grade curriculum. He called the

What questions would you ask?

Should this concern Mr. Sanchez?

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district office and insisted that they send either an ELL teacher or a reading specialist to work with Elena. The district office agreed to send an ESL specialist to work with Elena for an hour a day, four days a week (Chapter 4). Ms. Davison would work with Elena on her language skills but she would integrate her work with whatever content the class was working on. It would be a team effort, the ESL specialist explained on her first day. Beginning in the second week of school, Elena spent one hour a day with Ms. Davison, except on Wednesdays, and the remain- der of the time she was in class with Mr. Sanchez and 22 other sixth graders.

To see how Mr. Sanchez planned for his very diverse class—besides the ELLs, the 13 native speakers represented a wide range of abilities including one student who was likely gifted and one who had a mild learning disability—we skip ahead to the end of the beginning of the second quarter. The social studies lesson he planned to introduce—a unit on home- lessness—demonstrates integrated content, language objectives and activities, a variety of teaching techniques, and multimedia materials. As you read the following lesson plan and participate in expanding it, think about what additional themes are applied from the previ- ous nine chapters.

Teacher(s): Mr. Sanchez

Subject: Social Studies

Grade: Six_________ Time allotted: 1.5—2.5 hours

Part 1: Setting Objectives

Content objectives

Relevance/ rationale

Language objectives (ELL modifications indicated in italics.)

CCSS alignment

To state the main causes of homelessness

To raise aware- ness about the plight of the homeless

Key vocabulary (in boldface in passage)

RI.6.1 RI.6.2 RI.6.10 RI.6.4 L.6.4.A L.6.4.B L.6.4.C L.6.4.D

To explain the relation- ship between poverty and homelessness

To understand that people do not choose to be homeless

Reading To read with sufficient comprehension to answer the following:

1. What social issue is the focus of the passage? 2. What are homeless shelters? 3. What are the two main reasons that people

are homeless? 4. Why don’t all homeless people live in govern-

ment housing? 5. What is the link between homelessness and

poverty? 6. Why does homelessness cause stress on

families? 7. What kind of stress? 8. Why do you think the author wrote this

article?

RI.6.1 RI.6.3 RI.6.6

(continued)

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Part 1: Setting Objectives (continued)

The ESL teacher recommended working with Elena on a simplified passage and simplified wording of the comprehension questions before it was intro- duced in class.

To differentiate between claims supported by fact, and evidence from claims that are not supported by fact

To compare and differenti- ate between three kinds of homelessness

To avoid mak- ing negative judgments about the homeless To articulate why unin- formed judg- ments about people are often wrong

Listening To demonstrate comprehension by taking of notes prior to reading passage To demonstrate comprehension by following all directions and responding to questions.

To describe the choices that poverty forces people to make and explain why they are difficult

Speaking To answer the eight questions in sentences flu- ently and with appropriate detail To ask questions arising from the text To ask appropriate questions seeking clarification

SL6.1.A SL6.1.B SL6.1.D SL6.1.C

To explain what is meant by pub- lic assistance and why it may be needed

Writing To take notes on the pre-reading vocabulary activity To use idioms from the passage in original sentences

To answer the eight comprehension questions in well-formed sentences To produce a 250-word paper on a subject related to passage

SLW.6.4 SLW.6.5 SLW.6.6 SLW.6.7 SLW.6.8

Grammar To correctly use the relative clause formation (There are also homeless people who . . .) using who and which

Text structure To explain the writer’s point of view or purpose for writing the text To explain what a chosen sentence fits into the structure of the paragraph or text

RI.6.6 RI.6.5

Which CCSS standard aligns with this goal? What activi- ties would you add to the delivery plan to help students meet this standard?

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Part 2: Delivery

Lesson sequence Technique (ELL modifications indicated in italics.)

Materials

Introduction/ orientation Show pictures of homeless people beginning with most obvious (i.e., “street people” and concluding with a child going to school with a backpack), mak- ing the point that these people all have something in common that we can’t see. Elicit possibilities and list on board.

Elicit what all the people shown in the photos have in common. Multiple paraphrases:

How are they all alike?

What is the same about all these people?

What could they have in common that you might not see?

Ask additional questions (e.g., if student says “they are sad,” ask Why do you think they are sad? Or What makes them sad? How do you know they are sad?

Provide advance organizer for the passage and sentence frames for the questions

Provide simplified passage for ELLs who are reading significantly below fifth grade level or below Lexile 700

Pictures

Teacher presentation/ modeling

Read the text aloud. Present simplified version of text first for ELLs with lower literacy skills (see below).

Text (See Homelessness) Simplified version of text

Student participation/ practice

Rephrase some comprehension questions (#5: Why are poor people more likely to be homeless? And #8, Why can we not ignore homelessness?)

ELLs use simplified text as prompts for answering comprehension questions.

Others?

*Reader participation especially encouraged in this area

Independent practice

Group discussion: Small groups discuss “What can we do to help eliminate home- lessness?” Take notes and be prepared to report back to class Pair less proficient ELLs with academically strong native speakers.

Other ideas?

Synthesis/ summary Introduce new vocabulary and idioms before viewing video

Ask learners to put up their hands if there is a part they do not understand. Teacher does not stop the viewing but makes note of the part to address later with ELLs.

Make video available for students to view later.

Related reading

See NBC reporter Ann Curry’s Employed but Still Homeless video at

https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=MdbHEZp0WPA Students could make their own video about homelessness in their town or city. Sarah Lean’s book A Dog Called Home- less (Lexile 660)

Why would Mr. S. use fifth grade and 700 Lexile as cut off for sixth graders?

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Part 3: Formative assessment

Content objectives Language objectives

What defines success? How measured? (ELL modifications indicated in italics.)

Answers in accord with text Answers that could be extrapo- lated from text

Less proficient ELLs complete statement: Poor people might be homeless because . . . .

Correct answers to quiz ques- tions (written) Accept oral answers or provide prompts for written answers (the words, transitional, chronic, episodic).

To explain the rela- tionship between poverty and homelessness

Response, orally or in writ- ing, that poor people have little money and fewer choices about how to spend it, and housing is expensive

To compare and dif- ferentiate between three kinds of homelessness

Ability to differentiate

To describe the choices that poverty forces people to make and explain why they are difficult

*Reader participation espe- cially encouraged in this area

To explain what is meant by public assistance and why it may be needed

Understanding of key vocabulary

Ability to use correctly in speech and writing Ability to identify and use alternative forms (e.g., epi- sodic/episode or transient/ transition/transitional) Ability to use in other contexts

Key words used in oral and written responses Quiz at end of lesson: ______________ refers to something that happens occasionally and at irregular intervals. Matching exercise with words on one side of the paper and defini- tions on the other

*Reader partici- pation especially encouraged in this area

The Passage: “About Homelessness” Homelessness is an issue that affects people of every age and from every country. If you walk down the street in many big cities in the United States, you might notice people sleeping on the sidewalk or begging for food or money. These individuals are very visible to passersby, and it is difficult to ignore them. But there are also homeless people who do not sleep on the streets. They are not as visible to the public eye, but they are also homeless. These people often spend their nights sleeping in shelters, which provide food, rooms, and often a variety

Why is it fair to use these terms as prompts?

