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Oral Language Activity Planning Template

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Oral Language Activity Planning Template

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Using Academic Conversations to Support ELs' Acquisition of Academic Language and Content

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Using Academic Conversations to Support ELs' Acquisition of Academic Language and Content

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Using Academic Conversations to Support ELs PPT.pdf

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Using Academic Conversations to Support ELs' Acquisition of Academic Language and Content Session Handouts

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Using Academic Conversations to Support ELs' Acquisition of Academic Language and Content Session Handouts

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April 2019

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Oral Language Activity Planning Template

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Oral Language Activity Planning Template

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Supporting ELs' Oral Language Development 

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Supporting ELs' Oral Language Development 

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Education Week blog post by Larry Ferlazzo

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The new question-of-the-week is:
How do you promote speaking with English-language learners?
Obviously, when learning a new language, it's important to be able to speak it.

This extensive series will consider effective strategies to teach and encourage English-language learners to communicate through speaking their new language.

Today's contributors are Valentina Gonzalez, Sarah Said, Mary Ann Zehr, Dr. Jeff Zwiers, and Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Valentina, Sarah, and Mary Ann on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You can find many categorized and updated resources related to this topic at Speaking & Listening on my resource-sharing blog.
Response From Valentina Gonzalez
Valentina Gonzalez is currently a professional-development specialist for ELLs in Texas. She works with teachers of English-learners to support language and literacy instruction. In addition to presenting, she writes a monthly blog for MiddleWeb focused on supporting ELLs. She can be reached through her website elementaryenglishlanguagelearners.weebly.com or on Twitter @ValentinaESL:
English-learners (ELs) benefit from time to discuss in the classroom using the target language and domain-specific vocabulary. Unfortunately, even today, our students are still not talking enough about academic content in the classrooms. Studies show that most of the talk happening in classrooms comes from the teacher, and when students talk, their answers are at a low level, usually one word or simple phrases. On top of that information, ELs are called on to speak less frequently in classrooms across our country. So the question becomes, how do we promote speaking especially for our ELs in order to advance their language development and see academic growth? When I was a young language learner, I, myself, spent most of my day listening quietly in the classroom. It was ingrained in me from my parents that my job as the student was to go to school and listen to the teacher. He/she held the knowledge, and it was not my role to speak. This was a learned cultural difference that I brought from home to my academic setting. Unless my teacher spoke directly to me, I could go all day without saying a single word except for at lunch and recess with my closest friend. Then when I got home, I told my mom everything I learned that day in school ... only I shared with her in Serbian (our native language). I had very little practice speaking English and using academic vocabulary with my peers. Though speaking at my home using my native language was truly a wonderful bridge for me and helped me to internalize what I learned at school, I wasn't practicing enough academic English vocabulary. That very well could have been a different story. We may not be able to control the language or vocabulary our students use at home, but we have a great deal of control over how they use it in our classrooms. We have to get them speaking regularly using domain-specific vocabulary on a daily basis. As they listen to their peers, they are building more vocabulary. And as they speak, they are growing their own writing vocabulary. And this listening, speaking, and writing vocabulary will also help them build their reading vocabulary. Here are four steps that promote speaking with English-learners: Creating a safe classroom for all students to talk is most important. If an EL is nervous about speaking or making a mistake, chances are they won't try. A classroom that embraces mistakes as opportunities for growth helps to lower the affective filter of ELs. This means we allow for mistakes in speaking. We encourage open questioning and curiosity. We embrace thoughtful communication. We leave space for student to student talk. As teachers, we step aside from the center of the classroom "stage" and allow our students to speak with partners and in groups frequently. Clearly and explicitly model the expectations of talk. Show students what the conversation will look like. What will each participant do? What will they say? What will they look like? Model so there is no ambiguity. Making the communication structure visible is critical for language learners. If everyone knows the expectations, then the target is clear and more easily achieved. We set students up for success this way. I remember before I learned to model conversations how my students would drift away from the conversation. I felt like they were being ornery or off task. I thought it was their fault. But really it was mine. I didn't outline for them what the talk should look and sound like so they just tried and mostly didn't live up to my expectations until I showed them explicitly what the academic conversation should look and sound like. And then guess what? They could do it! And they felt so proud of themselves! Our goal is that our students become independent at everything in life, be it walking, riding a bike, reading, paying bills, and even holding a conversation. But no matter what, they need a scaffold to begin the JOURNEY to independence. For ELs and many other students, structuring conversations alleviates the stress of how to hold the conversation, so they can focus on what's important ... the content. Though turn and talk is oOK every now and then, it is loose and less supportive for students who need a bit more support. I have a few favorite scaffolds for talk in the classroom: think-pair-share, talking heads, and QSSSA. Most of these offer students sentence starters to propel their thought. One problem often seen with partner talk in the classroom is that one partner dominates the conversation. These three methods offer all students an equitable chance to participate in discourse. For ELs who are more shy or resistant to speak, this encourages active participation. As teachers, we've probably all been guilty of playing the question game with our class. We ask a question and immediately call on a student to answer. The students are well aware of this game, and many don't even try to answer unless called upon. Most know who the teacher usually calls on, too. In order to get ELs and all students really thinking and talking, we can employ some wait time, otherwise known as think time. It's quite simple yet completely effective.

