Teaching Strategies for English Language Learners

After interviewing an English language learner for my case study, I was inspired to do some research on possible teaching strategies for ESL students in the classroom.

This case study/article I found online does a good job of breaking down six different strategies that have been found to be useful in the classroom when teaching English language learners.

http://www.all4ed.org/files/archive/publications/SixKeyStrategies.pdf

Let me know if you have any more thoughts or suggestions as I'm very interested in eventually teaching ESL. :)

Gaming

For those of you interested in more info on gaming, I posted some great resources that I learned about in Prof Barnett's class on tech in the classroom. It is under the gaming topic of the blog. hope you all find this useful!

Discussing Controversial Issues

Hi All,

Thought I would post this article as it reminded me of the discussion we had the other week about discussing controversial issues with students in the classroom...

Don't teach, don't tell?

Text Sets

After reading Tovani's article, I became quite interested with using text sets in my own ELA classroom. I think it is a great idea, although tedious and time consuming, as issues of text complexity and the common core are becoming prevalent in high school classes. I found options for a few text sets that incorporate both history and literature, starting from the American Revolution and reaching up to about 2003. There is obviously room for change based upon individual preference and the needs of the students, but I thought this might be a decent place to start.

American Revolution: Before and After

Cast Two Shadows: The American Revolution in the South by Anne Rinaldi (YA)

The Fifth of March: A Story of the Boston Massacre by Anne Rinaldi (YA)

The Bastard by John Jakes

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (YA)

My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier (YA)

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson (YA)

Redcoat by Bernard Cornwell

Rise to Rebellion: A Novel of the American Revolution by Jeff M. Shaara

Wolf By The Ears by Anne Rinaldi (YA)

Civil War/Westward Expansion

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Mine Eyes Have Seen by Ann Rinaldi (YA)

Dances With Wolves by Michael Blake

Family by California J. Cooper

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beatrice Stowe

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt (YA)

The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox (YA)

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

North and South by John Jakes

The Adventures of Huck Finn by Mark Twain

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines

This Strange New Feeling by Julius Lester (YA)

The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton (YA)

Daniel’s Walk by Michael Spooner (YA)

Turn of the Century (1890’s-1920’s)

The Magnificent Amberson by Booth Tarkington

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Call of the Wild/White Fang by Jack London

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch (YA)

White Lilacs by Caroline Meyer (YA)

Cold, Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

Great Depression/World War II (1930’s-1940’s)

Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt

Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by Hampton Sides

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene (YA)

Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson

The Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida (YA)

Wings of Honor by Tom Willard

The Last Lieutenant by John J. Gobbell

Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh

The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (YA)

Tobacco Sticks by William Hazelgrove

A Separate Peace John Knowles

1950’s to Present

Rocket Boys: A Memoir by Homer Hickam

The Bomb by Theodore Taylor (YA)

Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic

Your Blues Ain't Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell

There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz

Jubilee Journey by Caroline Meyer (YA)

Spite Fences by Trudy Krisher (YA)

The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy

Guns Up by Johnnie M. Clark

Teaching with Love and Logic

Teaching with Love and Logic

http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Love-Logic-Control-Classroom/dp/0944634486

Game Design?

With all the articles about video games I figured I would post this link to a Master's Degree program in Stanford University

http://suse-ldt.stanford.edu/

Learning, Design, and Technology

Education as assimilation - what do our students have to sacrifice?

I have been reading this book called More than a Dream: The Cristo Rey Story, by G.R. Kearney. The book gives a history of the Cristo Rey Catholic schools, including their mission, vision, purpose, and successes. One man, Mike Heidkamp, who was hired at the first Cristo Rey School in Chicago, shares his understanding of education after returning from teaching in Peru, an understanding that links to a lof of what we have been talking about in class. Here is the quote:

"Education doesn't function the same way for all kinds and all communities. I'm not just talking about resource allocation. That's part of it, but there's also the fact that part of education is teaching people to assimilate. Part of education is developing a common culture. But what does it mean if you're starting from the outside and moving in? What do you have to check at the door at various stages along the way? Compare that to the person who's starting at the center, the person who already owns that common culture. That person doesn't have to compromise nearly as much and I believe will have a very different educational experience. For me the question became how can I rethink and rework education in a way that doesn't ask people to deny parts of themselves?"

Thoughts on Heidkamp's questions?

TED talks - Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

MCAS/ Critical Literacy

For those of you who (like me) are unfamiliar with MCAS here is their website with some example questions/ FAQ's that helped give me a better idea of the test: http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/

Building on what we talked about in class, here is an example writing prompt question:

WRITING PROMPT

Often in works of literature, a character develops a friendship with or feelings of love for someone who is disapproved of by others.

