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Valuing Critical Thinking and Inquiry: Engaging Students in Asking Effective Questions

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When we talk about engaging students in asking Effective questions, we must also talk about simultaneously developing the three sides of the Effective student questioner. Students learn through inquiry because they have questioning knowledge; they are capable of asking questions in pursuit of their own learning and understanding; and, most important, they are disposed to asking Effective questions-of themselves, their teachers, and their peers-as part of the day-today, minute-by-minute work they do in the classroom.

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In 2013, 4.4 million U.S. public school students were classified as English language learners ( NCES). These students come to school with the benefit of speaking a language other than English. All the while, they face the challenge of acquiring content knowledge in English at the same time as they acquire English as an additional language. They are held to the same graduation requirements and accountability standards as their English-proficient peers. English language learners can be supported by conducting rigorous research and evaluation to improve instruction and learning, evaluating policy to inform decision-making, and enhancing ELL practice at the district, school, and classroom level.

The core of AIR's work supporting ELLs is done through the Center for English Language Learners.
Read more about the Center's work >>
Featured Work

Mastering math and the academic language of math is essential for all students, but especially for ELLs, who are acquiring content knowledge and English proficiency concurrently. The goal of this three-year study is to enable sixth-grade Spanish-speaking ELLs to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to meet the new Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M) and Literacy in the Technical Subjects (CCSS-L). The first two years of the study follow an iterative development process to refine the intervention, leading to a pilot study in the third and final study year.

Spring Branch Independent School District

In this project led by Linda Cavazos, the Center for ELLs staff based in Austin, Texas are working with the Spring Branch Independent School District in Texas to provide districtwide ELL-focused professional development and ongoing technical assistance for a period of five years. The AIR team will provide an annual ELL Summer Institute followed by a series of professional development with a recursive cycle of observations, coaching, and Professional Learning Communities, with a focus on the improved outcomes of ELLs.

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In 2013, 4.4 million U.S. public school students were classified as English language learners (NCES). These students come to school with the benefit of speaking a language other than English. All the while, they face the challenge of acquiring content knowledge in English at the same time as they acquire English as an additional language.

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The Best Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Websites for teachers of ELLs

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The Best Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Websites for teachers of ELLs

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Last week, my classes all of a sudden became more challenging.

Instead of teaching two separate classes of United States History to Intermediate English Language Learners, one double-block period of Beginning ELL's, and one period of IB Theory of Knowledge, my schedule now looks like this:

First Period: U.S. History to Intermediate ELL's

Second Period: Prep

Third and Fourth Period: Combined class of Beginners and Intermediates

Fifth Period: U.S. History to Intermediate and Beginning ELL's

Sixth Period: Theory of Knowledge

It's all going to work out fine, and I'll certainly get some new good ideas out of it to add to my upcoming book on teaching ELL's 🙂 (Katie Hull, my co-author and colleague, and I just submitted our 90,000 word manuscript to editors over the weekend - it will be published next July, and I'll have time to make additions in December).

But it did force me to make some changes to my new English class blog. It now includes a list of accessible links to what, in my opinion, are the Best Sites For Beginners, Intermediates, and Advanced English Language Learners (Katie's class of advanced students will now also use the site).

I just copied the sidebar from the class blog and pasted it here. You can find more specific reviews for all of them if you search this blog. I also included a section from the sidebar where I'll be adding music and video sites that I'll be using in the classroom via computer project - those sites are blocked to students, but not to teachers.

Let me know what you think - am I missing something?

Feel free to add suggestions in the comments, and also feel free to visit the class blog, which will be continually updated with new assignments and sites.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 760 other "The Best..." lists I've compiled.

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The Best Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced English Language Learner Sites

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Last week, my classes all of a sudden became more challenging. Instead of teaching two separate classes of United States History to Intermediate English Language Learners, one double-block period of Beginning ELL's, and one period of IB Theory of Knowledge, my schedule now looks like this: First Period: U.S.