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of social services (like daycare). We might not see these people on the streets, but it does not mean that they aren’t suffering.

When thinking about homelessness, one of the first questions that might come to mind is: why are people homeless? People become homeless for a variety of reasons, often outside of their own personal control. Two key reasons have been identified on why people become homeless. The first is a lack of affordable housing. The second is poverty, or the condition of being poor. The government is usually responsible for providing affordable housing to people and families in need. It builds large apartment buildings or housing developments for people who cannot afford to live elsewhere. Sometimes there is not enough affordable housing for all the people who need it. Those who are unable to secure housing may become homeless.

Homelessness and poverty are quite clearly linked. Poor people must often choose between such important things as buying food or paying for medical care versus paying the rent. When poor people are faced with these difficult decisions, housing is often the first expense to be dropped because it generally requires the most amount of money. Many of the homeless in the United States are simply unable to find jobs due to a lack of opportunity. Others are men- tally ill or addicted to drugs. Still others who are homeless have previously relied on public assistance but have lost that assistance for one reason or another. An example of a public assistance program is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides help for people who struggle to afford healthy and nutritious food.

There are three distinct kinds of homelessness. The first is called chronic homelessness, and it represents the group of people who move from shelter to shelter in a seemingly never-ending cycle. Often, the chronically homeless are older, and often suffer from disabilities or addiction. The second type of homelessness is called transitional homelessness, and it describes people who must enter a shelter for a short period of time. For example, if they are evicted from their homes for not being able to pay the rent, they might go into a shelter or enter government-based transitional housing. They may live there for up to two years until they are able to get back on their feet. The third kind of homeless is called episodic homelessness, which accounts for peo- ple who move in and out of shelters at various points throughout their life. Those who experience episodic homelessness usually have difficulty maintaining steady employment. People who are considered transitionally homeless and those who are episodically homeless are often young.

Homelessness rises when people are unable to find or keep jobs. But it also affects people who are not even employed in the first place—children under sixteen years old. As minors, they are not legally allowed to work. According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, one in every 45 children experiences homelessness each year. Most families that experience homeless- ness are made up of a mother and her children. The National Center on Family Homelessness reports that 29% of adults in homeless families in the United States are working. Yet the wages are often not enough to support the various needs of a family, like healthcare, food, and shel- ter. Furthermore, many families try to stay out of shelters. Shelters can be noisy, overcrowded, and stressful places for both children and parents. These families would often rather stay at the homes of friends or relatives, or even sleep in their cars. Families that experience homelessness in any situation are under a ton of stress, due to the lack of stability and privacy.

There are no simple solutions to this major social issue. But homelessness affects too many people around the world to be ignored. (Grade 4, 731 words, Lexile 1120)

© 2014 ReadWorks®, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

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The Modified Passage Homelessness affects people of every age and every country. In many cities, you might see people sleeping on the sidewalk or begging for food or money. It is easy to see these people but hard to ignore them. Not all homeless people sleep outside, and we do not see them. These people often sleep in shelters that provide food, rooms, and often some social services (like daycare). We might not see these people on the streets, but they are suffering.

Why are people homeless? There are two main reasons that people become homeless. One is that housing costs too much where they live. The second is poverty. The government some- times builds large apartment buildings or housing developments for people who cannot afford to live elsewhere. Sometimes there is not enough of this housing for everybody who needs it. When people cannot find a place to live that they can afford, they may become homeless.

Homelessness and poverty are clearly related. Sometimes poor people must choose between buying food, or healthcare, and paying the rent. When poor people are forced to choose, they may not choose housing because it costs more. Many homeless people in the United States cannot find jobs because there are no jobs nearby or because they do not have the skills to do the jobs. Others may be mentally ill or addicted to drugs. Still others once received govern- ment assistance but lost that assistance. An example of a government assistance program is one that provides help for buying food.

There are three different kinds of homelessness. The first is chronic homelessness and describes people who move from shelter to shelter over a long period of time. Often, the chronically homeless are older, and often suffer from disabilities or addiction.

The second type of homelessness is, transitional homelessness and it describes people who are homeless for a short period of time. For example, if they are evicted from their homes because they cannot pay the rent, they might go to a shelter or enter government housing. They may live there for up to two years until they are able to afford other housing.

The third kind of homelessness, episodic homelessness, describes people who move in and out of shelters at various points throughout their lives. These homeless people usually have a hard time keeping a job. They are often young. More people are homeless when people are unable to find or keep jobs. Some are children under sixteen years old who are not legally allowed to work. According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, one in every 45 children is homeless. Most homeless families are made up of a mother and her children. The National Center on Family Homelessness reports that 29% of adults in homeless families have jobs but do not earn enough to pay for the things their families need. Also, many families try to avoid shelters. Shelters can be noisy, overcrowded, and stressful places for everyone. These families would often rather stay at the homes of friends or relatives, or even sleep in their cars. Homeless families are under a lot of stress because they have no privacy and their future is uncertain.

There are no simple solutions to this major social issue. But homelessness affects too many people around the world to be ignored. (555 words, Lexile 970)

Adapted by author from “About Homelessness,” © 2014 ReadWorks®, Inc. All rights reserved. Modified with permission.

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Section 10.3 Using Digital Technology

10.3 Using Digital Technology Mr. Sanchez’s lesson on homelessness utilized a number of different media, but because of the rapid increase in the availability and use of electronic devices and applica- tions, we should take a closer look at some of the ways in which electronic media can be used to support learn- ing inside and outside the classroom to realize learning objectives and to foster independence. We also need to consider how teachers can make use of newer technolo- gies for assessing, tracking, and reporting student prog- ress. Our discussion will not be exhaustive because new applications appear with such speed that they are hard to track and evaluate. The point of this section is to exam- ine some of the possibilities and to encourage teachers to stay abreast of developments in technology for educa- tional use.

Classroom Applications Students need to be “self-directed learners, effectively seeking out and using resources to assist them, including teachers, peers, and print and digital reference materials.” (CCSS, ELA Anchor Standards)

One way to engage students actively in the process of learning is to use a variety of media, especially those most familiar to them such as electronic notebooks and tablets. Using these media helps to maintain interest while carefully chosen applications advance learning. More- over, as we saw in Chapter 7, while the CCSS do not specify a separate set of standards for technology, there is a clear expectation of technological proficiency in both the English lan- guage arts/reading and the mathematical standards. As stated in the standards,

New technologies have broadened and expanded the role that speaking and listening play in acquiring and sharing knowledge and have tightened their link to other forms of communication. Digital texts confront students with the potential for continually updated content and dynamically changing combinations of words, graphics, images, hyperlinks, and embedded video and audio. (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2015)

Mathematically proficient students at various grade levels are able to identify relevant external mathematical resources, such as digital content located on a website, and use them to pose or solve problems. They are able to use tech- nological tools to explore and deepen their understanding of concepts. (Com- mon Core State Standards Initiative, 2015)

Digital media, and particularly the Internet, have accelerated the speed at which the connec- tions can be made between speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Students are required to

Zhekos/iStock/Thinkstock Digital technology is transforming the way that children learn and teachers teach. These boys are as comfortable with digital tablets as they are with coloring books.