From a work of literature you have read in or out of school, select a character who develops a friendship with or feelings of love for someone who is disapproved of by others. In a well-developed composition, identify the character, describe the character’s relationship, and explain how the relationship relates to the work as a whole.

What I'm wondering is... if a student is taught to read text critically, not in the dominant sense.... they might have a different take on how to respond to this question. For example, in regards to a character who expresses a love for "someone who is disapproved of by others" a student experienced with critical literacy might have focused on the character being disapproved of by others, instead of looking at the "character who develops" the relationship or even the relationship as a whole and be unable to answer this question in the way that is being asked. To what extent would this student receive an acceptable score if their response was critical, but not answering the question the way that is expected?

I remember taking AP exams and having to write to a specific score. We had models in the classroom of what the top scores looked like and basically practiced mimicking them in order to receive the same scores. The models were very specific-- how would a student do on an exam in which they were expected to write in a very specific format if they responded in the ways they practice in critical literacy? Their responses would be critical of course, but how lenient is the test system to allow for this type of response/ are test makers trying to create this rigid one format to dominate writing systems across schools and discourage critical/create responses? What do you guys think?

Another look at Critical Literacy

I am very interested in Critical Literacy, and as an English teacher I look to use this practice in my classroom. Today, we didn't get to Brendan's question about using critical literacy through writing, and this article touches upon writing and how teacher's can influence the writing environment and can help students as writers look for certain things within a text. This article also offers multiple resources in terms of optional texts about Critical Literacy and different lesson plans and websites.

Critical Literacy

-Maureen

"No, Seriously: No Excuses"

Reading this article from the New York Times reminded me of a small group discussion we had in class regarding addressing the "issues" of literacy, including issues of literacy as power and capital and as a manifestation of the dominant culture, in our classrooms. My group had decided that one way to address such issues is to hold all students to high expectation of achievement. This article addresses and defends this approach, stating that we must hold all students and schools, regardless of their socio-economic status or demographics, to a high standard. I thought the idea of all students as "apples" was interesting as well. Although this article might be less related to our recent conversations on critical literacy, I think it is something that can appeal to us as teachers, especially as many of us are teachers in urban schools with minority students from low-income families and neighborhoods. How do we hold these students to the same standards as students from affluent neighborhoods and well-equipped schools? How do we reveal and teach the dominant discourse to these students so that they can compete in today's society without sacrificing their original language, discourse, and culture? An issue from a few classes ago!

Text Message Literacy

I was browsing Google earlier today and found a study analyzing the effects of text message use on normal literacy practices in the classroom.

The title of the article is "Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children's literacy attainment?" by

Beverly Plester,

Clare Wood,

Victoria Bell.

Abstract:

This paper reports on two studies which investigated the relationship between children's texting behaviour, their knowledge of text abbreviations and their school attainment in written language skills. In Study One, 11–12-year-old children provided information on their texting behaviour. They were also asked to translate a standard English sentence into a text message and vice versa. The children's standardised verbal and non-verbal reasoning scores were also obtained. Children who used their mobiles to send three or more text messages a day had significantly lower scores than children who sent none. However, the children who, when asked to write a text message, showed greater use of text abbreviations (‘textisms’) tended to have better performance on a measure of verbal reasoning ability, which is highly associated with Key Stage 2 (KS2) and 3 English scores. In Study Two, children's performance on writing measures was examined more specifically. Ten to eleven-year-old children were asked to complete another English to text message translation exercise. Spelling proficiency was also assessed, and KS2 Writing scores were obtained. Positive correlations between spelling ability and performance on the translation exercise were found, and group-based comparisons based on the children's writing scores also showed that good writing attainment was associated with greater use of textisms, although the direction of this association is nor clear. Overall, these findings suggest that children's knowledge of textisms is not associated with poor written language outcomes for children in this age range.

I'm having trouble opening the remainder of the article, but it can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-4369.2008.00489.x/full or requested through the library.

"Karaoke for Literacy": Improving literacy in India

After reading this article from the Boston Globe, I was inspired and thought you might find it interesting!

http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pdqweb?did=2141194321&sid=3&Fmt=3&clientld=7750&RQT=309&VName=PQD

In Khodi India, for past the past decade, schools have been using Hindi-subtitled Karaoke in classrooms. I.e. Showing music videos with subtitles in the students' native language (Also known as SLS- Same Language Subtitling). According to Riddhi Shah, author of the article, this practice has largely contributed to the rise in functional literacy in the area (up 50% in the past nine years!) The reason... "making reading easy and entertaining." One ninth grade student said: "I was always tired and lazy. Then I began reading better, and everything just became easier" after experiencing SLS.

I attached the article which gives some more background and explains the practice in detail.

So... my question is... Do you think this would work in the American classroom? How about with ESL students in the process of learning the English language? Could we show them American videos with English subtitles? In India, the practice worked largely because students would follow along, write the lyrics down, and go back and study them. How could we bring this into practice in America?


(I found this in the Boston Globe in the BC library site... if you have trouble opening this, maybe try googling "Watch and Learn; How Music Videos are Triggering a Literacy Boom" by Riddhi Shah)





-Katie Flynn

How Slang Affects Students in the Classroom

I saw this article on U.S. News & World Report and thought that it might be of interest.

How Slang Affects Students in the Classroom

-Kristin Anzuoni

Functional Language Analysis Strategy: ELA Teachers

In the introduction of Reading in Secondary Content Areas, it is stated that "Functional language analysis is based in systemic functional linguistics (SFL), a theory that provides a framework for demonstrating how meaning is constructed in particular language choices...Functional language analysis goes beyond- and adds to- these strategies by providing tools for deconstructing texts, ssentence by sentence, to help students process unfamiliar discourse patterns and talk about how meaning is constructed through language choices."

This got me thinking about a worksheet exercise that my high school English teacher gave us and it definitely helped me and my peers tackle poetry analysis. Its an acronym, with each letter standing for a step by step process into which the student analyzes the poem. Take a look and see what you think.

TYPCASTT:

T=Title: Think about the possible meanings that the title could mean.
Y= Your Dictionary: Use it to look up words you don't know; Connotation and Denotation are important in poetry!
P= Paraphrase: Translate the poem into your own words, line by line.
C=Connotation:Look beyond the literal: What is the feeling of the words in the poem? Consider figurative language-symbolism, diction, sound devices (rhyme, meter and alliteration).
A=Attitude: speaker/poet's attitude in the poem; the tone.
S=Shift: Note any shifts in speaker or attitude.
T=Title (again): Look again, this time with a new understanding of the poem.
T=Theme: What is the poet saying? What is the connection to 'real life?'

Memoir Rubric -8th Grade

MEMOIR PROJECT RUBRIC

Name _____________________________________

IDEAS and CONTENT the meaning and the development of the message	§ Stories highlight meaningful, life-changing, special, or otherwise significant moments in the writer’s life § Minimum of 1 typed page § All necessary information and details are included § Writer demonstrates knowledge of memoir as a genre: includes dialogue, setting, descriptive details, and reflection § Creative and thoughtful title that captures the memoir’s theme _________ / 5
ORGANIZATION the internal structure of the piece of writing	§ Inviting introduction and satisfying conclusion § Writing has a logical order or pattern § Transitions are used effectively to show change in idea, experience, or time period § Effective pacing: the writer spends just enough time on a topic (not too much information or too little) _________ / 4
VOICE the way the writer brings the topic to life	§ Purpose is clear and powerful § Awareness of audience makes for compelling and engaging reading: the writing reaches out and pulls the reader in § The writing has style and flavor unique to the writer _________ / 3
WORD CHOICE the specific vocabulary the writer uses to convey meaning	§ Wording is precise § Powerful and engaging words; evidence of strong vocabulary § Consistent of tense § Figurative language (metaphors, similes, idiom, etc.) is used effectively _________ / 4
SENTENCE FLUENCY the way the words and phrases flow throughout the text	§ Writing is smooth and enjoyable to read § Use of transitional words and phrases § Sentence length and structure is varied and sophisticated. § Sentences begin in a variety of ways _________ / 4
CONVENTIONS the mechanical correctness of the writing	§ Correct grammar § Correct sentence structure: no fragments or run-ons § Correct spelling and punctuation § Correct format _________ / 4 points
TOTAL _________ / 24

Rubrics from Lauren Cohen's Classroom

SIXTH GRADE WRITING RUBRIC

Writing to Reflect

	BEGINNING	APPROACHING	MEETING	EXCEEDING
Topic/ Idea Development	· Experience unclear · Little or no detail to describe experience · Introduction or conclusion missing · Essay makes no attempt to express what has been gained from the experience	· Experience clear · Some evidence to describe the experience · Conclusion incomplete; may appear tacked on at the end · Introduction attempted; may be simplistic or incomplete · Essay attempts to express what has been gained from the experience	· Experience presented clearly and in an interesting way · Adequate details paint the picture of the experience · Introduction grabs the reader’s attention and introduces the experience on which you are reflecting · Conclusion effectively wraps up the main ideas · Essay clearly expresses what has been gained from the experience	· Experience fully developed · Variety of compelling details, reasons or explanations used as evidence of ideas drawn from the experience · Engaging, effective introduction · Thought-provoking or memorable conclusion
Organization	· Arrangement of ideas difficult to follow · Details appear listed · Lacks transitions · Some sections need to be organized into more than one paragraph or paragraphs need to be combined · Many ideas repeated	· Order and arrangement of ideas sometimes difficult to follow · Some lapse in the general flow of writing · Transitions attempted · Some Ideas may be repeated without elaboration	· Order and arrangement of ideas clear and easy to follow · Paragraphs have a clear and appropriate method of organization · Flow of writing is maintained consistently · Transitions used	· Organization demonstrates some unique qualities that enhance writing · Pacing and flow of writing feels smooth and natural · Transitions used effectively · Writing demonstrates a variety of sentence lengths, forms, and beginnings
Voice/ Word Choice	· Writer distant or detached from topic · Personality of writer does not come through · Most of the words used are simplistic · Writer uses no figurative language	· Some tone may be inappropriate for topic and audience · Personality of writer comes through at times · Some words may be simplistic, but word choice is mostly effective · Writer attempts to draw comparisons using metaphors or similes	· Tone is consistently appropriate for topic and audience · Personality of the writer comes through · Word choice is effective · Writer draws comparisons using metaphors or similes	· Writing consistently lively and expressive · Personality of the writer consistently comes through, as if he or she is truly interested in the purpose and audience · Word choice is consistently effective; ideas expressed in a unique, distinct, and creative way · Writer draws comparisons using extensive or extended metaphors or similes
GUM/ Conventions	· Many grammatical and/or spelling errors sometimes confuse the reader · Little to no variety in sentence structure and use of writing conventions · Many punctuation and capitalization errors	· Some grammatical and/or spelling errors · Some attempts made to use a variety of sentences and writing conventions · With few exceptions, rules of punctuation and capitalization are followed	· Few grammar and/or spelling errors present · Some variety of writing conventions is used for creative and stylistic purposes · Rules of punctuation and capitalization followed	· No grammar and/or spelling errors · Both commonly and uncommonly known rules of punctuation and capitalization are followed · Student applies knowledge of writing conventions effectively to edit both his/her own final draft and writing done by others as well

COMMENDATIONS: SUGGESTIONS:

Name________________________________________ Date________________

Oral Presentation Rubric

1----------------------------------------1/2----------------------------------------0

The presentation fulfills The presentation partially The presentation does not

all elements of the criteria. fulfills the criteria. fulfill the criteria.

In the oral presentation, the student…

speaks clearly. 1 ½ 0

(I can understand each word you say.)

speaks audibly. 1 ½ 0

(I can hear you from the back of the room.)

speaks with inflection. 1 ½ 0

(I can hear your voice rise and fall with emotion.)

speaks with appropriate pacing. 1 ½ 0

(You don’t speak too quickly or too slowly.)

has eye contact with the audience. 1 ½ 0

(You look up at the audience from time to time.)

uses sensory details or examples 1 ½ 0

of figurative language in the

excerpt.

(Your excerpt has strong word choice.)

gives supporting evidence or 1 ½ 0

details from research.

(Your excerpt gives information from your research.)

TOTAL ORAL _______

Exceeding 6 ½ - 7

Meeting 5 ½ – 6

Approaching 4 – 5

Beginning 0 – 3 ½

Name_______________________________________Date______________Period_____

Book Jacket / Speech Rubric

Title of Book ________________________________________

Categories	Notes/Comments	Points Possible	My Points
Basic Speech Elements
We could hear/understand you. (No gum!)		1
You looked at your audience.		1
You sounded interested, and we could tell you were prepared. You got us interested in the book and didn’t give away the ending.		10
You stood up straight.		1
The time was between 1 and 2 minutes.		1
You had a closing for your speech; it didn’t just end.		1
Plot Diagram
You fully completed the plot diagram. Rising and falling actions were detailed.		10
Book Jacket
Front cover is neat and colorful. It is not copied.		8
Front flap includes a minimum of 4 reviews.		3
Back cover grabs the reader’s attention with an interesting passage.		8
Back flap includes author information. It is NOT copied. It is in your own words!		6

Hand this rubric to the teacher before you present!

Total ______ 50

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