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The district I work in is extremely diverse. There are over 25 languages spoken in my school! Because of this, all teachers in my district have to be very savvy to strategies for teaching English Language Learners. You already know about my obsession with OCDE Project GLAD® and my work with Systematic ELD, so this summer I decided to take a couple grad school courses to finish up my ESOL endorsement. I've been teaching with ESOL strategies for six years, but knew that the endorsement would bring me some more ideas and tools to use in my classroom.

The main model for instruction that my class is focusing on is SIOP: Sheltered Instruction, Observation Protocol.
Here is the SIOP website: http://www.siopinstitute.net/
And our course textbook if you want to read about it (affiliate link):

Most research claims that this kind of teaching is also good for students from poverty, since their language levels are significantly lower than their middle class peers. Since my school is both high poverty and high ELL, this is a must for me!

A SIOP lesson has eight components, and I found some great YouTube videos from Pearson Education to explain each one. Click on the link below to watch them.

What other resources do you have for Sheltered Instruction? Do you have ELLs in your class? What kinds of strategies do you like to teach with?

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The district I work in is extremely diverse. There are over 25 languages spoken in my school! Because of this, all teachers in my district have to be very savvy to strategies for teaching English Language Learners.

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Valuing Critical Thinking and Inquiry: Engaging Students in Asking Effective Questions

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When we talk about engaging students in asking Effective questions, we must also talk about simultaneously developing the three sides of the Effective student questioner. Students learn through inquiry because they have questioning knowledge; they are capable of asking questions in pursuit of their own learning and understanding; and, most important, they are disposed to asking Effective questions-of themselves, their teachers, and their peers-as part of the day-today, minute-by-minute work they do in the classroom.

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Why Academic Discussions are So Important 

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Why Academic Discussions are So Important 

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One of the many things I love about working for Oakland, California schools is serving a community rich in diversity of culture and language. At the same time, it is no easy task ensuring that our English Language Learners (ELLs) are meeting grade-level content standards while mastering a second language.

Much of ELL instruction has been focused on 30-60 minutes of English Language Development (ELD) each day. Taken alone, this daily block of language instruction, isolated from any grade-level content, is not going to get us the results our students need and deserve. Rather, we need to see language-rich instruction throughout the day, embedded in and woven through the content areas.

What would it look like if language instruction occurred throughout the day? What would it take for every teacher to be a teacher of language in their discipline? These questions led us to identify Quality Academic Discussion as one district-wide strategy to foster collective responsibility for accelerating the language and content outcomes for our ELLs.

WhatIsan Academic Discussion?

In Oakland, we are greatly influenced by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford's bookAcademic Conversations (2011), and we believe academic discussion demonstrates the following characteristics:

Purposeful and sustained conversations about content

Anchored in grade-level texts and tasks

Students work together to co-construct knowledge and negotiate meaning

Students use "talk moves," such as asking for clarification, paraphrasing, and building on or disagreeing with a previous idea

Why are Academic Discussions So Important for Our ELLs?

Academic discussions help all students develop reasoning skills and deepens understanding of content and multiple perspectives. For ELLs, academic discussions are critical to language and content development because:

ELLs need the opportunity to hear language in authentic and varied contexts.Teachers, as well as students with higher language proficiency, serve as language models. Particularly important is exposure to discipline-specific language so ELLs hear what it sounds like to communicate in an array of academic contexts.

ELLs need opportunities to produce language in contextualized and purposeful ways.They need to practice applying form (e.g., grammar, vocabulary) and function (e.g., language used to clarify, explain, argue) to communicate and build ideas.

ELLs benefit from redundancy of ideas and their related vocabulary.Discussion allows for multiple opportunities to hear new concepts and content explained, analyzed, and interpreted.

How Do We Make Sure Our ELLs are Fully Engaged in and Benefiting from Academic Discussions?