We pose a question.

WAIT about 5-10 seconds.

Here I like to provide my ELs with a sentence starter to help propel their thought.

And then let them all share with a partner or group. This step ensures that EVERYONE talks and not just one individual.

Now I can call on a student at random to share what he/she said or what their partner said.

Wait time is important for ELs because it allows for processing, translating, and building bravery to answer. If we want to promote more talk with English-learners in our classrooms, we, as teachers, have to talk less. Give our students the room to talk more. Amplify their voices and empower them with the confidence to speak up. Their voices are important and hold value. We have to trust that by allowing them to talk, we are unlocking the potential for them to uncover the curriculum rather than us working so hard to try to "cover" it daily by telling them everything. Giving them the power to negotiate for meaning, grapple with ideas, question their thinking and their classmates' thinking will create a space that fosters curiosity and breeds thought. After all, our job is not to teach them facts. They can simply Google anything these days. But rather ,we are here to teach them how to learn and think, communicate, and question and grow as learners each day. Response From Sarah Said
Sarah Said is currently a district-level administrator who oversees English learning and bilingual programs in two elementary school districts in suburbs south of Chicago. Sarah spent over a decade teaching and advocating for English-learners spanning from the early grades to high school age. She has a graduate degree in instructional leadership: literacy, language, and culture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is married and a mother of three who enjoys traveling with her family:
They'll "Drop the Mic One" Day Soon ... Us cool kids "drop the mic" when we give a triumphant speech. The English-learners in our classroom will one day "drop mic" as well in a way that will inspire us and shock us all at the same time. We need to have hope in our students as we support them in developing their speaking skills. There are some people that want to explicitly teach conversation skills to English-learners to a point where the students may find it so amusing that they don't take seriously ... aka bad TPR (Total Physical Response) implementation. And, there are other teachers who think the students will learn speaking skills through sitting there, listening to the teacher drone on and on because their brain will magically acquire a language. Buehler ... Buehler ... Neither way helps. Let's be real, students need to learn oral language in a nonthreatening, nonbelittling, and organic way. If we roll up our sleeves and really try to support our students' oral development as much as we do reading and writing, they will soon enough be able to "drop the mic" and amaze all one day soon! How do we do that? How do we really try to develop the speaking skills of English-learners. We need to do this step by step to really home in on developing skills. Give Them Time and Let Them Listen First, we want to give them time and let them listen. As we go through structure speaking-yes your kids can speak in class-let your newcomer take their time to listen. Sometimes, newcomers go through a silent period; we need to honor it. By honoring it, we can then take baby steps to rich academic conversations. We can then work with that student one on one to develop speaking skills. Later, we can partner them up with a student who will support them. Then we can move them to groups of four students until we get them into full-class discussions. Yes, they can get there. But it all starts with allowing them to listen and be comfortable in that environment first. Building a relationship with you and their classmates will give them the confidence they need to participate in class and begin developing their speaking skills. Use Tech Tools Like Seesaw to Scaffold Speaking in Front of Others For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you would know that I am a huge fan of Seesaw. This application does a world of good for English-learners. Many people know about it's benefits to connect students to families. But it has strong benefits with supporting student voice. I am a proud Seesaw ambassador and very pleased with what the app offers for helping English-learners develop speaking skills. You can learn more by going on Twitter and following the #ELLchat_bkclub discussion on hashtag called #Seesaw4ELs. Seesaw also has great communities on Facebook where people can learn more ideas of others using the application. Based on the assignments you offer, students can record their opinions, they can read and listen to themselves, or they can practice simple greetings on there. They can really go through the application and have tons of practice learning. It is accessible for primary- but can be used in secondary-level classrooms as well. The only people who see what the students have done are the teacher and parents who are added by a family app. Once they are confident speaking on technology, they can then move on to speaking in front of more people. Plan Structured Speaking Activities That Have Appropriate Supports In order to explain this, I will tell you about my own failure. Many years ago, I had moved into a high school English-learner classroom. I wanted to conduct a Socratic seminar in English with newcomers. I gave them a text and an overarching question. I did not model the structure nor give them appropriate roles for the activity. It then became a discussion free for all that became difficult to control. I had to go back to the drawing board later and realize my mistake. I didn't give them enough explanation of the Socratic seminar beforehand. I also didn't