Rethinking Spelling

Here is an interesting article that will probably make you rethink the way you were taught/teach spelling. The article also includes some tips on how to help your students become better spellers. Enjoy!

How to Help ESL Students Acquire Vocabulary

We all know how important vocabulary acquisition is for all students, especially those learning English. So how can we help in this crucial area? According to David Sousa in How the ELL Brain Learns, "How quickly a child understands words of another language may be closely related to whether the word can generate a clear mental image" (p. 38). We can conclude that a simple way to help kids learn vocabulary is to present the word alongside an image, whether this be through use of flashcards, multimedia, bulletin boards, etc. Be creative in thinking about this and share ideas with your colleagues!

Why Do Bilingual Children "Mix" Their Languages and What Can You Do to Help?

As a teacher with ESL children in your classroom, you might hear them "mix" their languages, say for example, using Spanish words while speaking English. While this may concern you, rest assured that it is not a cause for concern. In his book Bilingual Life and Reality, Francois Grosjean states, "It is important to view within and between-language mechanisms (over generalizations, simplifications, interferences, and so on) as strategies employed by children in their effort to use their weaker language" (p. 193). Far from being a cause for concern, it is evidence that the child is in fact learning and using strategies that enable them to use their "weaker" language. The child is not mixing because of laziness or lack of care.
Here's what you can do to help! Grosjean states, "Further language input and feedback from listeners, as well as occasional breakdowns in communication, will gradually help the child home in on the new language" (193). So, as the teacher, if you hear your kids "mixing", follow Grosjean's advice:

• Continue providing appropriate input to the child, giving them opportunities to hear the target language in context
• Give feedback, helping to find a needed work or giving an example of appropriate sentence structure

Lastly, Grosjean says, "...as soon as they have picked up enough of the second language, they will increasingly speak just that language and will then call on the other language mainly for communicative reasons, primarily when the situation is appropriate and they are in a bilingual mode" (p. 198).

Be patient with your students, give them lots of rich, appropriate input, and gentle feedback. Language acquisition is a process.

Matching Instruction to Language Acquisition Phase

Earlier, I did a post on the four general stages of language acquisition. In this post, I wanted to give you a couple of tips I found on matching instruction to each phase/level.

Beginning Level (Preproduction Stage)-
Provide concrete activities featuring input that is augmented by pictures, real objects, carefully modified teacher speech (see post on guarded vocabulary), and frequent repetition of new vocabulary

Early Intermediate and Intermediate (Early Production and Speech Emergence)-
Ask questions that evoke responses of single words and brief phrases
Provide opportunities for student to use their primary language as they acquire the second language

Early Advanced Level (Intermediate Fluency)-
Engage student in opportunities to speak with greater complexity, read several pages of text even thought they may have limited comprehension, and write paragraphs
Offer a curriculum that supports and explicitly teaches learning strategies


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

Stages of Language Acquisition

I wanted to give you some information on the general stages of language acquisition so you could work on recognizing them in your ESL students and providing the proper support at each stage. Here are the four stages:

1. Preproduction- this is also called the silent period because the learner is absorbing the sounds and patterns of the new language, tuning into the pace of speech, and starting to pick up on words. Understanding is highly contextualized and the learner often communicates non-verbally. If you have a "silent" student, do some investigating and see if they might simply be in this stage of acquisition. If so, be patient with them; don't force them. Give them low stress opportunities to express themselves.
2. Early Production- the learner attempts words and phrases (single or two/three word phrases)
3. Speech Emergence- learners are a bit more confident and talk readily; begin to use full sentences
4. Intermediate fluency- learners are able to initiate and participate in conversations; they begin to self-correct language errors 

In a later post, I'll give you some ideas on how to match instruction to each of these stages!


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

The Phases of Acculturation

Acculturation is the process of adjusting to a new or non-native culture. It is helpful to be aware of its phases so that you may recognize them in your students and be of support to them during the process of learning a new culture. The phases are as follows:

1. Honeymoon-there may be a sense of excitement at the sense of novelty of life in a new culture
2. Hostility- As time goes by and the newness wears thin, students may find that their cultural mannerisms are misunderstood and/or that they struggle to understand their new culture. In this phase, students often feel impatient, anxious, frustrated or even angry. Teachers can offer support by cultivating a supportive, respectful, and caring classroom environment.
3. Humor- Students begin to reshape their cultural identity as they begin to understand more about their new culture and how they fit into that culture
4. Home- Students at this phase "value and celebrate their own bicultural and bilingual identity". They feel at ease in the second culture

Source: Herrera, S.G & Murry, K.G. (2011). Mastering ESL and bilingual methods. Boston: Pearson.

Beginning of the Year Considerations

The first few days of school are nerve-wracking for any student, but for a bilingual or ELL student, those first days can be even more overwhelming. This article gives four really practical and helpful ways to connect with your English Language Learners at the beginning of the year.

Tips for Holding a Conference with ELL Parents

Here is an article with some really helpful tips on conferencing with the parents of your ELL students. The article is short but very practical, covering where to sit, body language, what to bring, and many other things. I think you'll find this to be a great resource!

Great Tip for Teachers with ESL Students

I came across this great tip earlier in the week. It is a simple way to help ESL students with spelling:

Display a word bank on a classroom wall with commonly used words that native speakers would already know but that ESL students might not yet be familiar with

An easy tip you might try soon!

