Resources for Teaching Sentence Structure

Syntax, or sentence structure, is something that can vary greatly from language to language. It is important for your ESL students to understand English syntax. Here are some resources to assist you.

Videos from YouTube:
To help teachers explain sentence structure:
http://youtu.be/VPyo8-Pr55Q

http://youtu.be/9EXL6M6eGyo

This one lets kids get up and move around: http:/youtu.be/Ra-nmxEhP2M

Websites: The following offer lesson plans, activities, and printables
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/sentences.html

http://www.time4writing.com/uncategorized/sentence-structure-worksheets/

http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/grammar/menu.html

http://www.eslbase.com/resources/sentence-reduction

Educating Boys

Here's a great article that doesn't necessarily deal with the ESL population but does apply to all boys in your classroom. There's an example activity in the article that would be fun and engaging in any classroom. Check it out here.

Administering a Classroom Test to ESL Students

Assessment is part of every mainstream teacher's classroom. Here are a few tips on adapting test taking for your ESL students:

• Let students know throughout the unit how their achievement will be measured
• Align instructional methods and assessment methods
• Check comprehension frequently throughout instruction
• Supplement tests with other measures (observation, participation, discussions with students, and projects)
• Review tests "through the eyes of an English learner". Look for difficult language and cultural bias; provide support such as word banks
• Read tests to beginning English learners
• Allow more time for English learners or give the test in sections

Source: Diaz-Rico, L.T. & Weed, K. Z. (2010) The crosscultural, language, and academic development handbook. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

How to Encourage Active Listening and Learning

One of the greatest skills we can teach our students is to think critically. It is and will continue to be one of the most vital skills one can possess in our global society with instant access to a wealth of information. I wanted to give you some tips from criticalthinking.org on encouraging active listening and learning in your classroom.

Regularly call upon your students to:

• Summarize or put into their own words what the teacher or another student has said
• Elaborate on what they have said
• Relate the issue or content to their own knowledge or experience
• Give examples to clarify or support what they have said
• Make connections between related concepts
• Restate the instructions or assignment in their own words
• State the question at issue
• Describe to what extent their point of view on the issue is different from or similar to the point of view of the instructor, other students, author, etc
• Take a few minutes to write down any of the above
• Write down the most pressing question on their mind at this point. The teacher then uses the above tactics to help students reason through the questions
• Discuss any of the above with a partner and then participate in a group discussion facilitated by the instructor.

A note about calling on students: This can be difficult if the same students always raise their hand while you never hear from other students. One tip I tried was to write down each student's name on a popsicle stick and put them all in a cup. When it was time to answer a question, I pulled out a popsicle stick and that student was called upon. Then I left their name out of the cup to keep it fair. This helped involve all students. At the end of class, I put all the names back into the cup for next time. I noticed that when students know they might be randomly called on, they paid more attention and were more engaged. If I called on them and they didn't know what they wanted to say, they could ask another student for help or I guided them through the thinking process.

Give Them Time to Talk

One of the best ways to help your ESL students meet content and language goals is by giving them plenty of opportunities to talk. Here are some tips on creating conversation in your classroom:

• Arrange the classroom to accommodate conversation between the teacher and a small group of students on a regular and frequent schedule
• Have a clear academic goal that guides conversation with students
• Ensure that student talk occurs at higher rates than teacher talk
• Guide conversations to include students' views, judgments, and rationales, using text evidence and other substantive support
• Ensure that all students are included in the conversation according to their preferences
• Listen carefully to assess levels of students' understanding
• Assist students' learning throughout the conversation by questioning, restating, praising, encouraging.
• Guide the students to prepare a product that indicates the goal of the instructional conversation was achieved.

Source: Diaz-Rico, L.T & Weed, K.Z. (2010). The crosscultural, language, and academic developmental handbook. Allyn & Bacon: Boston.

Inside Outside Circles

Here's a short video I made (my first one!!) describing one of my favorite cooperative learning activities. I've used it many times in my high school Spanish classroom, and students always love it and it's a great way to formatively assess because you have the chance to hear all students working with the content, as well as practicing listening and speaking skills. I hope you're able to try it soon and that you love it as much as I do!