model the activity appropriately. I went back at it a week later, I showed them a video of how Socratic seminar should be done. I also gave them a text that was more meaningful to them. And there was an appropriate pre- and post- activity related to the seminar. More wait time was given. I also gave them sentence and question starters to support them. Bingo! We as a class were successful! Building speaking skills in English-learners takes the ability to build relationships with them, a classroom environment that allows freedom to fail, creativity, and well-structured lesson planning. You also have to understand that your students need modeling and the ability to practice their skills. You have to find ways to really give them an equitable chance to develop those skills. Give it time, and one day they will "drop the mic" and have you in awe with their speaking skills. Response From Mary Ann Zehr
Mary Ann Zehr taught core English and history classes to English-language learners for seven years in the District of Columbia public schools. Currently, she is teaching 9 th grade English at Harrisonburg High School in Virginia. She still has some ELLs in her classroom:
To be successful in promoting speaking with English-language learners, I must carefully plan and structure speaking activities. I'm not one of those teachers who can wing it in leading a discussion and get everyone in the classroom participating. Challenging, higher-order questions don't pop into my head spontaneously. I think of these kinds of questions and write them down as part of my lesson planning. I've developed several protocols that support students to speak. One protocol is for student debates. For this protocol, I provide one or two texts about a debate topic. For example, I used the April 30, 2018, New York Times article, As part of my debate protocol, I divide a class into two teams. With The New York Times article, I assigned one team to make the argument that making school more rigorous helps to reduce risky behavior in teens. I assigned the other team to argue that making school harder does not affect teens' risky behavior. In their teams, students read the article and highlight any evidence to support the position, or "claim," that they have been assigned. Then, still in their teams, each person in the group practices speaking the claim and giving evidence and reasoning to support the claim. After the teams have prepared their arguments, I match up students in twos, with a student from each of the teams in each pair, to argue their opposing claims. The class comes alive as each student expresses the arguments he or she has prepared in a one-on-one debate. Lastly, we have a group discussion during which students are free to express their true opinions. Again, students use the format of making a claim and providing evidence and reasoning to support it. I also coach students to use posted sentence stems, such as "I agree because ..." or "I disagree because ..." or "I'd like to add ..." I've used this same protocol successfully for students to debate whether military recruiters should be permitted in schools, whether the United States should celebrate Columbus Day, and whether schools should permit students to have cellphones in class. Another protocol I've used to promote speaking is reciprocal teaching. With this protocol, I divide a class into teams of four or five students. I assign each team the task of preparing to teach and then teaching a chapter of a book or scene of a play. For example, in 12 We read the first scene of the play together. Then I assigned other scenes of the play to different teams of students. As part of the protocol, I give them an activity packet with specific instructions for the structure of their planning and execution of a lesson. For example, each student chooses a role, such as to be the wordsmith-whose job is to lead the selection of vocabulary words that need to be taught-or connector-who ensures that each student has created a discussion question, or summarizer, or discussion leader. With "Blood Wedding," teams of students read aloud their assigned scene and then picked an excerpt of two pages to teach. After teams had prepared their lessons, they carried out reciprocal teaching by exchanging lessons with another team. When the planning and reciprocal teaching are going on, the students are talking. And because the students have roles, everyone speaks. I provide some guiding questions. In the activity guide for "Blood Wedding," I prompted analysis with questions: What does the character do and say about gender roles? (I asked them to write quotes). Does the quote reinforce or challenge traditional gender roles? But students also are required to create open-ended questions of their own, which they use to lead discussions. After reciprocal teaching, we also typically hold a Socratic seminar to discuss the text that we have read. I give grades for speaking, just as I do for reading and writing. During debates and reciprocal teaching, I circulate to make sure I hear each student speaking and give a grade for it. I often host guest speakers to my classroom. Before the speaker arrives, students have a chance to prepare a question. Then, to receive a grade, they must ask at least one question or make one comment during the class period. Nevertheless, I still have a couple of English-language learners who are reluctant to speak and will do just about everything in their power to avoid it. Sometimes a student will take a zero, rather than speak aloud. Recently, I've experimented with having students make voice recordings and send them to me electronically. I've created assignments for students to reflect on a particular teaching unit. Usually, I give them five questions and ask them to choose to answer three in a voice recording that lasts for at least one