Just because we give students the opportunity to discuss, doesn't mean they will. We need to provide additional supports and structures so that the students who can benefit the most from academic discussion actually do! Here are five important teaching strategies you can use to support your ELLs to fully participate:

1. Mix up your grouping structures, but give more time to pairs.Whole group discussions provide a great opportunity to model discussion skills, to hear a broad perspective of ideas, and to synthesize learning from small group or pair conversations. The biggest payoff, however, is paired conversations, because they maximize speaking time and increase overall engagement. Even when the structure is a whole-group discussion, consider inserting paired conversations ( Turn and Talk or Think-Pair-Share) throughout to allow for ELLs to rehearse their ideas and related academic language.

2. Use discussion strategies that require every student to talk.You can simply open a discussion with a Round Robin, or use Talking Chips or Discussion Cards that allow for equitable participation. Watch students actively participate in discussions in Participation Protocols for Academic Discussions.

3. Provide language support.Providing students access to language resources, such as sentence stems and word banks, gives students both the academic language and confidence to participate. A note of caution: overuse of prescribed sentence starters or stems can actually stifle talk, as students just fill in the blanks. Better yet, have students rehearse a few choice sentence stems and relevant vocabulary before they engage in academic discussion. The goal is for students to know how to access and use language supports when neededand independently( Watch Talk Moves in Academic Discussion).

4. Accept imperfect language. When ELLs are engaged in academic discussion, privilege communication over precision of language. Overcorrection or too much attention to grammatically correct language can hinder ELLs language production and interrupt the flow of ideas. During a discussion, we want our ELLs to approximate correct and sophisticated language, not perfect it.

5. Expect and require extended responses. One of the biggest disservices to our ELLs is to accept one-word or abbreviated responses -- even worse is when we complete their sentences. Instead, provide wait time, encourage students to continue, and press students for evidence by asking, "Why?" or, "Can you give me an example?"

Resources

Ready to add this strategy to your class work? Here are some of my favorite resources on academic discussion:

PDF Download: Academic Discussion Continuum of Teacher Practice

PDF Download: A Distinction between Output and Interaction

Academic Language and Literacy: Be sure to check out the tools and resources page for discussion strategies and activities, as well as language supports for students.

Academic Language Development Network: Find resources and articles on academic language development and fostering student interactions.

The Inquiry Project: Focused on science instruction, you'll find "video cases" and a guide for using teacher "talk moves" to deepen classroom discussions.

Understanding Language: This is the site of the Stanford based Understanding Language initiative, which seeks to raise awareness of the critical role of language in the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. The site includes academic papers, exemplary lessons, and professional learning opportunities. Teaching Channel also has a six-part video series showcasing an exemplar unit focused on ELA instruction for middle school English Language Learners.

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Why are Academic Discussions So Important for our ELLs?

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One of the many things I love about working for Oakland, California schools is serving a community rich in diversity of culture and language. At the same time, it is no easy task ensuring that our English Language Learners (ELLs) are meeting grade-level content standards while mastering a second language.

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Ways to Support ELLs in the Mainstream Classroom

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Ways to Support ELLs in the Mainstream Classroom

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
A note on terminology: The acronym ESL is used less often now in schools than it used to be, because we recognize that many students who are learning English already speak several other languages, so English would not be a "second" language. I use it several times in the post because schools sometimes refer to the teachers as ESL teachers, and the term is still widely used as a search term for this topic. My intent in using the acronym is to make this post easier to find online.

You have a new student, and he speaks no English. His family has just moved to your town from Japan, and though he receives English as a Second Language (ESL) support, he will also be sitting in your room every day to give him more exposure to his new language. How can you be a good teacher to someone who barely understands you?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, an average of 9 percent of students in U.S. public schools are English Language Learners (ELLs); that number is closer to 14 percent in cities. Although many of these students start off in high-intensity, whole-day English programs, most are integrated into mainstream classrooms within a year, well before their English language skills would be considered proficient.

How prepared are you to teach these students? If you're like most classroom teachers, you have little to no training in the most effective methods for working with English language learners (Walker, Shafer, & Iiams, 2004). So that means we have a problem here: Lots of ELL kids in regular classrooms, and no teacher training to ensure the success of that placement.