Great Teacher Interview

I recently did a blog post about building a culturally responsive classroom. We talked about how the four components of such a classroom are as follows:

• Using what students know
• Affirming students' identities
• Presenting diverse perspectives
• Examining real-world issues

In this interview, you will hear from a teacher that has created such a classroom, and the interview is full of great ideas and tips as well as lots of her personal experience. Check it out here! 

Building a Culturally Responsive Classroom, Part 3

In Part 2 of this post series, I told you I would give you some ideas for the last two components of a culturally responsive classroom. To review, such a classroom has four components:

• Using what students know
• Affirming students' identities
• Presenting diverse perspectives
• Examining real-world issues

In Part 2, I gave you what were hopefully some ideas to get you started in the first two components. Now I'd like to give you some ideas for the second two. Most of these ideas come from Literacy for All Students (Powell & Rightmyer, 2011).

Presenting diverse perspectives--

• Teach students to view all texts and non-print material with a critical eye
• Encourage students to question and challenge the ideas presented and to question what is missing
• Provide students with specific structures that require them to view an issue from different perspectives
• Have students dramatize a text so that they view it from the point of view of multiple protagonists
• Ask students to take various stances as they read aloud from a text
• Allow questions to come and be discussed without trying to provide an immediate explanation

Examining real-world issues--

• Take a few minutes of class time to engage students over real-world issues
• Function as the guide, not the authority, helping students examine issues through various perspectives
• Include texts that deal with the real-life issues of your students as well as national and global issues

Building a Culturally Responsive Classroom, Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, we talked about why the culturally responsive classroom should be the goal of every teacher. In this post, I hope to give you some ideas to get you started in building your own culturally responsive classroom.

To review, the framework for the culturally responsive classroom includes the following (simplified from the bullet points in the previous post):

• Using what student know
• Affirming students' identities
• Presenting diverse perspectives
• Examining real-world issues

Let's briefly take a look at some ways to address the first two of these components. In a later post, we'll talk about some ideas for the second two.

Using what students know--

In order to use what they know, you must know what they know! This means you have to build relationships not only with your students but also their families and communities. You can connect to students by "intentionally and consistently including opportunities for discussion and sharing" (Powell & Rightmyer, p. 133). Give students opportunites to share about themselves (through pictures, family interviews, sharing of songs or traditions, etc) and include the information you glean into your lessons. In a later post, we'll talk about home visits as another great way to gather this kind of information.

Affirming students' identities--

Having and incorporating multicultural literature in your classroom is a great starting point. Here are some tips (from B.Y. Louie, 2006) to keep in mind when choosing such literature:

• Check the text's authenticity
• Help learners understand the characters' world
• Encourage children to see the world throught the characters' perspectives
• Identify vaules underlying the characters' conflict resolution strategies
• Relate self the the text and critique the portrayal of characters in the text and in popular media
• Use variants of the same story or collection of stories to help students build schema
• Encourage students to talk, write, and respond throughout reading the multicultural texts.

I hope these tips and ideas are a helpful starting point for you as you begin to think about your classroom as a culturally responsive one!

Building a Culturally Responsive Classroom, Part 1

First let's talk about the components of a culturally responsive classroom and why that should be your goal, then we can talk more about the how-to's.

According the Powell and Rightmyer in their book Literacy for all Students, the curriculum in culturally responsive classrooms is designed to do the following:

• make explicit links to student' cultural knowledge
• affirm students' identities
• prepare students to understand multiple perspectives 
• involve students with real-world, relevant issues in order to empower them to transform their communities

Creating a culturally responsive classroom will create an inclusive environment in which every student is respected and set up for academic and social success. As Powell and Rightmyer tell us, "Students whose language, ethnicity and race are not represented in the school's dominant culture experience varying degrees of success in school" (p. 127). As educators, we want our classrooms to represent the language, ethnicity and race of all of our students so that they feel an integral part of the culutre of your classroom.

But Can Your ESL Students Understand You?

One term that ESL teachers and researchers often use when talking about instructing ESL students is guarded vocabulary. Yesterday, I posted a video link to Stephen Krashen talking about comprehensible input and how important it is that your students be able to understand you. One way to help with this is by using guarded vocabulary, so I wanted to explain the term a little more so you can be sure to implement it in your classroom.