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use all four modalities, often simultaneously and across all content areas. So while technologi- cal savvy is in itself a goal, there is little need to treat it as a separate subject in the curriculum because the need to use the tools of current technology is embedded into every aspect of the curriculum from preschool through university. The challenge for teachers is that what is “cur- rent” changes extremely rapidly, meaning that both teachers and learners need to be adapt- able in response to that change. Ellen, the teacher we met in Chapter 1, puts the issue into temporal context in A Teacher’s Story: Change and Challenge.

A Teacher’s Story: Change and Challenge

I remember in my third or fourth year of teaching, my colleagues and I were upset when the district made the decision to change the math text book series for grades one through three. I was comfortable with the old series and couldn’t see any reason for changing it. To make matters worse, they also changed the social studies text to make it more accurate. Well, I was very comfortable with the math and social studies books, and I was not happy about so much change happening so fast. Can you imagine? I thought that was change!

In this last decade of my career, I’ve had to cope with NCLB, with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, with a new computer adaptive system for measuring student progress, and with my school’s new tablet policy—this year, every third grader was issued an electronic tablet and the school held a workshop for teachers that lasted for two full days on how to integrate them into our teaching. When I started teaching, a tablet was made of cardboard and paper, and we didn’t need professional development to learn how to use it. Now, a tablet looks like a miniature television set, and even after the PD (personal development), it feels like I spend most of my time online just trying to catch up with what the kids know how to do when they took them out of the boxes. Now that is change!

But somehow, as I enter my final year in the classroom, I am beginning to see that technology can be used to make concepts clearer. If a learner is struggling, I know it sooner and I am able to search a number of source materials for an alternate way of illustrating the troublesome concept and do it quickly. Digital libraries make many more stories and books available, and it is easy to determine readability for individual learners. Homework has become easier to customize to the needs of individual learners, and I’ve seen my ELLs benefit especially from being able to listen to audio versions of text as they follow along. Interactive comprehension questions allow them to work at their own pace, and there are some excellent games available that really are educational. Every day, I see more potential for using these new technologies to augment and supplement my teaching. When a bilingual boy suspected of having a learning disability was assigned to my class, I not only had the school district’s resources to call on, I also had an online community to consult. I was able to find excellent materials, a list of support services in Spanish available in our community, and suggestions for adapting my teaching to include Jake. I also found that it was easier to communicate with parents via email or text—I could see whether they had read my messages or not, which was a great improvement over the days when I could only hope that the note I sent home actually got there.

Last year, my colleague Jim’s fifth grade class built a class website they named “Our Space in Cyberspace.” It is on the school’s intranet so everyone in the school can view it, and parents

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We learn from Ellen and Mr. Sanchez that there are many applications for new technologies.

1. Communicating with parents. Parental involvement is important to learners’ success. Setting up parent-teacher conferences, inviting them to school events such as con- certs or plays, soliciting volunteers for field trips or class activities, notifying them of upcoming educational or sports events—technology can play a role in all of these. Many schools produce a regular electronic newsletter to keep parents informed about and to try to engage them in classroom activities.

2. Engaging learners. Even experienced teachers face the task of getting learners interested in and actively engaged in learning content that does not immediately appeal to them. Solar energy, for example, might not be a compelling topic for study for some fourth graders. Introducing it with key words or a list of facts about the sun might be helpful, especially for ELLs’ comprehension, but will likely do little to excite learners. One teacher, while doing an Internet search, found a website called What If ? that gave him an idea. He began by taking a contrarian approach: By presenting the case that the sun going out would have many benefits to humans, and then he challenged the students to prove that the disadvantages would outweigh the advan- tages. Before allowing the students to go searching for counterexamples, this teacher led them to pose hypotheses about what might happen if the sun went out and why they thought so and then to search for the evidence in support of their hypotheses.

Another way to engage learners is with electronic interactive textbooks. The text- books of today go well beyond pictures to supplement text with hyperlinks to web sites that may include assignments, assessments, animations, supplemental materi- als, video and audio files.

3. Publishing and celebrating learners’ work. Poster board displays are becoming a thing of the past as software takes over the job of displaying information, illustrat- ing relationships, and generally demonstrating what learners know about a subject. There are Web tools available that allow learners to create a multimedia presenta- tion to illustrate what they know. More traditional formats are also made easier. Using students’ contributions to create class books, publishing individual students’ stories or portfolios of work can be quickly and inexpensively done with readily

A Teacher’s Story: Change and Challenge (continued)

can access it with a password. It provides an excellent place to publish students’ writing, to cel- ebrate accomplishments, and to showcase art work. There is also a message board and a space for blogs. They documented the experience of building and maintaining the site in print and also in video. At the end of the year, they put together a three-minute video collage capturing their year of intense learning about the net and on the net. I was amazed by what these kids accomplished, but I had heard about the dangers of the Internet and I was skeptical. But Jim told me that the stu- dents policed the content very responsibly, with his oversight, and so far he had had no problems with inappropriate content or with unwanted visitors to the site. I may try it myself this year.

I used to worry that technology would replace teachers, but I now know that is not the case and never will be. It’s a very powerful tool, and used appropriately it has the potential to make good teachers great, which means that all students will benefit. It is so exciting that some days I almost regret my decision to retire.

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available word processing and publication software. Online publication on class or school websites is another way to share work within the school or with parents, but paper publication is also possible. One caution: Web publication provides the pos- sibility of a much wider audience, and so teachers must carefully monitor the sites on which learners comment about their work or their lives. Most schools have safety measures built into their intranet or portal to the Internet, but once children leave the school, dangers exist, and so it is useful each year, or even more often, to conduct a reminder lesson on Internet safety. There are several available free, including one at GCF LearnFree for older learners and one from Brainpop Educators for younger children.

4. Research. As we saw in Chapter 7, the Common Core State Standards require that students be able to conduct research and evaluate source materials. Research used to be so labor intensive that teachers specified a minimum number of source materi- als just to ensure that students spent time learning how to search for relevant evi- dence. The long hours in the library have been replaced by a few mouse clicks as the Internet has made research easier and faster for both teachers and students. While care must be taken to ensure that students understand that not all source materials on the Internet are accurate, the problem of unfiltered search results is becoming easier to manage. One reason is that, increasingly, peer reviewed journals are mak- ing their content available via digital media, and these journals may be accessed directly or through membership in a library that holds the digital subscription. Nev- ertheless, teaching students how to filter and use quality information is necessary to ensure that they are able to meet the rigorous standards for evidence-based reason- ing that the CCSS establish.