Below, three ESL teachers tell us what they know about the things regular classroom teachers can do to improve instruction for ELL students. These 12 strategies are simple, they are not very time consuming, and best of all, they will help everyone in your class learn better:

1. Make it Visual

"Avoid giving instructions in the air," says Melissa Eddington, an Ohio-based ESL teacher. "ELL kids have a harder time processing spoken language." So instructions - even basic directions for classroom procedures - should be written on the board whenever possible. Challenging concepts should be diagrammed or supported with pictures. And modeling the steps of a process or showing students what a finished product should look like can go a long way toward helping students understand. "Sometimes showing our students what to do is all they need in order to do it," Eddington says. Not only will this kind of nonlinguistic representation improve comprehension for ELL students, it will help all of your students grasp concepts better.

2. Build in more group work.

"Kids aren't just empty glasses that we pour stuff into and then at the end of the day they dump it back onto a test," says Kim, an ESL teacher who was the subject of my very first podcast interview. "If you really want the kids to learn, they've got to be engaged." That means less teacher-led, whole-class instruction, and more small groups, where students can practice language with their peers in a more personal, lower-risk setting. And if ELL students attend your class with a resource teacher, make use of that person: In most cases the resource teacher doesn't have to work exclusively with the ESL students; they can work with smaller groups that happen to contain these students, helping to improve the teacher-student ratio and give kids more time to practice.

3. Communicate with the ESL teacher.

Mary Yurkosky, a former ESL teacher in Massachusetts, credits much of her students' success to the strong relationship she had with the regular classroom teachers. "The classroom teachers were always talking to me about what they were doing in their classes," she says. "They made it so easy for me to support them: If a teacher was going to be doing a unit on plants, I could make sure we used some of that same vocabulary in the ESL class."

Ideally, this could be systematized, where ESL teachers could regularly get copies of lesson plans or collaborate with regular classroom teachers to build solid back-and-forth support, but "it doesn't have to be that much work," Yurkosky insists. "Just talk to each other. Talk about what's going on in your classrooms, invite each other to special presentations, share what your students are learning, and the words will naturally find their way into the ESL class."

4. Honor the "silent period."

Many new language learners go through a silent period, during which they will speak very little, if at all. "Don't force them to talk if they don't want to," says Eddington, "A lot of students who come from cultures outside of America want to be perfect when they speak, so they will not share until they feel they are at a point where they're perfect." Just knowing that this is a normal stage in second language acquisition should help relieve any pressure you feel to move them toward talking too quickly.

5. Allow some scaffolding with the native language.

Although it has been a hotly debated topic in the language-learning community, allowing students some use of their first language (L1) in second-language (L2) classrooms is gaining acceptance. When a student is still very new to a language, it's okay to pair him with other students who speak his native language. "Some students are afraid to open their mouths at all for fear of sounding stupid or just not knowing the words to use," Yurkosky says. "Letting them explain things or ask questions in their first language gets them to relax and feel like a part of the class."

And this doesn't only apply to spoken language. If you give students a written assignment, but the ELL student doesn't yet have the proficiency to handle writing his response in English, "Don't make them just sit there and do nothing," Eddington says. "Allow them to write in their first language if they're able. This allows them to still participate in journal writing or a math extended response, even if you can't read what they write." There has even been some evidence that allowing second-language learners to pre-write and brainstorm in L1 results in higher-quality writing in L2 in later stages of the writing process (Yigzaw, 2012).

6. Look out for culturally unique vocabulary.

"For most of these kids, their background knowledge is lacking, especially with things that are unique to American or westernized culture," says Eddington. It's important to directly teach certain vocabulary words: "Show them videos of what it looks like to toss pizza dough, show pictures of a juke box or a clothing rack - things that are not common in their own language."

One way to differentiate for ELL students is to consider the whole list of terms you're going to teach for a unit, and if you think an ELL student may be overwhelmed by such a long list, omit those that are not essential to understanding the larger topic at hand.

7. Use sentence frames to give students practice with academic language.

All students, not just English language learners, need practice with academic conversations. Sentence frames - partially completed sentences like "I disagree with what _________ said because..." - show students how to structure language in a formal way. Keep these posted in a highly visible spot in your classroom and require students to refer to them during discussions and while they write.

