Why the exaggerated pause?

I know I said I’d be posting soon about academic language and how to incorporate it into your teaching of ELLs. But you know that feel when you have just discovered something that just totally rocks your intellectual boat and you just can’t get past it? Or, has your mind ever been like a boa constrictor where it has taken in so much that you know it’s going to be weeks before you totally digest what you’ve just learned? Well, choose whichever metaphor suits you, and that describes me of late. I just can’t wrap my head around explaining anything else until my mind stops reeling. I love moments like these but they can be frustrating, too, because they cause such writer’s block. I’m not capable of writing about even the most mundane daily tidbits. So, please indulge elsewhere for a little longer. I’ll be back soon

"May the odds be EVER in your favor"

Reblogged from Reflections of a First Year Math Teacher:

Having just watched The Hunger Games with my two boys earlier today, Effie Trinket’s Capitol slogan, ”May the odds be EVER in your favor,” struck me as the perfect tag line for Arne Duncan’s NCLB waivers, officially known as ESEA Flexibility.  The irony in the line applies equally well to public education as it does to the unfortunate tributes in the movie, with the odds stacked against both sets of players by the heavy-hand of those living in a Capitol city.

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Well said. Reblogging. :)

Approaching Learning Cultures

Soon my break will finish and I will return to school to face the first assault of standardized tests. With my return, I will be adding my second post on teaching academic language to ELLs. In the meantime, I’d like to share with you a curriculum approach called Learning Cultures that I’m excited about. It’s really challenging me to think much more deeply about literacy and what it could really look like, if collaboration and discussion were more embedded within the curriculum, instead of just a strategy or activity plugged in somewhere. It’s inspiring me in so many ways right now, generating so many questions. A colleague I deeply respect is involved, and I encourage you to take the time to look at the page of videos from practitioners of this approach.

The article I’m sharing now relates very sharply to the problems with the current moves toward education reform, from what I feel is a unique, philosophical angle.

This article is by David Olson, whose book, The World On Paper I’m about to read. Here is a bit from the article:

More recently, many have warned of the pitfalls of treating one social agent—the school—as if it were the only cause of learning and social development. Others warned of the danger of setting unachievable goals, and still others warned of the naivety of the school systems for promising to achieve the impossible. My criticism is more generic and more severe. It is that assigning responsibility for learning or failing to learn to forces outside of the learners themselves both disables the learners and leads researchers to completely overlook the primary resource for educational development, namely, the learner him or herself as an agent of and with responsibility for his or her own learning. Consequently, it has allowed reformers to ignore aspects of schooling that could be instrumental in advancing children’s agency, responsibility and accountability.

Blog on break

I’m in vacation and while I could use the time to reflect and write, I’m using it to spend as much time with my daughter as possible instead. See you next week.

If only I’d been told…

For most of my life, I was told by parents, teachers and others that I should be a lawyer (presumably because I like to argue and defend), or a writer (presumably because I loved to write since a very early age). But if someone had introduced science to me this way, or if I had learned about anthropology or linguistics early on in life, I know I would have chosen to be a scientist. Because, when I think about it now, scientists do all that and more:

Yet, for any scientific purpose there are different sides, contrasting analyses, theories and predictions. Choosing between them and justifying one’s choices are what being a scientist is all about. And we select our theories in part using data.”

—Daniel Everett, Language: The Cultural Tool, p. 205 (2012)

All I remember is biology and chemistry in high school.

But let’s keep reducing what students learn, rather than expanding. As long as it’s all testable.

Don’t Just Keep It Simple

This post is the first in a new series to address the question of teaching academic language to ELLs. This was inspired by the fact that many readers who find my blog are searching for “juicy sentences”, a term often used to refer to complex sentence structures.

Also, I was inspired to dig more into this topic now because of a recent workshop I attended regarding the language demands in math and science, especially with its emphasis throughout the new Common Core standards. At this conference, the confusion and surprise shared by most of the middle school and high school content area (non-ESL) teachers attending told me that this is not the common focus of all the supports schools are giving teachers, or not enough. Given the questions many had by the end, I don’t feel the workshop really clarified the different levels of challenges for ELLs when accessing academic content. One new teacher whose subject is math even refused to participate in the last activity because she “doesn’t teach language” because the kids don’t write in her class. I know that often times schools can start setting expectations without the proper supports or training since, like the students we teach, we often need multiple exposures to and different ways of examining and trying something new before we can really make it our own. Otherwise, just telling people to do something can engender resistance. Hopefully, this is will be a useful resource for those curious or wanting to teach it.

