Blog 10: Homework Rationale

Our rationale for giving homework and independent work is to provide opportunities for students to practice and master content previously taught in the classroom.  Meaningful homework will include a clear academic purpose, promote ownership and choice, will leave the student with a feeling of competence, and will be enjoyable and interesting to the students. Homework does not always need to be done on paper. Students will have choices such as creating comic strips online or researching topics that interest them.  Parental help will be minimal and assignments will be differentiated based on student needs. Assignments will be time-based rather than task-based and video tutorials, as well as web-based resources, will be available on the class website. Specific feedback will be given during weekly homework conferences.   

Blog 9:Fiction vs. Non-Fiction for ELLs

I chose two texts that I have in my classroom.  Hands down, my ELL students (who are also primarily boys) tend to gravitate to the non-fiction texts.  I think that for them non-fiction is a lot more literal and clear for them to understand.  While the non-fiction texts have a lot of specific vocabulary, it is supported by an image or a good description.  In the fiction text, particularly the one I chose, there were more abstract concepts that were difficult to understand even with the picture support provided.  I think both are obviously very important – but I think that teachers need to choose wisely when using fiction texts to make sure they are clear enough for ELLs to make meaning of when they read.  Conversely, they need to make sure their students aren’t choosing only non-fiction to read.

Blog 8: Sheltered Lesson

The teacher was focusing on teaching students how to use inferences.  She used the book Esperanza Rising with her students who were obviously not emerging speakers.  She encouraged students to make text to self connections and helped them through making inferences.

What do you see the teacher do?

·         Set objectives,

·         identify vocabulary

·         gives contexts

·         uses some realia

·         provides visual support

·         using students first language

·         previewing the reading

 What do you see the students do?

The students were not particularly engaged during this lesson.  I think they were well behaved and appeared to be listening but definitely not actively engaged in the lesson.  They politely answered questions but it wasn't until the very end of the lesson before they really answered anything authentic or meaningful.

  

List essential components of the sheltered lesson, comment on your observation of both the teacher and student.

• ·         Teacher set clear language and content objectives
• ·         Vocabulary was introduced
• ·         Teacher reviewed concepts and summed up the lesson objectives
• ·         Teacher made real life connections for students

Although the teacher did spend a lot of time introducing and discussing vocabulary, there were really too many vocabulary words.  When she was explaining some of the vocabulary she used the original vocabulary word to define the vocabulary word.  It would have been nice if she had given the students the chance to practice vocabulary using other modalities.

In this video the teacher does most of the talking.  She didn’t really help encourage students to participate other than just by asking questions.  There was no real opportunity for them to interact with each other or practice skills with peers which we know from our readings is ideal for students learning a new language.  Additionally, one student answered all of the questions and the teacher didn’t use a lot of techniques to get other students to participate. 

I feel like the comprehension skills were not really mastered because students never got the opportunity to practice or demonstrate that they understood what they had been taught in the lesson.

Blog 4: Foreign Language Text Activity

 I picked a book in Russian which is a language I don’t have much knowledge of so this task was very challenging for me!  Initially I looked through the pictures to help me get an idea of what the book was about.  I also tried to find text features that I might recognize.

• What did you do to make meaning?
•   Used illustrations
•   Looked for repetitive words (names) 
• Attempted to find some of the letters that I knew in Russian

One thing that some members of class did was to go to another student who spoke the language they were trying to read.  In the classroom, if a student was really struggling, they could go to someone else who knew the language if there was someone available.  However, in a lot of cases, this isn't always possible. 

In the text, it was possible to make out quotations – although they are a different shape and other text features.  I also was able to make out the names of the characters because they were written repetitively.  The pictures in the book weren’t all that helpful because they didn’t really help me understand the plot of the story but they did give me ideas on the characters in the book.

What are the implications for teachers?

•  Teachers need to be very mindful in how they present text to students. 
• They need to be mindful that they are scaffolding texts and to help their students get the maximum amount of information from the text
• They need to have resources in the classroom to help their students out for example picture dictionaries, first language resources.
•  Make sure books you are giving students have pictures that really do tell a story to help them make more meaning.
• Present books so that students are meaningfully looking for a word or phrase that they have learned so that they have success with the activity.

As someone who has traveled a lot, I have to admit that I’m not all that daunted by foreign text.  However, I remember the day I landed in Beijing.  Talk about overwhelming!!! I was lucky to have a guide book with me!  I remember that my first strategy was to learn common characters first, which in China ended up being numbers.  I could empathize with first language learners in their frustration at not understanding what was going on in the book. 

Blog 5: Children’s Literature Review

I reviewed two of my favorite children’s books and examined them through the lens of a second language learner.  For me the challenge has always been anticipating what exactly will be difficult for ELLs or children who live in non-literature enriched environments to understand.

The first book I looked at was The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg.  This is one of my favorite books and I have read it many times.  It tells the story of a stranger who is involved in an accident with a farmer.   He ends up with amnesia and stays on the farm to recover.  He has strange clothes

Some of the things in this book that might be hard for an ELL student to understand could be:

• ·         Fall and seasons,
• ·         strangers
• ·         urban vs rural
• ·         magic and mystery

Some of students that I have worked with had very strong religious backgrounds and the magic elements of this story may or may not be something that they are familiar with or completely understand.  Additionally, because of the strong religious beliefs, it may not be possible to explain these concepts to them.

