Video: English Language Learners: Culture, Equity and Language

Just a quick Friday message after being sick for a week and a half :(

Equity for ELLs! I love this video can't share it enough. It breaks my heart to still see ELLs sitting in the back of the room with crayons, when they could add so much to a classroom.

Then I see the other side, at one of the middle schools their newcomer is one of the popular kids. Everyone knows who he is, the students have taken him under their wings and support and look after him. I love to see that kind of caring culture in a school!

Video: Confession: New Teacher of Newcomers

I felt like sharing this video this morning, because it is something that is so relevant to teaching newcomers. It is Michelle Benegas at TEDxUMN. She discusses her own experiences as a new teacher of ELLs, and her own learning about culturally responsive teaching. 

This video resonated with me, it echoed my own thoughts about my first year teaching. Over and over I thought I was not prepared to meet the needs of the diverse learners sitting in front of me. There are gaps in this area in teacher preparation programs and, with a rapidly growing population, more and more teachers will have newcomers in their classes. 

I was just at a school yesterday day discussing this very thing with teachers. I recommended that they learn about his culture and his story; that they find ways to let him express himself. 

Video: The Danger of a Single Story

Now that things are finally starting to settle back down on my end. And school is under way, I thought I'd share a video that always resonates with me this time of year. 

A TED Talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the dangers of a single story.

I love this video as a reminder of the impact of the words we choose, the examples we use, the stories we tell, and the questions we ask.

This is one of the reasons I don't ask the question at the beginning of the year: "What did you do this summer?" 

Video: Miracle Workers by Taylor Mali

As we are getting to the end of the school year, testing preparations are underway and after burning both ends of the candle for the last 9 months, the teachers I'm seeing are tired. I can relate, I know how I felt at this time of year. "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming." is constantly running through my head (I love Dory). 

So, I decided to share a video. This poem from Taylor Mali is just as poignant as his "What Teachers Make" and I love it. "Education is the miracle. I'm just the worker." We all need just a bit of encouragement and to be reminded of this sometimes.

Essential Tips for Mainstream Teachers with ELLs (Part 3)

This is the third part in my series on essential tips for mainstream teachers who find themselves working with English language learners. 

In case you missed them, you can read them here:

Essential Tips for Mainstream Teachers with ELLs (Part 1) Classroom Environment
Essential Tips for Mainstream Teachers with ELLs (Part 2) Comprehensible Input/Output

In this section, I'm going to focus on ways to help students interact with your content. 

Interaction

1. Vocabulary - When it comes to English language learners, the problem is truly one of a vocabulary gap. The older the students the more noticeable this is. 

We hear a lot about 3 tiers of vocabulary, but I find many people do not have a clear idea about which words are which, and which ones to teach. It's such a confusing task that I talk about it in almost every workshop that I do.

Tier 1: (words they already know) basic sight words, early reading words, common use/ everyday language. Even if the students don't know these words, their ESL teacher is likely working with them on these.

Tier 2: (words they NEED to know) testing words and phrases like evaluate, describe, draw a conclusion, things like polysemous, multi-meaning, words, prepositional phrases, and words used in multiple contexts and content areas. 

A 6th grade ELA/SS teacher shared with us in my SIOP cohort last week about giving students state test type questions, and on one that said draw a conclusion about... 2 students actually drew pictures. One of them was not even an English language learner.

It is estimated that 40% of the English language is polysemous, it can cause confusion for an English language learner that may or may not be able to decipher a meaning from context. These Tier 2 words also carry a lot of meaning in content areas, but are often not explicitly taught anywhere.

Tier 3: (words they SHOULD know) academic vocabulary, content specific vocabulary

These are the words we want to expose all of our learners to, they are often bolded in textbooks, and the words up on your word wall (if you have one). They are the content area words you are already teaching. 

My next series is going to be all about vocabulary, so if you are looking for more information in that area, stay tuned!

2. Focusing questions - English language learners, especially lower levels spend a lot of mental energy just trying to decipher basic meaning. Often times, it is challenging to determine what is important and what is not. There are a lot of things you can do to adjust your own practices such as slowing your rate of speech, avoiding asides while presenting information, and simplifying speech. Sometimes, this is not enough, so providing focusing questions can help give students clues about what is important and what to listen for. Going over objectives and having them written out has a similar impact.