For this kind of language to really sink in, though, Kim says it has to become a regular part of class. "They won't do it if it's not the norm in the class, because they'll be embarrassed to use it among their peers," she says. "But if they can put it off on the teacher and say, Oh, well, you know, Miss Kim makes me talk like this, then they don't look as hoity-toity as they would otherwise."

8. Pre-teach whenever possible.

If you're going to be reading a certain article next week, give ESL students a copy of it now. If you plan to show a YouTube video tomorrow, send a link to your ESL students today. Any chance you can give these students to preview material will increase the odds that they'll understand it on the day you present it to everyone else. "That kind of thing is wonderful," Yurkosky says. "The kids feel so empowered if they've had a chance to look at the material ahead of time."

9. Learn about the cultural background of your students...

Our second-language populations grow more diverse every year. Taking the time to learn the basics of where a child comes from - exactly, not 'somewhere in the Middle East/South America/Asia/Africa' - tells the student that you respect her enough to bother. Kim remembers one time when she had to set the record straight about the diverse South American population at her school: "I was listening to the teachers talking about the 'Mexican' kids in our building," she says, "and I was like, 'We don't have any Mexicans.'" Not taking the time to at least correctly identify a child's country of origin, much like not bothering to pronounce their name correctly, is a kind of microaggression, a small, subtle insult that communicates hostility toward people of color. Make a commitment to be someone who bothers to get it right.

Once you have the country straight, take things up a notch by learning about students' religious and cultural practices. If he is a practicing Muslim, he should be told if one of the pizzas you ordered for the class party has sausage on it. If she comes from a culture where eye contact with adults is viewed as disrespectful, you'll know not to force her to look you in the eye when she's talking.

10. ...but don't make a child speak for his entire culture.

In her podcast interview, Kim shared a story about watching a teacher ask a new Iraqi student how he felt about the war in his country, right in the middle of class. "That's not cultural inclusiveness," she explains. "I've seen teachers do this and then pat themselves on the back. The students' English is limited so they can't express themselves very well, and they don't want to 'represent'; they just want to be there." If you anticipate a theme coming up in your class that's going to be relevant to one of your students, have a conversation with them in advance, or check with your ESL teacher to see if they think it's appropriate for in-class discussion.

11. Show them how to take themselves less seriously...

By modeling the risk-taking that's required to learn a new language, you help students develop the courage to take their own risks, and to have a sense of humor about it. "I tried to say the word 'paint' ( pinta) in Portuguese and instead I said the word for 'penis' ( pinto). They all roared with laughter while I stood there with a What?? look on my face," Yurkosky says. "When they explained what I'd said, I laughed so hard! I told them that laughing was fine because sometimes mistakes are really funny, but ridicule is never okay."

12. ...but always take them seriously.

One of Kim's pet peeves about how teachers interact with English language learners is the way they often see students' efforts as 'cute,' missing the whole point of what the student is trying to say. "A student will be desperate to communicate, and the teacher will get distracted by the delivery and miss the message," she says. "That's painful for me to watch." It bothers her when teachers mistake a lack of language for a lack of intelligence or maturity. When a child can't express themselves as well as they would in their native language, it's far too easy to assume the concepts just aren't in their heads.

"It breaks my heart when I hear teachers say (ELL kids) don't know anything," says Eddington. "These are brilliant kids and they know a lot. They just can't tell us in English yet." Make a conscious effort to see past the accent and the mispronunciations and treat every interaction - every student - with the respect they deserve.

"They're doing twice the job of everybody else in the class," Kim adds, "even though the result looks like half as much." ♦

Further Reading

The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide is one of the highest-rated books on teaching English-language learners available. In addition to offering an overview of the research on second-language learners and best practices in teaching ESL, it also includes a whole section on teaching ESL in the content areas and another specifically geared toward teaching ELL students in mainstream classrooms.
References:
Walker, A., Shafer, J., & Iiams, M. (2004). "Not in my classroom": Teacher attitudes towards English language learners in the mainstream classroom. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2(1), 130-160.