5. Communication. An elementary teacher with several years’ experience recently com- mented that “note-passing is a thing of the past.” It isn’t, of course, but now the notes are text or email messages. Web logs (blogs) dedicated to particular subjects of interest are a great way to build learning communities, of teachers and of students.

6. Organization. Past generations of teachers, especially English teachers, risked back injury with all the paper and books that they carried home with them most nights. Books, three ring binders with lesson plans, grade books, student papers and port- folios—the mountain of paper was overwhelming. Their desks were covered with stacks of assignments to mark, assign- ments to return, lesson plans, grade books, appointment books, attendance sheets, permission forms, and any number of other kinds of paper. Today, teachers have many technological tools at their disposal to eliminate most paper and to speed up all the processes that all that paper represented. Parent-teacher conferences are more produc- tive because parents can track their children’s progress on line and communicate with

Lisa F. Young/iStock/Thinkstock The Internet has given teachers many more resources to call upon as they work together to meet the learning goals they collaboratively established.

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teachers more readily. Organization has been simplified by technology and as more integrative applications are developed, it will become even easier for teachers to deal with the administrative functions more easily and free them to spend time on the things that more directly impact learning.

7. Professional development for teachers. New technologies offer a plethora of opportu- nities and options for teachers to find ideas for teaching, discover new techniques, discuss possible solutions for classroom problems, stay up to date with district, state, and national regulations, seek information about how others are implement- ing CCSS, and share best practices. There are many different types of media, and those listed below include a few examples as illustrations of what is available; for each medium, there are many more:

• Podcasts are digital audio, video, PDF, or ePub files made available on the Internet to be downloaded onto a computer or portable media player—iTunes, for example, has a subscription to podcasts for ELS learners including several short grammar les- sons. Many of the podcasts on iTunes are interactive as well as free.

• Blogs or weblogs—such as Edublogs, Sciencefix, and Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog to name but a few—invite observers to witness experienced teachers in action and, in Mrs. Cassidy’s case, to watch students as they progress in their learning. They serve as online communities where teachers can learn from each other and share ideas that work.

• Websites of professional organizations such as the American Speech-Language- Hearing Association (ASHA), the National Education Association (NEA), Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and the National Council of Teach- ers of English (NCTE), among many others, provide useful information for teachers on their sites and often provide links to other resources.

• Other professionally focused websites such as Colorín Colorado, which offers resources and tips for parents and educators on almost everything related to bilin- gual learners, and Edudemic, which focuses on making connections between tech- nology and education, provide a wealth of information.

• Common Core State Standards website. • Websites and information posted by other school districts. New York State,

for example, produces some excellent resources for teachers including one on Technology-Enhanced Instruction for ESL and Bilingual Learners.

• Social media used to connect with other professionals.

These few examples illustrate the potential of technology to change the way teachers plan, teach, assess, and organize their professional lives. But the bigger question is whether tech- nology affects the way that people learn? In other words, does technology just make the learning mechanisms and processes that we already have faster and more efficient? Or does it change the way in which we learn? As we see in Figure 10.1 technology has facilitated four major changes in how we learn.

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Passive Active

Ease of differentiated and individualized instruction

Multitasking

Individual Collaborative

Figure 10.1: How technology is changing learning

Technology has changed and will continue to change the way teachers teach and learners learn.

Adapted from Lepi, K. (2014, August 6). 4 Ways Technology is Changing How People Learn.

Some of the shifts that are taking place in how we experience learning may not answer the question, but they suggest that we need to pay attention. As J. S. Brown states, one aspect of the Web

is that it is the first medium that honors the notion of multiple intelligences. This past century’s concept of “literacy” grew out of our intense belief in text, a focus enhanced by the power of one particular technology—the typewriter. It became a great tool for writers but a terrible one for other creative activities such as sketching, painting, notating music, or even mathematics. The type- writer prized one particular kind of intelligence, but with the Web, we sud- denly have a medium that honors multiple forms of intelligence—abstract, textual, visual, musical, social, and kinesthetic. As educators, we now have a chance to construct a medium that enables all young people to become engaged in their ideal way of learning. (Brown, J. S., 2000, p. 12)

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Another popular concern is that digital media are turning children into passive learners, when in fact the opposite appears to be the case. There are two powerful arguments: First, the definition of literacy has broadened beyond text to include image and screen literacy as well as information navigation. As Brown states, “The real literacy of tomorrow entails the ability to be your own personal reference librarian—to know how to navigate through con- fusing, complex informational spaces and feel comfortable doing so” (Brown, J. S., 2000, p. 4). The ability to navigate the Internet may well be the main form of literacy for the 21st century.

Brown goes on to point out that one of the concerns that teachers and parents often express about digital impact on children—that they seem to have shorter attention spans—may not be so troubling as it appears. He suggests that “the short attention spans of today’s kids may turn out to be far from dysfunctional for future work worlds” that require exactly the kind of rapid shifts in attention and multitasking that they are learning as users of digital devices (p. 13). Moreover, as Prensky points out, today’s learners may have shorter attention spans for the old ways of learning, but “their attention spans are not short for games . . . or for anything else that actually interests them” (Prensky, M., 2001, p. 4). For the past several hundred years, the main function of schools has been to retrain our speech-oriented brains to be able to read. Read- ing doesn’t just happen; it almost always has to be taught (Chapters 2 and 6). With the advent of television, the human brain once again had to be recalibrated or reprogrammed to process tele- vision viewing. It is, thus, highly likely that the human brain is changing once more to accommo- date the highly varied and very fast digital media. (See Digital Media and Brain Change).

Digital Media and Brain Change Does extensive use of digital media change the way the brain learns? Probably. Based on research in neurobiology, we know that the input can actually change brain structure and affect the way people think and that these transformations continue through life. Here is some of the evidence:

1. Experiments have shown that when blind people are taught braille the “visual” areas of their brains have “lit up,” showing increased activity, even though they could not see.

2. Similarly, nonhearing people use their auditory cortex to read signs. 3. An experiment in which people were taught a complicated sequence of finger tapping

over several weeks, and then had their brains scanned, showed a larger area of the motor cortex becoming activated than when they performed sequences they had not practiced.

4. Researchers have found that an additional language learned later in life is stored in a different place from the languages they learned as children.

5. A comparison of the brains of musicians and nonmusicians showed 5% greater volume in the cerebellum of the musicians, believed to be a result of intensive musical training and practice.

6. If the brain is not static, that is, if it reorganizes itself and changes itself based on input, as evidence is beginning to show, then digital media has undoubtedly changed the way in which children learn.

Source: Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part 2: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), pp. 1–6.