I must caution you though: there are some in the field who see this as the “magic bullet” to pull ELLs toward proficiency. It isn’t. It is, however, a necessary skill they need for accessing academic texts. And as long as reading complex writing is a part of school, then learning the language involved will be crucial.

I will address looking at texts for “juicy sentences”, choosing the words to teach, and the kind of work kids can do to put it all into practice. Some of my suggestions will be most useful for elementary classroom teachers, but most will have broad application. Please feel free to share your experiences, questions, and concerns below or via email.

For example, today I’m going to share something that I imagine many elementary teachers already do but maybe don’t consider it academic language, don’t know the term to describe what they are doing, or don’t think it’s appropriate for beginner* ELLs.

Synonyms.

Specifically, Tier 2 words that are synonyms of more common words ELLs pick up more readily. Tier 2 are words that involve more depth and require more context or description when explaining, and can even represent shades of a similar meaning (like surprised vs amazed), or they are polysemous (words with multiple meanings like words with different meanings depending on context like the word “even”), homonyms, homophones, words with prefixes/suffixes, or words that I’d say play pivotal roles in a paragraph like “except” or “although”, etc., and are not technical words students will rarely encounter outside the subject area (like hydroponic or submarine or equilateral). Those are Tier 3. Tier 1 are basic, everyday words.

Teaching synonyms allow you to use words students know already (mad, angry), and build on it. We act out the words, discuss different contexts in which these words work, draw pictures or write comics for the kids to refer to. Then the kids are on the lookout for them as they read or are read to. The Frayer model works well here (though for non-example, I prefer “sentence with the word”). I have had kids write the word on one side of an index card and then do the Frayer boxes on the back, or they can do it in their notebooks.

When time is short, having a chart like this that you refer to, or that you use as a reminder to use these words yourself, even if you can’t teach into them right away.

You can take a week, a month or more to teach them; it depends on your kids.

*The term beginner, just like the term ELL, covers a vast and diverse area of language comprehension. One teacher’s idea of beginner is different from another’s. I will address this throughout subsequent posts, in terms of how I teach academic language for the multiple levels, but for the sake of clarity, when I say beginner I am not referring to newcomers who arrived yesterday from their country. They, too, can be taught to use academic language, but when I use the term beginners, I am referring to students who have a very basic understanding of English (struggle with past tense, possessives, personal pronouns, and writing beyond the most basic of sentences; subject/verb/object).

I don’t want to be in a hurry

Five minutes before I had to leave for work, my daughter woke, crying, likely because she didn’t find me next to her. I am always in a hurry in the morning. Yet, although I didn’t have much time, I went into the bedroom; my husband waved me away, but I wanted to nurse her to see if she’d go back to sleep.

Normally, I would have been keeping one eye on my watch, worried I’d miss my bus, but today I had a realization. My daughter was going to miss me while I was at work, just as I miss her. This moment was a gift.

She won’t always need me. She won’t always miss cuddling with me or cry when I leave for work. But here and now she does.

These are not epiphanies, I know, but my grasp on them are deeper than before. See, like most new parents, my partner and I have different approaches and disagree at times, primarily about how she goes to sleep. These disagreements weren’t always there. In the beginning, she would only fall asleep if we rocked her and patted her on the back (not lightly either), and then would stay asleep longest while on our shoulder or chests. So we took turns sleeping with her in our reclining sofa.

Neither of us questioned this routine. Put her in a crib to cry? If my husband considered this, he never hinted. It wasn’t a case of Dr. Ferber in a crib one corner of a dark room, screaming to no response and Dr. Sears in another part of the room, being nursed to sleep in a giant family bed. Although it may have felt like this at times. Overall, we were/are pragmatic, and doing what we thought was best for her. I mean, when I was pregnant, I had always imagined her going to sleep in the crib or cosleeper we bought. The circumstances and her strong personality just didn’t fit. I often tell my husband, if she slept through the night, or went to bed easily, she’d be the perfect child, and perfection doesn’t exist.

Weeks and months passed, and she goes to sleep more easily, in our bed and not on our shoulders, but still likes being rocked if she is having a hard time falling asleep. With teething and her ambitions, it’s no surprise to me she is a toss-n-turner. Experts in the field often say when a baby is about to make leaps, their sleep is interrupted, and my little simcha has been doing cartwheels.

But, her sleep is still a topic. It’s still something one of us is trying to deal with each night. We have tried, at my husband’s request, getting her to sleep parts of the night in a crib. It doesn’t make her sleep through the night or fall asleep on her own, but it does give her a place to wind down until she tells me she’s ready to be nursed to sleep (yes, she cues me).