minute. I grade the reflection with a checklist based on the speaking rubric from the WIDA Consortium. Students earn points, for instance, for using several content words from the unit and elaborating on their ideas with examples. They use the online program, vocaroo.com, to record their reflections and send them to me. The first time I required students to make a voice recording, they were reluctant to do it in class. Some came and made their recordings in my classroom at lunch to avoid having other students hear them. But the second time I required them to make recordings, most students seemed to have overcome their reluctance. (I want to see them do the recordings so I can ensure they are not reading from notes. I want them to speak without using notes). Recordings help me get a good sense of how each student needs to improve his or her speaking. Because I can replay recordings, I get information about how students speak that I often miss by hearing them speak only in class. Some need to use more transition words. Some need to speak in complete sentences. Others need to provide more examples. I evaluate and reflect on my students' speaking skills in the same way that I do for other domains of English and I use that knowledge to inform my teaching. Response From Dr. Jeff Zwiers grade English, we read and analyzed the play, "Blood Wedding," by Federico Garcia Lorca. We analyzed the play particularly for what it said about traditional gender roles. Give students authentic and engaging ideas to talk about. This seems obvious, but we have seen way too many lesson activities in which students speak to show some knowledge of grammar or word meanings-mdash;not to communicate engaging ideas in authentic ways. And some folks think that students at beginning and intermediate levels of proficiency need the boring basics and shouldn't be asked to communicate yet. Hogwash! All students deserve tasks in which they use language to communicate with others to get interesting things done and made. One of the advantages of paired conversations is that students are more likely to be engaged with one other person who is either listening or talking to them at any given time. There is less opportunity to "check out." Think about when you are sitting in a conference session, not paying excellent attention, and the speaker asks you to turn to a partner and answer a question. Suddenly, you are more engaged. Most of you. And if the topic or question is interesting or useful to you, then the engagement goes up even more. But remember that English-learners can be shy and reticent to talk, especially in large groups. Many English-learners need to develop stamina in creating complex ideas and concepts with peers by engaging in sustained conversations. They need the motivation to communicate (talk and listen) and to push themselves to talk and listen beyond their usual "bare minimum just get by" levels of participation. As teachers, we want them to get so engaged that they forget they are learning. We want to immerse them in meaningful language use. Recently, our work has focused on student conversations in elementary settings. There are many activities that attempt to promote meaningful uses of language. For example, a common one is the think-pair-share, or turn-and-talk. However, by teaching and modeling core communication skills, teachers can take these strategies to the next level. English-learners, even primary-grade students, will be more engaged and learn both content and language from each other. During academic conversations, students practice active listening as they create and negotiate ideas. How powerful can your student dialogues become? Response From Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks "Worried About Risky Teenage Behavior? Make School Tougher," by Austin Frakt, as a text for one debate .The article caught my eye because the Learning Network of The New York Times developed activities for its use in the classroom. "I don't speak English fluently, but I understand it and I know how to speak and write it ... not the best. But they [teachers] think that just because we look like Mexicans that they need to keep repeating, repeating, repeating ... like the ones who learn Spanish first they don't think we are going to understand it and they keep us like away from the other ones that know English." -Francisco, a high school student After Francisco (a pseudonym) shared these thoughts, I was surprised. His comment surprised me because over the three months that I had observed him in his high school English/language arts class, he rarely said a word. He spoke so little that because of his English-language learner (ELL) classification, I was unclear as to how much he could communicate in English. Toward the end of our interview, I shared my initial assumptions about his English abilities with Francisco. He responded by recounting experiences of teachers assuming that he could not speak English because he sat near students who (unlike him) were recent immigrants from Latin America. He shared his frustration with being spoken to by white English-speaking teachers in broken Spanish because they assumed that he did not know English. Moreover, he understood white teachers' disrespect toward those they perceived as Latino immigrant students as emblematic of racial dynamics that he witnessed outside of school. His decision to remain silent during class was a way to ensure that his intellectual and linguistic dignity would be protected. My conversation with Francisco situates my response to this week's question within the importance of perceptions about race in English-language teaching. I highlight two areas of learning that are fundamental to educators setting the groundwork for students, like Francisco, to believe that their contributions are important in the classroom.