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The second argument that digital learning is active rather than passive is that young people today do not approach the learning of something new in the way previous generations did. Today, computers and other digital media rarely come with manuals. Hand a six year old a new cell phone or electronic tablet and it is unlikely that she will ask how it works. She cer- tainly won’t ask to see the user’s guide. Rather, she will turn it on and get busy figuring out how it works based on what she has already learned about how similar devices might work.

Technology is here to stay, and it has tremendous potential to have a profound effect on how we teach and learn. Nevertheless, a word of caution is in order. As we move deeper and deeper into technology, we have to do so with the most information available to us. Just as the Com- mon Core State Standards are rooted in evidence, so should the methods and techniques used to realize the standards be grounded in evidence. Before adopting a significant innovation, whether for teaching or testing, it is important to see what the evidence tells us. Fortunately, the very technology we need to be cautious about has also given us the means by which to gather relevant evidence quickly and in increasingly large quantities.

Evidence Matters In its report Expanding Evidence Approaches for Learning in a Digital World (2013), the U.S. Department of Education advises educators to embrace big data for its capacity to provide information not only about student outcomes but on student progress that shines light on the learning process. Warning that the first consideration in evaluating an innovation is whether it will align with deeper learning objectives and incorporate sound principles of learning, the report goes on to describe “how big data and an evidence framework can align across five contexts of educational improvement” (U.S. Department of Education, 2013, p. ix):

1. To guide improvement. By uncovering patterns of learner behavior, educational data mining can be used to guide improvement. If, for example, a significant number of students struggle with questions related to earth science, educators may want to dig deeper and find out what texts are being used and whether the curriculum is adequate.

2. To individualize teaching and learning. Adaptive learning systems adapt the presen- tation of educational material according to individual students’ needs. By comparing

Antonio_Diaz/iStock/Thinkstock Critics who argue that digital media are turning children into passive learners have not paid close attention to children using digital media. Which activity appears to be more engaging to this girl?

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Section 10.4 Assessment and Record Keeping

a learner’s response to materials against a large data base of other learners’ responses, these digital resources can personalize learning by altering the pace, the level of difficulty, or the content.

3. To guide intervention for struggling students. Increasingly, states are using statewide data systems to track information about students, such as when they move between schools. There is also the capability and potential, using big data, to link other social services such as foster care, juvenile justice, or family services with school information.

4. To shift the focus of assessment to new outcomes and to provide more timely informa- tion to educators and learners. Newer adaptive assessment systems make it possible to measure the types of outcomes defined by the CCSS, something that traditional standardized tests rarely captured. Moreover, traditional norm-based standardized tests were usually given near the end of the school year when the results were of little value to the classroom teacher. Further, the current generation of high-stakes tests are mostly given at year’s end. The MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) tests described later in this chapter are a good example of how an adaptive system can gather better data that helps teachers to individualize instruction earlier in the school year.

5. To allow educators to make informed choices about learning resources. Ideally, educa- tors always make their decisions based on evidence of what works and what does not, but that evidence is not always easy to acquire. Big data is changing that, and, increas- ingly, educators are able to choose materials and approaches based on the successes (or failures) of other educators.

10.4 Assessment and Record Keeping Throughout the previous chapters, we have discussed the importance of appropriate assess- ment. Not only do teachers and schools need the information provided by summative assess- ments done at or near the end of the school year, but teachers need to find out what students know or don’t know, what concepts are causing them difficulty, and what they can and can- not do in order to hone their instructional plans while there is still time to make a difference (Chapter 4).

The Common Core State Standards established a set of objectives for each grade level, but they did not establish a set of tests for determining whether students are on track for college and career readiness. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education established a competitive grant program for state consortia of 15 or more states to develop new assessment systems aligned with the following criteria:

1. prompt return of student-level results, 2. information that helps teachers refine instruction, 3. results that measure student performance over time (to enable evaluation of teacher

and principal effectiveness), and 4. the incorporation of fair and reasonable accommodations for students with dis-

abilities and English language learners. (Center for K–12 Assessment & Performance Management at ETS, 2012 http://www.k12center.org/rsc/pdf/Coming_Together_ April_2012_Final.PDF)

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Accountability and Progress Assessments Two consortia were funded, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), with 45 states and the District of Columbia as members of one or both consortia. The member states committed to implementing the common assessments in the 2014–15 school year to replace the NCLB assess- ments in grades three through eight and for high school ELA and mathematics. Since 2010, some states have withdrawn as a result of political pressure, but the consortia remain largely intact.

There are many similarities between PARCC and SBAC—both offer summative assessments and both have optional formative (interim) tests in development. Both utilize computer tech- nology, but PARCC uses a fixed-form delivery, meaning that students are assessed on one of several fixed, equated sets of items or tasks. SBAC, on the other hand, uses computer adap- tive testing (CAT), meaning that students see an individually tailored set of items or tasks.

Computer adaptive technology is also being used in the assessments developed by a third consortium, the North West Education Association (NWEA). Unlike PARCC and SBAC, their formative tests—Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), MAP for Primary Grades (MPG), and Children’s Progress Academic Assessment (CPAA) for pre-K through second grade—are not intended as mandated accountability measures. Rather, they can be given three or four times per year and are intended to provide personalized data in a timely manner so that teachers can adapt their teaching strategies, individualize instruction, or even change direction.

The way CAT works is straightforward: If a test taker is able to answer an intermediate level question, the next question selected will be more difficult. If the student cannot answer an intermediate level question, the program will select an easier one next. In that way, a truer measure of the student’s knowledge or skill level can be attained. There is much potential in this technology for ELL teachers because it corresponds with what we know about compre- hensible input—in order to advance their language learning, learners need to be presented with material that is just slightly beyond their level of competence. Table 10.1 summarizes the similarities and differences among the three assessments.

Alternate Testing Whatever format they take, general summative and formative tests are not suitable for all learners (Chapter 4). No Child Left Behind mandated that states develop appropriate accom- modations for testing reading and mathematics for learners with significant cognitive dis- abilities, and although the states met this requirement by 2005, the type and quality of the tests used varied from state to state. In 2010, the Obama administration offered competitive incentive grants to spur the development of new alternative assessments to be jointly devel- oped by state consortia.

Two consortia were funded, the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment Consortium (DLM) and the National Center and State Collaborative (NCSC). Aligned to the Common Core State Standards, the instruments being developed by both consortia will be aligned with both PARCC and SBAC. It is the objective of both DLM and NCSC to provide timely diagnostic information along with instructional support for teachers through a system of “instruction- ally embedded and end-of-year assessments” (Center for K–12 Assessment & Performance Management at ETS, 2012).