Yigzaw, A. (2012). Impact of L1 use in L2 English writing classes. Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences, 8(1), 11-27.

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.

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Teaching Students How to have a Conversation

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Teaching Students How to have a Conversation

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Maybe you have also observed how common it is nowadays for students to not know how to have a conversation. Perhaps this owes to a preponderance of talk shows in which people with different opinions rarely listen to each other, instead preferring to out-shout their opponent. Maybe it is due to changed dinner habits where more families are eating on the go rather than sitting down together and catching up on each other's day. It could be about how texting and tweeting now trump talking and listening as today's preferred forms of communication.

8 Tips for Speaking and Listening

While it is impossible to know all of the reasons, there is no doubt that learning to listen and talk is an extremely important way to broaden knowledge, enhance understanding and build community. Perhaps this is why the core standards in English-language arts include an important emphasis on developing speaking and listening, the basic tools for conversation. The eight tips below can be used regularly to help your kids learn good conversational skills.
1. Model a Good Conversation
Make a point of having one-to-two minute interactions, one-on-one, at least a few times each week with students who struggle conversationally. Share information about yourself as you might when meeting a friend or acquaintance, and show interest in the student by asking questions about his or her interests. Conversation enhancers include responses and prompts like:

If these students don't or won't share easily at first, don't give up.
2. Encourage Physical Cues
Identify procedures for having a conversation that includes appropriate non-verbal behavior. For example, you might teach a strategy like S.L.A.N.T. ( Sit up straight. Listen. Answer and ask questions. Nod to show interest. T rack the speaker.)
3. Challenge Put-Downs or Hurtful Comments
For example, if a student says, "I think what she did was really stupid," challenge with "How else can you say that without being hurtful?" If the student seems unaware, teach an alternative like, "I disagree with that." Ask the student to repeat what you said and then move on to:

"What happened to make you feel that way?"

"How would you have handled things differently?"

"Do you think there is only right answer, or could there be more?"

4. Ask Open-Ended Questions
These are questions without one correct answer, questions that stimulate discussion and can be a very powerful way to reinforce the idea that there are different views of an issue, or a set of beliefs that can be equally valid. For example: "So if Columbus came knocking on your door and told you that sailing to the New World would be an amazing adventure and there might be lots of riches there, but you might never arrive because the world was flat, would you go?"
5. Put Thinking Ahead of Knowing
When asked a question, don't accept "I don't know." Tell students that you don't require them to "know" but that you do expect them to "think." Teach them how to wonder aloud, speculate, guess or give the best answer they can. ("I'm not sure about that, but I think _____ .")
6. Have Informal Chats
Before class begins or in the hallway, ask students about their other classes, what they think about a current event, or how they feel about the outcome of a game. Share your thoughts as well. ("I thought it was more that the Jets lost the game than anything the Eagles did to win. How did you see it?")
7. Make Eye Contact
When a student is speaking in class and you are listening, give him or her your eye contact. However, gradually scan away from the speaker and direct your gaze and movement towards other students. This will often get the speaker to redirect his or her talk toward peers, and it invites peers to get and stay involved with what's being said.
8. Encourage Turn-Taking
Use an object, such as a talking stick, as a signal for turn-taking. Teach your students that when they have the object, it is their turn to talk or pass while others are expected to listen.

How do you help your students become better speakers and listeners? Please share your strategies in the comments section below.

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Teaching Your Students How to Have a Conversation

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I was recently in a third grade classroom and was struck by the presence of rules that were posted for how to have a conversation. Having visited many middle and high schools, I think these same rules could -- and probably should -- be posted there as well.

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Thought starters

1. What strategies does the teacher use to engage his students in discussions?

2. What strikes you about student discussions in this classroom?

3. How would you describe the teacher's role?

School Details

Shaw Middle School
4106 North Cook St
Spokane WA 99207

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Students in Steven English's 8th grade science class build their understanding of variables in an experiment by engaging in small group and whole class discussions. The teacher facilitates student-centered discussion through questioning and the use of a koosh ball technique.