And then yesterday in the car, she was crying, wanting to fall asleep but wanting or needing to nurse to do so. And the remark was made that this was a “sleep association”. Yes, nursing is. But must that automatically have a negative connotation? Must my daughter who is so independent during the day also be fully independent at night? Should the “association” of sleep and nursing equate crutch? Can it not signify love, comfort, cuddling and our relationship ushering her into dream time? Why shouldn’t she want her mom there? I’m happy to “parent” her to sleep, as some put it. Yes, it’s exhausting. Yes, I miss the days of sleeping through the night (although I didn’t have that during pregnancy either). But there were days when I gladly gave up sleep to a good novel, movie, concert, or all-nighter. Why shouldn’t I do the same for her? Should I worry she will need me to sneak into her dorm room to nurse her to sleep then too?

It seems to me that the concept of sleep associations is only negative when a child needs us, as if reliance on others for something like sleep is a bad skill and a sign of weakness because it impedes my life. It makes me wonder if this was a big concern for early man. It’s laughable to imagine the scenarios. Of course not. It’s only in cultures like ours. I don’t criticize anyone who places their child in a crib, or even let’s them cry a tiny bit. Everyone has their own values. But I also want to be understood as someone who is choosing to do this for benefits I see, not simply because I couldn’t find a better solution.

So, I choose instead to see these moments as gifts. As extra time I get to be there for her, because I won’t always have that option. My daughter will sleep through the night unassisted, just like I did, eventually. I’m not in a hurry.

A little late, Mr. Duncan

In today’s Edweek, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is quoted as saying,

“Do you need to publish every single teacher’s rating in the paper? I don’t think you do,” he said. “There’s not much of an upside there, and there’s a tremendous downside for teachers. We’re at a time where morale is at a record low. … We need to be sort of strengthening teachers, and elevating and supporting them.”

Your vague “sort of” does not go unnoticed. There’s a reason why you are conveniently late with this and aggravatingly mute on what you mean by “sort of” strengthening, elevating, and supporting teachers. I presume that perhaps after supporting the onslaught for so long it’s hard to change the party line on a dime? Have you been hearing a louder buzz of disapproval and disgust this time? I hope so. I hope the sound is deafening.

You can’t have a policy of undermining teachers as a method for promoting your new education agenda and then realize too late that you can’t pull it off without them. I think there’s this idea that as long as teachers are desperate enough, or their ranks overwhelmed by newbies or alternatively-certified-non-traditional types (like me), they will remain complacent and unable to oppose what is done to their professions.

I am beginning to believe you are wrong.

No “Mock”ing this United Nations

So, I have often joked about how my classroom is like the 21st century version of the little red schoolhouse with the multi-grade level needs of my students, and how it’s like a mini United Nations because of all the countries and languages it often represents.

This year, as a class project that needed to touch on two themes, countries and careers, we learned about the United Nations. Together, they wrote and performed a speech as if they were ambassadors about an area of concern (deforestation and pollution). I used this video to inspire them and introduce the project.

There is not a lot of material available to the students that is at their reading level about the UN, so we studied the organization in two ways: first, we went together to the UN’s website for kids (which, frankly, needs a ton of work), and discussed and played one of the games there about disaster relief. The kids got to work in small groups discussing what resources they’d choose to purchase if they needed to protect their small island nation from a tsunami. We then discussed some of the different areas the UN works within and they chose the topic that interested them most and the career they’d like (for example, peace education and translator).

It was honesty done far too quickly and I would have liked to have made it a bigger part of my curriculum. The students I had this year are very aware of things like environmental issues; it seems to come up often as a connection or reference they make.

This all made me imagine both how terribly exciting and difficult it’d be to do a model United Nations curriculum with the kids. I can see them choosing and studying a country, learning to research, to collect relevant information, organize, present, and argue for ideas; all of which are higher-order thinking skills and would allow them to apply their gained knowledge, as outlined by the Common Core standards. It could even have the added benefit of creating teachable moments on conflict resolution, cultural awareness and respect which are often so needed in a class like mine.

Have any of you ever done a model UN with beginner ELLs, or elementary students? Or a similar meaty project? If so, what was it like?

Don't Mess With Texas!

Reblogged from From the Desk of Mr. Foteah:

Deep in the heart of Texas, it seems the delicious taste of a people’s revolution is hanging in the air. Indeed, state Education Commissioner Robert Scott is firing salvos against testing that someday might earn him the distinction of being, “The Scott Heard ‘Round the World.”

His army is responding. According to the Washington Post, “more than 100 districts” have passed a resolution condemning an “over reliance” on standardized testing.

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How inspiring and unexpected, but it is the Lonestar State after all!