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Both consortia took a broader view of assessment, and the suite of tools they offer in their assessment package includes guidance and support materials for teachers as well as profes- sional development resources. In order to develop these assessment tools, DLM began by defining the essential elements and achievement descriptors of the CCSS for students who take the alternative assessment. They also developed learning maps based on the assumption that there are multiple learning pathways to the same objective or standard. The defining fea- ture of these learning maps is that they provide support for multiple pathways. A significant feature of the DLM learning maps

is that they not only include the definitions of the subject specific skills that students will acquire—such as being able to add a series of three-digit num- bers or define a vocabulary word—but also provide useful delineation of the:

• precursor academic skills needed to master the tested skill; • communication skills required to communicate answers through speech,

pointing, or other means; and • attention skills needed to focus on the task or item (Center for K–12

Assessment & Performance Management at ETS, 2012, p. 35).

The DLM system utilizes a variation of CAT called dynamic delivery. Unlike CAT, which selects items based on their difficulty, dynamic delivery relies on several pieces of informa- tion—for example, the learner’s success with the previous item and the item’s position in the learning map and the amount of support or prompting required. More significantly for the learner and the teacher, the system provides immediate corrective feedback, meaning that it

Table 10.1: Properties of three consortium-created summative and formative tests

Assessment Diagnostic Summative (EOY)

Formative (interim)

Standards/ content tested

Computer adaptive

Number of states/ students (in millions) using

PARCC Yes Yes In development/ optional component

Reading, ELA, mathematics

No 23/25m

SBAC No Yes In development/ optional component

Yes 37/21m

NWEA MAP No Reading, language usage, mathematics

Yes varies/50m

NWEA CPAA

Pre-K-3 English/ pre-K-2 Spanish

No Yes Early literacy and math skills

Yes, with instructional scaffolding

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integrates assessment and instruction—or such is the intent. The system was scheduled to begin in the 2014–15 school year and has not yet been used with a significant number of learners.

The assessment system developed by NCSC is similar in its goals, if not in its method. Like DLM, this consortium is developing formative tools along with the summative assessments so that teachers can monitor student progress throughout the year. Instead of learning maps, NCSC bases their tools on Learning Progression Frameworks (LPF) that describe the cur- ricular sequence that typical students follow as they develop and demonstrate greater under- standing in each of the content areas:

From these LPFs for mathematics and English language arts (ELA), NCSC is developing grade-level assessment content targets and alternate achievement standards, linked to the CCSS, for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. The system of assessments, curricular materials, and professional development materials will address these grade-level learning targets in the context of the broader curriculum for all students. (Center for K-12 Assess- ment & Performance Management at ETS, 2012, p. 39)

Like their PARCC counterpart, NCSC is given in an essentially fixed-delivery mode, but there are some differences. NCSC claims to have “a mechanism to determine the appropriate parameters for each student’s assessment participation and teachers will then be given flex- ibility to select appropriate items within those parameters” (Center for K-12 Assessment & Performance Management at ETS, 2012, p. 39). As is the case with DLM, the NCSC consortium assessment has not yet had extensive use and it is too early to judge how user-friendly or effective it is.

ELLs’ Language Proficiency Testing Since the enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2001, all states have assessed K–12 English language learners annually until they are deemed to be proficient in English. States are also required to participate in the state academic assessments of mathematics and English lan- guage arts. As we learned in Chapter 4, it is sometimes necessary to make accommodations for ELLs. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education offered a competitive grant to develop new assessments for ELLs who met the following criteria:

• consortium members would agree on a common definition of English language learner;

• the test would include both diagnostic and summative assessments; • the test would assess all four domains of English language proficiency from kinder-

garten through 12th grade; • the assessment would produce results that indicated whether individuals had

attained a level and complexity of English proficiency necessary to participate fully in academic instruction entirely in English;

• the assessment tools would be accessible to all English language learners except those who were eligible for alternative assessment, such as those with severe cogni- tive disabilities; and

• technology would be used to the maximum extent appropriate to develop, adminis- ter, and score the tests.

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Section 10.5 Building Learning Communities

Only one grant was awarded, to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in collabo- ration with the World-Class Instructional and Design Consortium. The 29 state consortium is developing a system called Assessment Services Supporting ELLs through Technology Systems (ASSETS), and they are creating a diagnostic/placement instrument, interim prog- ress tests, and an annual summative measure of English language proficiency. Expected to be available for the 2015–16 school year, ASSETS will test all four skill areas from K–12 using computer delivery. The first iteration of the test will not utilize computer adaptive technology, but the consortia are considering developing an adaptive version at a later time. In the meantime, the English language assessment of MAP is used by some schools for ELLs and may be particularly useful for teachers with ELLs in a mainstream class. St. Paul school district recommends that ELLs be allowed to attempt the MAP at the appropriate grade level. The computer adaptive function will select lower grade levels if the items are too difficult and will generate no scores if learners are guessing. Very preliminary research indicates that MAP can provide a fair assessment of academic progress in English for ELLs (Bohlman, 2012).

10.5 Building Learning Communities Although elementary school teachers are usually responsible for the entire curricu- lum, it is frequently the case that individual teachers excel at one or two particular sub- jects. Back in the first chapter, we recognized the fact that today’s teachers have heavy demands placed on them, whether there are ELLs in their classes or not. When we add the particular needs of ELLs to the heavy emphasis that the CCSS puts on informational text and the integration of science and social studies into the ELA curriculum, not to mention accountability testing, we can see that collaboration can lead to better teaching and outcomes.

As we saw in Chapter 1, teachers are held accountable for their pupils’ test scores and there is often pressure from the district or school administrative personnel to “prepare for the test.” Collaborative professional development can go a long way toward demystifying the testing process for teachers and increasing understanding of what skills the test is evaluating and how the skills are evaluated. In particular, when teachers work together, reading a sample text and completing sample tasks or answering questions, they

begin to wrap their heads around the cognitive demands of the prompt. This simple but very important step helps teachers clarify expectations of profi- cient work, and builds a common understanding of proficient work within a team and across a building. Additionally it supports the teacher in creating a coherent plan that delivers content instruction clearly. Teachers, working in collaborative teams, talk about instruction, and sometimes these poignant moments unearth content or pedagogy deficiencies that can be quickly addressed. (Krehbiel, 2012, p. 9)

By understanding how to take advantage of each other’s individual interests, teachers can maximize their instructional effectiveness. Teachers with different skills and interests can work together to plan lessons—for example, a teacher with a particular interest in or gift for science can work with a language arts teacher to ensure that the goals of language learning

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and content learning are met and that the standards are met. Or a teacher who has had extra professional development on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards can help colleagues to see that a particular standard should receive greater focus or be discon- nected from a particular lesson.

Another way for teachers to collaborate is a kind of bartering system—teachers can “trade” their own strengths and interests with those of another teacher. A gifted art teacher, for exam- ple, can exchange her time with the gifted math teacher of another class. Some of the program options available for ELLs require collaboration between teachers. For example, with the pull-out program (Chapter 4), cooperation between the mainstream classroom teacher and the ESL teacher can take many forms. Ideally, it begins with planning. Mr. Sanchez had only a part-time ESL teacher available to assist with Elena, but getting her input and advice before beginning the unit on homelessness helped him to make his plan more inclusive of Elena and the other ELLs. He conferred regularly with the ESL teacher who was able to identify prob- lematic areas in Elena’s comprehension and to recommend activities for her that Mr. Sanchez could carry out in the classroom or in homework assignments.