According to Herrera and Murry in their book Mastering ESL and Bilingual Methods, guarded vocabulary does NOT involve "unnatural speech or raising the volume of instruction" (p. 275) but rather involves " linguistic actions on the part of the instructor that increase the comprehensibility of instruction" (p. 275). So what does that mean? What are these linguistic actions? Well here are some ideas...

• Slowing the rate of speech
• Emphasizing word enunciation
• Simplifying the vocabulary used. In other words, stating things as simply as possible
• Using more consistent vocabulary with appropriate repetition (songs, raps, chants, etc)
• Using shorter sentences with simpler syntax
• Inserting more pauses between phrases

I hope these ideas are helpful and you are able to implement some of them right away! First, try making some observations about your speech and see which of these ideas your students could most benefit from. 

Tips on Language Error Correction, Part 2

Here are some more tips on how to address language errors in your ESL students:

• Listen carefully and make observations from writing samples so you can identify the recurring errors your students are making
• Address these errors in mini-lessons to the whole class, a small group of students, or one-on-one
• When you address errors, have students jot down their errors along with the corrections in a journal. This gives them a reference source to use in the future.

When and How to Correct Language Errors in Your ESL Students, Part 1

This is a topic I am always wondering about, and I recently read some of the best advice I've heard on the subject. The following are some of the perspectives offered by Diaz-Rico and Weed in their book The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook:

• In the early stages of language learning, fluency is more important than accuracy, therefore converse in and model appropriate language.
• Focus on the student's message and provide correction only when meaning is not clear.
• If students are older or have higher English proficiency, they need and will benefit from feedback on recurring errors. 
• Listen for recurring errors and then address them whole class, in small groups, or one-on-one.
• Random errors need not be corrected; focus on recurring errors.

Strategies for Increasing Comprehensibility

When communicating with your ESL students, you want to make sure they understand your meaning as clearly as possible and vice versa. Here are few ways to help make sure you and your students are understanding one another:

• Use sentence structures that expand the students' output by supplying needed phrases and vocabulary
• Use gestures to convey instructions
• Concentrate on understanding and communicating rather than on error correction
• Provide alternative grouping procedures so that students can share their understanding with one another and with the teacher
• Maintain regular classroom procedures and routines

These ideas were drawn from Diaz-Rico and Weed's The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook

Making Text More Understandable to English Learners

Here are some ways to make a text more comprehensible to the English learners in your classroom:

• Supply an advance organizer for the text that highlights they key topics and concepts in outline form, as focus questions, or in the form of concept maps
• Change the modality from written to oral. By reading aloud, you can also model the press of posing questions while reading to show prediction strategies used when working with text
• Tape-record selected passages for students to listen to as they read along in the text. These recordings could even be uploaded to your class website or blog for students to access at home.
• Develop a study guide for the text. For each reading section, create ten sentences that reflect the main ideas, then turn each sentence into a question or selectively omit key words that students must supply
• Ask student to work in groups so they can share their notes and help one another complete missing parts or correct misunderstood concepts

Try one of these ideas in your classroom today!

These ideas were taken from a great book called The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Devlopment Handbook by Lynne T. Diaz-Rico and Kathryn Z. Weed

Ways to Supplement the Verbal Presentation of a Lesson

English learners, and students in general, are more likely to comprehend a concept when that concept is contextualized. This means that the concept is reinforced through the use of media, realia, manipulatives and human resources. Take a look around your classroom and see if you have plenty of visuals to help reinforce the lessons you are currently teaching. Here are some items to help you do this:

Object Resources

• Picture files
• Maps and Globes
• Charts and posters
• Printed material such as illustrated books, catalogs, and magazines
• Puzzles
• Science equipment
• Manipulatives such as M&Ms, buttons, tongue depressors, and gummy bears
• Costumes
• Computer software
• Internet

Human Resources

• Cooperative groups
• Pairs
• Cross-age tutors
• Heterogeneous groups
• Community resource people
• School resource people
• Parents 
• Pen pals (adult and child)
• Keypals

These suggestions come from the Diaz-Rico/Weed text The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook