Thoughts, reactions and strategies for teaching ESOL students

Click here to go to the overview of my blog entries regarding the English Language Learners class I recently completed.

Kathy Schrock Interview Reposted

In honor of the NECC Conference, I'm reposting a link to our Kathy Schrock interview we had under the show's former name. She is incredible! She has so many great instructional tools for teachers! Check it out here.

Podcasting Just Got Easier

Adam Curry's much anticipated podcast recorder, CastBlaster, is out in public beta. I downloaded the trial version free, which is a full-blown version but limited to 10 minutes of recording. It's pretty slick as it automatically adjusts volume levels to keep them consistent and for lead-in voiceovers. I'll use it for my next podcast. It seems to work great! The full version will set you back 50 smackers.

Download Squad has a little blurb on it as well as a link to a very informal screencast about it (the user is experimenting with it as he screencasts)--that served as a pretty effective tutorial for me.

English Language Learners

Here's some thoughts, ideas, and strategies resulting from the Enriching Content Classes for Secondary ESOL Students class I recently completed in Colorado Springs. We covered everything from the differences between primary and secondary language development to specific instructional strategies to help ELL students in content classes. If you scroll down, you see them in the reverse order that I posted them because this is a blog. So I've added links to the bottom of each post to take you to the next post and make it a more natural read (hopefully).

For those of you, like me, that have a hard time keeping track of acronyms, ESOL stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages. I didn't even know that before the class started. I'll switch back and forth between acronyms but for the purposes of this discussion, they all mean about the same thing (even though they do have their own nuances and distinct definitions).

Below, I've added the links to all three posts and a brief description of each.

English Language Learners I
Thoughts about some of the obstacles that face ESOL students when attempting to learn the academic language of different curricula.

English Language Learners II
Strategies to help ESOL students to overcome those obstacles mentioned in ELL I.

English Language Learners III
Instructional strategies to help ESOL students decode and comprehend the text they encounter in our content classes.

I have left a lot out from the class as well as from the art of teaching ESOL students. If you have anything to add, please (please, please!) leave a comment or two. You certainly won't be stepping on my cyber-toes as I don't profess to be an expert at, well, anything really. Plus, everyone benefits when we share ideas.

So please feel free to add to this rather quick synopsis.

To start, click here to go to English Language Learners I.

English Language Learners III

Alright, here's my final installment on what I learned in the Enriching Content Classes for Secondary ESOL Students class I took in Colorado Springs. The required text for this class was the study guide by the same name as the class, Enriching Content Classes for Secondary ESOL Students from the Center for Applied Linguistics and the Delta Publishing Company. The study guide really helped me structure the material being presented and concetpualize it's usefulness in the classroom. Specifically, it gave me a point of reference for some of the most important strategies that we learned in the class.

One of the strategies that we learned was a lesson modification called Teach the Text Backwards, which allows teachers to increase the comprehensibility of the text their students are reading. Basically, Teaching the Text Backwards gives students several previews of the text they're about to encounter. To demonstrate our learning, we had to produce a lesson plan that used this strategy. I worked with two very bright high school teachers--one taught automotives and the other taught foreign language. We decided to have students produce various car maintenance tutorials through iMovie based on the reading in their textbooks. For a copy of the lesson modification in Word, click here. It will help to make a little more sense of where I'm going with all this if you haven't taken the class.

For this strategy, we start by giving the students some relevance to the text through their lives or a tie-in to their prior knowledge. Demonstrations of labs are popular examples of this. Jim, our automotive teacher, started with a rundown of very common automotive fluids that could be checked, topped off, or changed very easily. Jim held each store-bought container up as he mentioned the fluid. This gives ELL students an opportunity to hear the content language with a visual representation.

With video guides in hand, the students (our classmates) watched an iMovie we produced which showed all the fluid fill and check locations in the car. Their task for this was to match the store-bought fluid containers that Jim held up with the fill and check containers from the iMovie. The iMovie contained audio sound effects that provided hints as to what went in each container, plus there were textual clues as many fill and check caps are labeled. This opportunity also allows students to preview the medium in which their projects would be produced.

That concluded the part of the lesson we were supposed to present to our classmates. From there, we simply explained the remainder of the lesson. Students would do a Think-Write-Pair-Share (a strategy that was modeled and discussed in the class) to review their video guides. Then in their same TWPS, students would identify the key concepts by previewing the Study Questions provided at the end of the chapter.

Each TWPS group would do a blind draw to determine the car maintenance tutorial they would have to produce (possibilities include changing a tire, changing an air filter, checking the fluid levels, checking and changing the spark plugs, etc.). We would make the reading more manageable for ELL students by having each group read the section that pertains to their tutorial, instead of the entire chapter. We would do a Numbered Heads Together exercise (modeled and discussed in the class) to check for comprehension and dissiminate the answers to the study questions. This provides students with a natural springboard to producing their own car maintenance tutorial through iLife.

We also worked with and created curriculum-specific models for using graphic organizers as a resource for ELL students. Graphic organizers are not just teacher to student instructional aides and Anticipation Guides, but they can also be used as student-back-to-teacher learning demonstrations or comprehension checks.

Here's a very quick review of some of the major instructional topics covered in the class:

• Three Principles to Help ESL Students
1. Increase Comprehensibility
2. Increase Interaction
3. Increase Critical Thinking Skills

• Specific Strategies
1. Teach the Text Backwards
2. Text-to Graphics-Back-to-Text Again
3. Demonstrations and Modeling
4. Think-Write-Pair-Share-Square

• Group/Pair Structures
1. Numbered Heads Together
2. Inside/Outside Circle
3. Search and Find
• Investigations
• Jigsaw
• Mix-and-Match

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English Language Learners II

On my Thursday, June 16 post, I wrote about some thoughts I had regarding some of the difficulty ELL students can encounter when entering our classrooms. These thoughts were spurred by the Enriching Content Classes for Secondary ESOL Students class I attended recetly in Colorado Springs. If there's one thing I hate it's someone who will pose a problem without offering a solution, which is what I did the other day, because it was getting real late and I had meetings the next day. So, here are some strategies for increasing comprehension in our ELL students, despite the highly specialized vocabularies each content area requires.

Our instructor for the course, Sara, illustrated some of the frustration ELL students can incur in our classrooms. She played a video of a woman speaking Farsi who was, in large part, non-descript in her delivery. The video was 59 seconds long, but it seemed like it was at least three times that. As a class we were only able to pick out a couple of words and that's only because they were cognates. Then we watched the same woman speaking Farsi but more animated this time and with visuals to represent what she was explaining.

Since I can't do the lesson justice and I don't want to ruin it for those who will take the class in the near future, I will not go into any specifics other than to just note that we were able to decipher much more of what she was teaching us, including several details. The second video lasted about 30 seconds longer, but she spoke at about the same pace both times. The extra time came from her demonstrating what she was talking about and pausing occassionally to give us time to process the information. Now, the sceptic in you might raise the point that it took her 50 percent more time to teach it the second time. Ya, but we got it the second time.

Just for the record, I didn't pick out any words from the first video because I zoned out after about 10 seconds of not knowing the language being used. What a great lesson on the perspective of someone immersed in another language.

Later in the class, Sara delivered a short ecology lesson in Spanish. She read it from a book. Since it was Spanish, we were able to pick out a few more words than we were in the Farsi lesson. However, there was also a false cognate in there so that threw a few of us off. Sara questioned us in Spanish about the contents of the lesson and asked that we answer in Spanish as well. As you might imagine, her comprehension check revealed exactly what we learned about ecology. Not much.

Even a couple of the Spanish teachers struggled a little bit with the lesson. Why? They are non-native Spanish speakers--they learned Spanish as a second language. If I remember the structure of my high school and college Spanish classes correctly, we learned much more social vocabulary than academic vocabulary. Hence, Spanish teachers have far greater exposure to social vocabulary than content-specific vocabulary. Again, learning the academic language of different curricula can be like learning completely different languages.

After the check for comprehension, Sara delivered the brief lesson again. This time she provided important vocabulary (in Spanish), which served as labels for graphics and pictures of those words. She pointed to those graphics when she spoke them in the lesson. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you that we were able follow along with the lesson much better. Plus, we were able to demonstrate our learning by answering in Spanish (one or two word answers) or at least pointing to the answer.

So what strategies did I get from these parts of the class?

1. Label everything in English so ELL students can see the word and have a visual to associate with it. For example, I will label several parts of the computers like the keyboard, mouse, power button, USB, Ethernet, Firewire ports, internal speaker, etc.
2. Being animated in my teaching helps my ELL students as well as my native English speakers.
3. Pointing to objects and acting things out increases their comprehension.
4. Give them repetitive opportunities to see, hear, read, and write important vocabulary. Some of that came from some "getting to know you" activities we did at the beginning of the class. However, those can easily be changed into "getting to know the curriculum" activities, without the writing being too intense.

More thoughts and strategies later...

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English Language Learners I

Whew!! I just finished my Enriching Content Classes for Secondary ESOL Students class down in Colorado Springs at Cheyenne Mountain High School. We were in class all day for seven days. I learned a ton! My head has finally stopped spinning enough for me to start thinking more extensively about what I learned and how I can use it. I was very impressed with the course as it contained fresh information for me. It gave me some very "do-able" strategies that didn't "dumb-down" the curriculum.

I learned several great strategies which I will reflect on here as I get the time. One general theme that I kept hearing in my discussions with my classmates was how these weren't just great strategies to help our ELL students; they were also effective strategies for helping our resource students! Plus, they would be a tremendous benefit to many of our regular ed students.

It's getting late and I have curriculum meetings all day tomorrow, as I did today. So, I can't get too much out now. However, I did want to mention at least one thing I got from the class before I hit the hay.

We need to give our English Language Learners more opportunities to see, hear, read, and speak our academic language. Now, you might think, see our academic language? Yes, see our academic language. The more I think of it, the more I realize that that the acronyms we use for our English as a Second Language students are entirely insufficient and/or grossly inaccurate.

Think about it.

English may, in fact, be the second language, but each curriculum has a language that has a highly specialized vocabulary. Math is a good example of a curriculum that has an academic language all it's own. Plus, when speaking "mathematically" we often use a passive voice. For example, here's a common math sentence structure: "The product of five and n is twenty."

Forget the fact that an ELL student has to learn that product means the answer to a multiplication problem in math--not just a direct result as it is in our common use of the word or a substance resulting from a chemical reaction as it is in science. Forget the fact that an ELL student has to learn that of and is mean "multiply" and "equal" in math, which are entirely different than their "English" counterparts. Forget the fact that the highly specialized vocabulary we use in our curriculum can be a dicey subject in and of itself.

To me, one of the real barriers that make many English Language Learners reticent to verbalize in class is the mixed messages they get regarding sentence structure in the different classes they attend. Imagine what it must be like for an ELL student to go from a math class that inundates that student with of and is, to a Language Arts class, where of and is are treated like the color red in the movie The Village (dreaded and shunned by all--Those We Don't Speak Of).

Now, I'm not suggesting that we neglect to teach our students to properly verbalize math sentences. And I'm certainly not saying that Language Arts teachers shouldn't teach their students to write with an Active Voice. Our students need to be able to do both.

So what do we do about it? Well, I'll have to address that on the next post as it is getting late and I have even more meetings tomorrow. Woo-Hoo!

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