Another consideration is the rural components of this book.  In one scene the family and the stranger are all dancing in the living room while people play instruments.  There is also a lot of scenes of farm life.  Students in urban settings might not always understand what is going on in these pictures because of their lack of exposure to

The second book that I reviewed was Flotsam by David Wiesner.   This book is about a boy that finds a strange camera washed up on the beach.  As with Wiesner’s other books, there are no words in this story.  While this is a non-verbal book and would be easy for Ell’s to access on one hand, it would also be very difficult to explain some of the deeper meanings and nuances of the story without language to explain them with.  Images in this book are intricate and when I have used it with kids before, there were many questions about the pictures.  By the same token, it would be an excellent book for studetns to practice asking questions about.

Some of the key topics in this book that I think Ells would have a challenge with would be:

• ·         Magic
• ·         Non-verbal recount
• ·         Ocean (tides and flotsam)

Again, culturally, the magic might pose a problem for Ells.  Depending on where students are from or their experiences, they may not have enough prior knowledge to access a lot of this story.  Visually though, this is a stunning story and students, no matter their level of English, could gain important skills from this book. 

Blog 6: Learning vs Acquisition

During this activity, we looked for different characteristics in learning/word recognition and acquisition/sociopsycholinguistic points of view using the following characteristics to guide us.

 

Learning/Word Recognition	Acquisition/Sociopsycholinguistic
Identify words to make meaning	Use multiple cueing systems
Phonics based	Graphophonics based
Examine parts of words/text	Start with whole, learn skills needed
	experience/fact-finding based

For the most part, we were in agreement of most of our answers and when we had a disagreement on the task it was easy for us to see how some tasks are not easily categorized into one neat category.  We all agreed that round robin reading was a terrible task no matter what category it is in!

 

One the groups big questions was about pre-teaching vocabulary.  The text says that pre-teaching vocabulary is an attribute of word recognition.  However, the sociopsycholinguistic model also discusses the importance of activating background knowledge prior to reading.  We felt as a group that this certainly could be either based on those criteria.  Pre-teaching vocabulary offers an element of exploration which is in keeping with the sociopsycholinguistic model.

Another a-ha we had was on the item that says “correct peers when they make a mistake during reading”.  Initially we all said that this was a learning/word recognition view.  As we talked about it as a group though and as a class we came to the conclusion that it could really be both.  Because the teacher was not doing the correction, it was more of an exploratory process akin to what sociopsycholinguistic view would expect.

Blog #2 My Writing Instruction

Writing has been my solace and an outlet for as long as I can remember.   As a writer I have had very unique experiences as far as my instruction.  Throughout my career, it has been a mix of formulaic instruction (ugh, grammar books!) and creative.

Growing up in Vermont, we were lucky to have a lot of artists in residence who would work in our schools for short periods of time working on writing with us.  In school I met authors, poets and songwriters.  Through them and my teachers too, I learned a lot about the craft of writing.  In fourth grade, Vermont author David Budbill came to my school.  At the time I was in a tiny school that had only 30 students from grades 4-8.  He spent a month with us working on crafting fiction pieces.  We had read one of his books as a class so for me it was like meeting a legend.  After his stay, we bound our books of stories and to this day I still have mine. 

As I got older, my instruction became much more formulaic and prescribed.  In 8^th grade, I had a teacher who hated how I wrote.  For me it was probably the most miserable time of my life – mostly because every paper got turned back to me with a lot of corrections to be made.  It was the only time that my mom, a teacher, ever took my side in parent teacher conferences!   This teacher thought my writing was too flowery and did not appreciate or like my independent voice at all.  My mom said that she didn’t have to like it, it was my voice and it was how I wrote and she needed to learn how to respect our differences.  My teacher was not amused.  I entered the state poetry contest that year and of all of the students in the state who entered, I got an honorable mention, flowery writing and all!

In high school, my creative writing endeavors got relegated to notes and poetry.  I spent much more of my time learning formal writing processes.  When I was a freshman, I almost failed English!  It was a steep learning curve from elementary to high school as far as academic English was concerned.  Looking back now I realize I had the worst teacher I could have possibly had that year and most likely would have done much better had this teacher had any teaching experience and spent more time guiding us through the writing process instead of just expecting us to already know it.

University brought whole new challenges to my writing.  I attended school in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Although they speak English there, it is the Queen’s English and man oh man did I have to relearn how to spell.  To this day I spell travelling with two l’s and recognise with and s.  And don’t even get me started on ‘our’ words!  My biggest challenge at this time actually came when I began writing in Spanish.  When I started college, I had just come from a year of living in Mexico.  My oral Spanish was very strong after a year of speaking it daily.  However, I had yet to learn to write much more than a few words.  Spelling in Spanish is very easy though because the words are written just like they sound.  But, accents and syntax were totally lost on me.  I struggled to master these skills, again with a professor who thought I should know all of these things if I was going to be in such a high level Spanish class. 

Of course, my instruction was not your usual experience – but for the most part it was authentic and meaningful and filled with lessons that I take with me know as a writer.  Writing has always been easy for me so it is something that I have enjoyed (minus the grammar books!).  Because of my experiences learning to read and write in different languages, I can also understand how hard and frustrating writing can be.