All the examples so far have shown the impact of collaboration for addressing particular issues or situations. Situational collaboration is very effective, and it is a wise school leader who facilitates strong working relationships among teachers so that they can help each other, not only after a problem or issue arises, but before. The professional learning community (PLC) is not a “one of ” but a framework for ongoing professional development. There are two basic models, although each can be implemented in slightly different ways.

School-based Professional Learning Communities Professional learning communities provide a structure in which teachers can collaboratively engage in ongoing professional development that is targeted to the goals and objectives of the school. Professional development that is embedded into the expectations, organization, and schedule of the school is likely to have a more enduring impact than onetime workshops or webinars. The point of a PLC is to foster collaboration, but not collaboration for collabo- ration’s sake. Rather, the purpose is “to make an impact on classroom practice in order to achieve better results. Participation in a PLC allows teachers to engage in ongoing dialogue around their repertoire of effective instructional strategies and build a sense of community” (Linton, 2011, para. 3).

For schools with ELL learners, the PLC can be an extremely effective tool. Broadly based conversations and discussions about bilingualism, about the nature of second language learning and teaching, analyzing student data, and tracking the progress of individual learners can all be facilitated in this environment. But the true value of the PLC lies in the opportunities for teachers to create plans to meet the needs of diverse learners, espe- cially in the context of the CCSS. Teachers can deconstruct lesson plans and rebuild them to align with CCSS standards that they collectively identify, while providing the individual- ized adaptations that ELLs—and other learners—may require. They can talk about upcom- ing units and how subjects can be integrated—how, for example, can the art teacher or music teacher contribute to the theme of homelessness in Mr. Sanchez’s lesson? Is there a CCSS aligned math lesson in there somewhere? These conversations allow teachers to gain hands-on skills while simultaneously drawing on the knowledge and skill set of every teacher in the school.

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An Extended Example: Deer Park Elementary Builds CommunityLearn The teachers at Deer Park Elementary School had all been experiencing some uncertainty and frustration about the Common Core when they attended a one day participatory conference on collaborative teaching and learning. From that experience, they could see some of the ben- efits to taking a more collaborative approach, but like many experienced teachers, they knew that the impact of a one-day conference would fade away unless they acted deliberatively. So the teachers of Deer Park Elementary School organized themselves into a learning commu- nity. They decided that taking a collaborative approach to teaching would help to reduce their anxiety, and more importantly, help them to be more effective in planning and implementing curriculum and instruction for the new standards. Once the teachers had decided to organize a PLC, the principal, Mr. Hayes, worked with the district office to adjust the schedule at Deer Park to accommodate half-day working sessions every two weeks. Figure 10.2, The Commu- nity Calendar, shows the first two months of their schedule for the 2014–15 academic year.

As the Deer Park PLC schedule shows, the teachers recognized that their community could be expanded. Parents and community associations could play important roles in the learning community.

Deer Park Elementary School’s CommunityLearn is a new community, and it is too soon to judge its success. Its chances for success are good, however, because the participants built into their organization and plan most of the elements others have found successful. Specifically,

1. They spent time learning how to collaborate. By planning their workshops as partici- patory collaborative sessions, they were able to do small scale collaborative exer- cises that will benefit them as they move into larger collaborative activities. Some PLCs have a trained PLC facilitator, but the Deer Park teachers decided that their small group would rely on their principal if they needed a facilitator. As the schedule shows, however, they did not often call on him but took charge of their own learning.

2. They worked within an atmosphere of trust. Only one of the teachers at Deer Park was new to the school and so they entered into the community building project trusting one another. It takes trust for a teacher to admit to not understanding or knowing how to do something, and CommunityLearn had that from the outset.

3. Sufficient time. The teachers were wise to build the PLC into the regular schedule of the school year and to commit to it over the course of the year. The adjustments needed to the student schedules were minimal, and all that was required by the dis- trict office was to change the order of the school bus drop-off to allow the school day to start eight minutes earlier.

4. A broad and inclusive attitude.

Although many PLCs consist only of teachers, a broader population can be brought in, such as administrators, parents, and community mem- bers who support their school. The objective is to align everyone’s interests and expertise with the school’s vision and goals (Ullman, 2009). As the November 7 schedule for CommunityLearn shows, these teachers recognized that there are others in the community who have a stake in the school, its students, and their outcomes. One of the groups they identified was a local community center that served a mostly His- panic population. This center offered translation services, among oth- ers, for recently arrived Spanish speakers. Bringing their director into the PLC would, they believed, help them to be more effective in plan- ning inclusive practice for their growing number of Hispanic ELLs.

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Deer Park Elementary School CommunityLearn

2014–15 Schedule

August 20, All Day

Implementing the CCSS: Overview Assessing the Standards

Practice test exercises RTI (response to intervention) benchmarking

Information about new students and their needs

Principal Hayes Ms. Canfield, Special Ed

Principal Hayes &

Ms. Canfield

Ms. Jacobs, Asst. Principal

August 21, Morning

Planning for diverse learners (gifted, special ed, ELL)

August 25 SCHOOL STARTS!!!!

September 19, Afternoon

Interpreting RTI results: Where do we go from here?

Ms. Jacobs & Mr. Acevedo

October 3, Afternoon

Preparing quarterly reports: How has CCSS changed what is reported to parents? How should they change reporting to parents?

Mr. Wilson, 5th grade

Group exercise

October 17, Morning & Afternoon

Interim progress monitoring: The new system Collaboration at all stages: • Planning • Teaching • Evaluating

District personnel Mr. Acevedo & Ms. Saab,

2nd grade Mr. Wilson & Ms. Richards,

Art Ms. Canfield & Ms. Reyes, 4th grade

November 7 Expanding our Community • via parents • via local community associations • via the Web

Ms. Acevedo

Ms. Charles, 1st grade & Mr. Levine, 3rd grade

Ms. Canfield & Mr. Acevedo (ELL/ESL)

Date Topics Leaders

Principal Hayes & Ms. Canfield

Figure 10.2: The Community Calendar

In this example, educators at Deer Park Elementary School decide to take a collaborative, long-term approach to help ensure their curriculum and instruction satisfy Common Core standards.

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E xc

ha

ng e Collaboration

Teach Le

ar n

District and community resources

School colleagues

Teacher

National and international colleagues

via the internet

The Deer Park teachers had all called on Internet resources from time to time and recog- nized the Web as the powerful tool it can be. They had no desire to create an exclusively online PLC, however, but rather sought to use it as a means to include the wider professional community in their community. The model they envisioned for their PLC was the one shown in Figure 10.3.

Ellen Rodriguez, the teacher we met in Chapter 1, has now retired. Her reflections on a career spent teaching dual language learners give us some perspective on how the future of teaching looks to someone who remembers so much of the past. This reflection is excerpted from the speech she gave at a banquet given in her honor by her colleagues.

Figure 10.3: Communities within communities: The PLC

A professional learning community can extend beyond a single school and include educators in different districts, neighboring states, or even other countries.

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Summary & Resources

Summary We identified in this chapter the 12 major themes that emerged throughout the book and examined how they are realized in the planning, teaching, and evaluating of learners. The implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the adaptations that need to be made for individual learners, and especially English language learners, means that teachers need to be able to call on a wider range of resources. Fortunately, the digital age has made it easy for teachers to visit or even join a much larger community of professionals, draw- ing from their experiences to grow their own repertoire of techniques and tools. The digital age also reminds us of the value of our colleagues, and somewhat paradoxically, the value of face-to-face contact. We see in the establishment of professional learning communities much hope for an approach to teaching practice that is as integrated as the content areas are in the Common Core standards. Collaboration with colleagues in cyberspace or in the classroom down the hall adds a richness to the experience of teaching that makes helping ELLs to succeed in school and to realize their potential as members of the community a truly fulfilling undertaking.

A Teacher’s Story: A Life of Love and Laughter

Can you imagine spending 7,200 of your days doing the same thing? Those of you who have just begun your careers can’t imagine how this is possible, and when I began, neither could I—which is okay because as it turned out, I didn’t. Yes, I taught for roughly 7,200 days, more than that if you count the weekends spent chaperoning, grading papers, tutoring, or just turn- ing up to watch a young boy play soccer because he didn’t have anybody else in his life who would bother, but I wasn’t doing the same thing. There were days when I wished I had some old standby to fall back on, and like all of you, I did have my tried-and-true bag of tricks, but no two classes ever needed the same things or responded in the same way, and so even when I tried, I couldn’t do the same thing. I’m grateful for that. For that and so much more . . . .

One of the reasons that teaching kept me so engaged for so long is that early in my career I was assigned a class with mostly second language learners. I wasn’t so grateful for that at first. In fact, I was petrified, but what kept me working so hard was the progress I could see almost daily. For the most part, teachers have to be patient—we don’t often see immediate progress, except in baby steps. But I found, and have often said, that if you are not a patient person, if you need to see results right away, get yourself assigned to a first grade class filled with second language learners. You don’t have to wait to the end of a quarter to test them to see what they’ve learned—you can see and hear it every day. And soon, they are teaching you! The year I had a fifth grade class that was made up of kids from five different countries, it was like I was able to go on a world tour. They also taught me enough to keep me from embarrassing myself with new technologies. When the school put in its first computer lab, I traded math tutoring for one of my fourth graders for lessons on how to use the desktops, and when the school put two of the things in my room, I watched over their shoulders as my third graders took turns using the publishing software. It was a first grader who showed me a few years ago how to turn on my smart phone and a fifth grader who set it up to send and receive email. Just as I’m finally learning to leave the 20th century behind and embrace the new ways of teaching and learning, it is time to pass the challenge on to another generation. It is a generation in which I have a great deal of faith, and if you find in teaching even a small measure of the joy that I have found, you will live a very rich and fulfilling life.

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Critical Thinking Questions

1. When Mr. Sanchez was unable to get a formal assessment of Elena and David, his first step was to call their families and arrange a meeting. Why was this an important component of his assessment of the learners?

2. For his initial assessment of the new ELLs, why did Mr. Sanchez focus on reading?

Key Ideas

1. ELLs are not a homogeneous group but are as possessed of the full range of variabil- ity as native speakers, in addition to all the diversity attributable to being bicultural and bilingual.

2. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally important for achieving com- municative competence, but reading and writing dominate the school agenda.

3. Educators must take the view that English is an additional language for dual lan- guage learners; it is not a replacement language!

4. Implementing the Common Core State Standards for ELLs requires adaptation at the planning, instructional, and assessment stages.

5. In evaluating an innovation, an educator’s first concern must be that it aligns with deeper learning objectives and incorporates sound learning principles.

Effective teaching requires cooperation and collaboration among colleagues in the school, other community members, and beyond —to national and international colleagues via the Web.

Key Terms

big data Data sets that are too large to manipulate and use with standard meth- ods or tools but are accessible with digital technology.

blogs/weblog A personal website on which an individual records opinions and informa- tion, such as links to other websites.

computer adaptive testing (CAT) The use of computers to select test items based on a learner’s response to previous items.

data mining The practice of examin- ing large databases to generate new information.

dynamic delivery A kind of CAT that relies on several pieces of information, such as the learner’s success with the previous item and the item’s position in the learning map

and the amount of support or prompting required.

fixed-form delivery Computer-delivered tests for which students are assessed on one of several fixed, equated sets of items or tasks.

podcast Digital audio or video files (in various digital formats) available through subscription and downloaded or streamed onto a computer or mobile device.

professional learning communities (PLC) Groups of educators who meet regu- larly, in person or virtually, and work col- laboratively to improve teaching skills and academic performance of students.

webinar A seminar conducted live over the Internet.

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21st Century Student Outcomes and Support Systems

Life and Career

Skills

Core Subjects—3Rs and 21st Century Themes Information,

Media, and Technology

Learning and Innovation Skills—4Cs

Critical thinking * Communication Collaboration * Creativity

Standards and Assessments

Curriculum and Instruction

Professional Development

Learning Environments

3. During the informal reading inventory Mr. Sanchez administered, David sometimes resorted to Spanish to make himself understood. Should this concern Mr. Sanchez? Why?

4. Can you suggest an alternate introductory activity using a new technology for Mr. Sanchez’s unit on homelessness?

5. Why do you think Mr. Sanchez chose Lexile 700, fifth grade, as a cut-off point? 6. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills produced a toolkit that includes a guide for

aligning their framework with the CCSS, entitled P21 Common Core Toolkit: A Guide to Aligning the Common Core State Standards with the Framework for 21st Cen- tury Skills. The document includes the following graphic (Figure 10.4). Examine it carefully, and then, using the information and insights you have gained in this book, explain what the graphic means and how its parts relate to one another.

Figure 10.4: 21st century student outcomes and support systems

Source: P21, Framework for 21st Century Learning. Used with permission from Partnership for 21st Century Skills, www.p21.org.

Life and Career Skills

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Additional Resources For ideas on how to use technology with ELLs, see http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/04/07/the-best-sources-for-ideas-on-how-to-use- technology-with-english-language-learners/

The Teaching Channel has a good example of how collaboration is used for planning a CCSS aligned lesson for ELLs at https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teacher-collaboration-for-ccss-ells-nea

Dennis Van Roekel helps to ease the concerns of teachers fearing the Common Core in his article Getting to the Core of Common Core on the National Education Association website at http://www.nea.org/home/53977.htm

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