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

Cultivating Parent Partnerships, Part 2

Yesterday I did a post on cultivating parent partnerships and why this should be our goal as educators. Parents/caregivers of your ESL students may be even more hesitant to come to the school or initiate contact with you, so I wanted to give you some information on home visits to give you even more tools to cultivate those partnerships. Here are some tips to having a quality home visit:

• Allow the family to do the majority of the talking and question asking
• View the home visit as a way to step into your student's world
• Listen attentively
• Let your agenda be nothing else but to learn from the family; don't try to hold a parent/teacher conference
• Gather information that can be used in the curriculum or to make future connections with the student

According to Powell and Rightmyer (2011), "Research shows that there are many positive benefits to conducting home visits. Families tend to change their attitudes towards the educational process, their ability to work successfully with their child improves, and they begin to utilize outside resources more often. Children demonstrate positive behavior changes and their self-esteem improves. Most importantly, the gap between home and school is bridged. Families begin to feel empowered and a real sense of partnership develops. Friendships are formed and mutual trust and respect can be found"(p. 75).

What better incentive could we need to try a home visit soon?!

Source: Powell, R. & Rightmyer, E.C. (2011). Literacy for all students. New York: Routledge.

Cultivating Parent Partnerships, Part 1

"We must appreciate that a child's parent is their primary educator, and as such, they play a critical role in the child's academic success" (Powell & Rightmyer, 2011).

Parent/teacher partnerships increase student achievement, increase student educational aspirations, increase length of time spent attending school overall, and increases ratings/opinions of schools in general (Powell & Rightmyer, 2011).

This is just one example of all the research that shows the benefits of teacher/parent partnerships. So how do we as teachers develop those partnerships? Here are some ideas and things to consider:

Make your school/classroom a welcoming environment
Your classroom should be clean and inviting
Display student work
Look around your classroom--Pictures and literature should convey an appreciation of diversity
Encourage parents to participate/volunteer in a way that they feel comfortable

Communication
All communication should be open, polite, and respectful
Use vocabulary that families can understand (avoid educator lingo)
Use titles (Mr. Mrs. etc)
Be clear and concise
Have written material translated, if possible and/or necessary
Give full attention when the parent is talking

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.

Wiki What?

You, like me only a short time ago, may have heard the word wiki and really have no idea what it is, but guess who does know? Probably your students. Technology is ever changing, and students have a way of staying on top of all of the latest technological developments. Tapping into this natural interest and excitement is a great way to engage your students.

In this post, I want to talk a little about wikis (because a little is all I know!) and how they might be beneficial in your classroom. I am deeply indebted to Lori Langer de Ramirez's book Empower English Language Learners with Tools From the Web. This short and highly relevant book has helped me to understand what a wiki is and how it can be integrated into your classroom.

A wiki is basically a webpage that, depending on your settings, can be edited by anyone. It is a quick and convenient way to add content to the Web. Basically, if you are authorized to make changes, you click the edit button, add the content or make the changes you would like, and then save. The wiki keeps a history of who made what changes to the site. You can also easily create links to new pages.

Wikis are nice because they provide a fast and convenient way for students to "work" together or with their teachers. Due to the lack of face to face time, they may also allow students, particularly ESL students, to interact and contribute more than they might otherwise.

De Ramirez gives the following suggestions for ways to use wikis in your classroom:

• Webquests
• Collaborative projects
• Coauthoring of essays or reports
• Interactive games (i.e. "what would you do next..." games)
• Planning for a class event
• Sign-up sheets for events
• Quick and easy Web sites with links and resources
• Online study communities
• A place to post and share student work

Join me in learning more about wikis and sharing tips and ideas on how to use them!

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. 

Ways to Involve Parents in Your Classroom

"Strong parent involvement is one factor that research has shown time and time again to have positive effects on academic achievement and school attitudes" (Ovando & Collier, 1998)

If you are looking for a way to increase achievement among your English Language Learners, and students in general, then make room for them to volunteer in your classroom. Realize that some of the parents of your ESL students may work multiple jobs in order to provide for their children and may be intimidated by the school environment. These are possible reasons why parents may not volunteer, so don't assume it's because they are disengaged or indifferent to the child's education. When parents are able to volunteer, here are some ways they can contribute:

• Setting up learning centers
• Working with projectors, recorders, listening posts
• Sharing about their culture
• Accompanying small groups to the library
• Recording primary-language stories
• Supervising individual testing

Tips for Choosing Appropriate Materials for Use with English Language Learners

Diaz-Rico and Weed, in their book The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook, give the following tips on how to choose appropriate material for your English Language Learners. The two most important questions to ask are these:

• Are the content objectives for the lesson adequately presented by the material?
• Is the material comprehensible to English learners?

How do you know if it's comprehensible to all students? Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the information accurate, up-to-date, and thorough?
• Are the tasks required of students appropriate to the discipline?
• Is the text clearly organized, with print and layout features that assist students' comprehension?
• Does the text appeal to a variety of learning styles?
• Is the language of the text straightfoward, without complex syntactic patterns, idioms, or excessive jargon?
• Is new content vocabulary clearly defined within the text or in a glossary?
• Are diagrams, graphs, and charts clearly labeled and complement and clarify the text?
• Will most of the students have prior experience with the content, or will much time be necessary for schema building?

These questions are attributed to Allan & Miller, 2005)

I know all of these questions may seem overwhelming but hopefully they just give you some ideas for how to look at your materials with fresh eyes, taking all of your learners into consideration.

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.