3. Teach/model how to take notes - The truth is all students need this. But just as I was saying in the last tip, it can be hard to pick out important information, so explicit instruction in how to take notes, and modeling is important.

For beginners, copying is writing. One thing that you can do if you are seeing that your students are struggling with taking notes is to provide them with notes ahead of time, or notes to copy so that they can focus on listening, and worrying less about what to write at the same time.

I had a student two years ago who was an incredibly hard worker and because of that, despite language difficulties made excellent grades in most of her classes. She came to me because she wanted help in her government class. The entire class was lecture, and they didn't use a book. She told me that she took plenty of notes, and studied. So one day, I looked through her notebook, and I realized that her notes were nonsensical. There were words and phrases written down, many misspellings, notes on what appeared to be teachers anecdotes, it was hard for me to follow to help her. We went to the teacher and just asked kindly if he could provide her with an outline of the lecture and key words. She was able to work with that and focus in on details about the key words and wasn't trying to copy down every single thing that he said. 

4. Listening stations - If you have ever learned a new language and tried to communicate with a native speaker, you probably wanted them to slow down and repeat what they said a few times. When it comes to reading assignments, an English learner's listening skills are usually better than their reading skills. This is something that worked great in my classroom and technology makes it pretty easy to accomplish. Whenever possible I would look for audio versions of texts that we were reading so that students could listen and read at the same time. This can be expensive, you can record yourself reading and share it with students too. This way they can go back and listen to it multiple times and at their own pace too.

I also used this with major project descriptions and directions. I would post the directions and the audio on Edmodo or Google Classroom which ever I was using that year.

5. Use manipulatives - When you talk about something, it can be very abstract and you are relying on the English language learner having a good grasp on whatever vocabulary you are using. Manipulatives help to make the abstract concrete. Post-its and index cards with words that could be moved around, categorized, matched, etc. can make as great manipulatives it does not have to be expensive "toys." When working with manipulatives with groups not only are they seeing the information in a new way, they might be hearing it in a new way too.

6. Get them talking - If they can verbalize it they can internalize it. Talking about content is a great way to process information and get it moving from short term to long term memory. For English language learners, it is practice with language and content. Let's look at it another way, speaking a foreign language is mentally exhausting. So when your student is talking to friends who speak the same language and their family who might only speak their first language, what language are they speaking? You guessed it, not English. That means your classroom is the only place they are practicing academic English, if they aren't getting it there, they aren't getting it anywhere.

Along these same lines, no opt-out. Don't accept "I don't know," teach them other ways to respond or how to find the information.  

7. Higher Order Thinking - Just like all students English language learners need to be engaged in high order thinking activities. A lot of times with English language learners, the types of questions they are asked are literal and basic recall. However, you can ask questions that have a low linguistic demand but are still higher order thinking questions. Things like charts, diagrams, and drawings are great for students to show their reasoning skills in non-verbal ways.

Combine this is visuals, word banks, and sentence stems for responses and your English language learner can soar.

Essential Tips for Mainstream Teachers with ELLs (Part 2)

This is part two in my series of posts highlighting essential tips for mainstream teachers to work with English language learners and help them thrive in their classes. 

My first post focused a lot on creating a welcoming classroom environment, you can find that here. This is so important because no learning will happen if a student does not feel safe enough to take the risks necessary to learn. 

I'm going to break this one up into tips for comprehensible input and output for students. Comprehensible input is important for English language learners, the content and language must be accessible to students for students to learn in. I can reflect back onto my own language learning experiences and saying silly phrases like "La souris est sous la chaise" because that is what I could handle. Along those same lines, the task that students do, and the language they are asked to produce also needs to be comprehensible. As essay is not an appropriate task for a newcomer, etc.

Comprehensible Input/Output

1. Use Visuals - Incorporate visuals into everything. Instructions. Procedures. Reading. Everything. Spoken language, especially if it is not modified, can be difficult for English language learners to follow. Having directions written is good, having directions supported with pictures is even better. Giving directions is good, modeling and showing our students what they need to do is better. Sometimes that is all they need to be able to do something. Making it visual does not have to just be pictures. I can make it visual by demonstrating with my body or with classroom objects too.

In many of my workshops for teachers I go through a full lesson in German. Whether it is my lesson on Unser Sonnensystem or gleichwertige Brüche the one thing participants say as soon as I open up reflection is the visuals made all the difference. Most go as far to say that without the visuals they could not have completed the lesson, let alone pass the quiz at the end (no one has ever failed one of the quizzes)

I just recently did my workshop for teaching mathematics to English language learners and I shared with them a problem I saw a teacher give on a worksheet. The lesson just crashed and burned at this point, and we as a group reflected on why. 

A farmer has 52 chickens and oxen combined. They have a total of 148 legs. How many of each animal does the farmer have

There are many native English speakers who do not know what an oxen is, in fact there was not a student in the classroom who did. The problem is, that knowledge is necessary for solving the problem, because you have to know how many legs it has to get the answer. I know you can make a logical guess that they have 4 legs, because lets face it, many farm animals do, but the difficulty disappears by adding a picture of an oxen and a chicken with the problem.

2. Provide Sentence stems/frames - providing sentence stems/frames for oral and written responses gives students an opportunity to practice with academic language and sentence structures. All students need practice with academic English. I say over and over again to teachers all students are academic language learners, these strategies really do work for all students. I gave my students sentence stems for talking about content:

The tone of the _______ is _________. In the text it says, "..." This means ___________.

Guess what my students were also learning to do: cite text evidence and write a paragraph.

I gave them sentence stems/frames to talk about cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies:

I predicted _______. My prediction was (not) confirmed.

I was confused by _________, I thought __________.

I also gave them sentence stems/frames for classroom discussion:

I agree with _______ because ________. I respectfully disagree with what ________ said because _________. 

I get more push back from teachers on this point than I would have expected. They tell me this is seems to babyish. When I get them to try it, they are always amazed. If it has never been the norm for students to use complete sentences and have academic conversations, you have to teach them how. Sentence stems/frames take the guess work out of that for students, and they know exactly what is expected.

I had a place in my room for sentence stems/frames that students would need regularly. But just like my word walls these were fluid, as we mastered these things I could take them down and add more. I also always gave my students the option, to try something beyond the sentence stem/frame if they were able. 

The participants of my German lessons are asked to write complete sentences, and they always tell me, I couldn't have done that without sentence stems, and once again, no one has ever failed the post-quiz. The best part is now in their notes they have it written out completely and correctly to refer to later. For my German lesson it isn't a big deal, they don't need to know it later, but for students they do. 

3. Allow use of their native language - I know this has been the subjected of heated debates, but the native language has its place. First, if the student is a newcomer and you tell them to quit speaking in their native language, you have cut off their primary form of communication. Second, instruction should be in English (and modified), but clarification is fine in the native language, a language buddy can be a great thing. But remember, use them, don't abuse them, or else you'll lose them! I even allowed students to write responses/plan first in their native language so that they could get their ideas out before having to worry about English. 

I hear over and over again, I don't speak X, how do I know they are on task? Or how do I know what they wrote is appropriate? etc.  Allowing native language use just might be the difference in a student fully participating and engaging, and tuning out. It's all about setting expectations for students, and encouraging them.

Essential Tips for Mainstream Teachers with ELLs (Part 1)

I'm compiling a list of essential tips for teachers working with English language learners. These are the things I find myself telling teachers repeatedly. Or things I'm noticing when I do observations. Some of them may seem like common sense but in the trenches it is easier said than done, and that doesn't mean it is always done, and some of these are just overlooked, or go completely unrealized.

Because this runs the risk of being a really long post, I'm going to break it up into several parts. Starting with the beginning, something that needs to happen before any learning can go on, creating a welcoming classroom environment.

Creating a welcoming classroom environment: 

Creating a welcoming classroom environment is one of the most important things you can do when working with English language learners. We need to feel safe and comfortable in order to take the risks necessary to learn. 

1. Smile - Especially if you are new to working with ELLs and the task seems daunting. It is a new learning experience for you, and is not something that you should dread. I am well aware of the stresses placed on teachers in the classroom, and I know what it feels like to be in the middle of a large class and in walks a brand new student that doesn't speak any English right in the middle of a Beowulf unit, or a week before finals, and that feeling of just wanting to scream. When an ELL walks into your classroom, if you look at them with a sense of impending doom, they will see it. We all smile in the same language, and a smile goes a long way towards creating a welcoming environment for students.

The same is true for ignoring the students. One year in the spring semester at my school, the failure rate for ninth grade English learners was so high the administration took pictures of all of the students and printed them, and at a staff meeting asked the teachers to pick up all of their students. Each student had 8 teachers, surely they could all be claimed. Wrong, at the end there were 5 students left over that none of their teachers recognized. Surprisingly, these students were receiving failing grades in most of their classes. I'm sure if you asked those students, they were aware of their teachers' indifference towards their education. Sometimes ignoring the students is not intentional, but a byproduct of assuming the student doesn't understand English.

2. Learn how to pronounce the student's name - Even if the name is hard to pronounce or sounds funny to you, take the time and make the effort to learn to pronounce their name correctly. Ask the student if you are saying it right, they will appreciate the effort.

3. Increase your knowledge - Take time to learn as much as you can about the language and culture of your students. A quick search for something like "Hmong culture" can give you valuable insights. This might even open up opportunities to bring the student's home language and culture into the classroom. All students will benefit from this. Also be aware of effects of culture shock which can manifest with physical ailments and behavior outbursts.

4. Don't assume he/she does not speak or understand English - Take the time to find out. Ask about the language proficiency level of your students. This will be necessary for planning appropriate accommodations.

One year, again in the spring, a student with rather low English language proficiency - she came to me in the beginning as a beginner, but she was intermediate level at the time - said, "Ms. E, you are my favorite teacher." so I asked her why was that, what did I do that was so different from everyone else. She didn't even hesitate when she answered, "you're the only one who talks to me."

5. Recognize that students will make language mistakes - model correct grammatical form in a supportive, friendly and respectful way. Being overly corrected, and getting writing back full of red ink doesn't make anyone feel good. Consider a conversation like this:

Student: I goed the store.
Teacher: Oh, you went to the store! What did you buy?

It shows an interest in what the student is talking about and is giving extended opportunities for them to practice their English.

6. Do not force reticent students to speak - Give students plenty of opportunities to speak in low risk settings, casual conversations, and with a buddy, etc. Increase wait time to allow students to process a response, and respond positively to student's attempts. Most newcomers go through a silent period that might last months, where they aren't producing the language yet, but they are listening and taking in their environment. If they are not comfortable with speaking, give them other ways to show their understanding of content. Allow them to do activities with pointing, matching.

7. Give lots of praise and encouragement - celebrate successes and give praise for what students can do. Create opportunities for students to be successful in the classroom. Grade for content not language.

Review: Snapverter

I have previously shared with you all reasons why I love Read&Write for Google in the classroom – I share it with so many people, they should probably give me commission. Recently Texthelp has released Snapverter, an add-on for Read&Write for Google that enhances its capabilities. It too can be found here on the Chrome Webstore.

One of the features of Read&Write was the ability to read aloud text on the web and in documents found in your Google drive, but this feature has limitations. Some documents like pdfs don’t read well if at all, and there is so much more text our students are exposed to than just what we see online.

Snapverter allows you to use your smartphone to take a picture of a text and it will convert it to a pdf that can be read aloud. What this means is, potentially anything can be read aloud to students. Worksheets, posters, notes, books, anything! And everything is done right inside your drive. This means that everything is easily saved and shared.

Being the skeptic I tend to be, and unwilling to promote a product that is not quality, I have tested it out. I took a picture of an old copy of Night, by Elie Wiesel, that I had laying around in my office. Using just the camera function on my phone produced a nice quality photo, but when it went through Snapverter, the recognition was off and fragmented, in many places it broke words into the letters and made the text incomprehensible.

Needless to say I was disappointed, but undeterred. I remembered I have a nice scanning app on my phone CamScanner. This is another product that allows free upgrades for education users, so of course I am going to support them. For more information you can go here. When I used the scanner to take photos of articles I use in my workshops and random textbook pages, Snapverter converted them really well.

I went back and used CamScanner to scan a page from Night. I allowed it to smart enhance the photo which reduced much of the yellowing of the page. Doing it this way, I uploaded the new pdf to my drive and Snapverter handed it really well. There are a few places that still produced errors for example it read tarce instead of farce, and bodies instead of Boches. Despite the errors, this proves to be an invaluable tool.

Currently for individual users this is limited to a trial account only, which means 10 conversions and then limited to 1 a week. I think this is adequate for an average user, because it counts documents and not pages. 

Immersion

I share this video in many of my workshops, because it is powerful and contains many accurate reenactments of typical scenes I have seen working with ELLs.

I have seen English learners struggle, I have seen students not want to help their English learner peers, I have seen bullying of English learners, I have seen teachers -inadvertently and purposefully- shame and embarrass English learners in front of the class, I have had administrators tell me not to focus on my newest students, but instead to focus on bubble kids.

However, I really like this video because of some of the positive things it highlights. The teacher, even if she doesn't really know how wants to help Moises. She's trying to do the best she can, and she cares about Moises. Moises is shown as hardworking, he understands the content, even better than his peers, but doesn't have the language to share the knowledge.

So often I hear teachers complain about English language learners. Things such as: Why don't they try harder? They are just lazy. But the reality is much different. English learners are trying very hard to learn English, learn how to communicate, and learn academic content, but it takes time. Research says it can take as many as 4-9 years. All we can do is support our English learners, and help them grow in their English.

Review: Read&Write for Google

In my last post I discussed some effective reading strategies that work for ELLs (English language learners). One of the key topics discussed was vocabulary - it is a problem of a vocabulary gap. Casual exposure to words might lead to some incidental learning, but not the meaningful learning needed to bridge this gap. Neither will list after list of words to memorize. In that same post, I also advocated for incorporating visuals with vocabulary instruction.

I can already hear it...But Lisa, adapting reading passages with visuals and incorporating visuals into vocabulary instruction takes up valuable time! Fear not, there are many tech tools out there to help teachers meet the needs of their students using as little extra time as possible, because time is the one thing a teacher can never have enough of.

Read&Write for Google

This is one of my favorite new tech tools. When I share it with teachers, they always ask why they haven't heard about it before.

Read&Write will read text aloud, allow for dual color highlighting, provide text and picture dictionaries, word to word translation, offer suggestions for words with word prediction, speech to text, allow for annotations, and simplify and summarize text on web pages. Whew! That's a lot, and it doesn't even capitalize on my favorite feature.

My favorite feature of Read&Write is the ability to collect text (from documents in my drive or the internet) through the highlighting, and then have Read&Write create a vocabulary list, with visuals, as a fully editable Google doc in my drive. I am not a fan of the text definitions that Read&Write provides because they are not very student or ELL friendly, however, because the doc is editable I can input my own.

Here's what is looks like from a random website:

The output is not perfect, but it saves time. I can delete images I don't need, change the definition to suit my needs, I can also modify how it looks. Because it is just like any other document, with a little tech-savviness and about 2 minutes I was able to turn the vocabulary list into an adapted text.

Overall, I this product is not perfect, but is a versatile tool. The reading capabilities run into issues one webpages with things like formatting and links, but audio support for ELLs is a great tool for any teachers toolbox. The simplification feature is nice, it increases white space and simplifies the text. I tend to prefer methods that keep most of the same text but simplify words instead of removing sentences. But, it is another useful feature.

I wholeheartedly reccommend Read&Write for Google to ever teacher working with ELLs and struggling readers as a tool to help meet their needs, while saving teachers time. It is also new free for teachers, all it takes is a quick registration after it is installed.

For more infomation:
http://www.texthelp.com/north-america/readwriteforgoogle

Chromestore Link

http://rw.texthelp.com/drive/home/RegisterTeacher

~

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Rigged Game

I'm taking a short respite form writing strategies, the theme of the month, and sharing this video of Dylan Garity at NPS 2013. I was reminded of this video this week. I hadn't seen it in a while, but it's one of those that gets me every time. It always reminds me what I'm working for. The system might be flawed but that doesn't mean we have to give up.

The system is flawed and teachers, buckling under the pressure, are leaving the profession. The other day as I drove down the road, I saw a bumper sticker: North Carolina Teachers: First in Flight. I just moved to this state to teach and everyone I met told me I was going the wrong direction.

The students I've had and continue to help, reminiscent of Juan and Ana in the video, get me up out of bed in the morning and always remind me of the work still to be done.