1. Learn about the linguistic and educational experiences of ELLs in your classroom.

Francisco shared how educators' assumptions about his English proficiency contributed to his silence within the classroom. Create opportunities for students to share their educational and linguistic experiences to allow educators to avoid these types of mistakes. Importantly, this does not mean asking students to respond to direct questions about these topics in front of the entire class. This type of information can be integrated into "getting-to-know-you" projects like linguistic autobiographies, linguistic surveys, identity collages, and other such classroom activities.

1. Learn about the racial histories of the United States and the countries with which your students have connections.

As Francisco's comments illustrate, students come into the classroom with histories of being treated certain ways because of their racial identities. Educating ELLs, most of whom also belong to minoritized racial groups, requires recognizing the impact of racism inside and outside of the classroom. Educators who understand how race and racism operate can make informed decisions about how to best incorporate students' identities into instruction, avoid racist practices within their classroom, and can advocate on behalf of their students. While learning about these topics through reputable external resources (e.g., documentaries, articles, etc.) is necessary, students can also teach educators through sharing their own experiences. For example, teachers can design activities in which students talk about resilience within their communities. Students who are identified as ELLs (like all other students) are multifaceted individuals. As a result, the racial dynamics that impact the rest of society also impact their learning. If educators want to create spaces for ELLs to use their voice, it is necessary to create classroom environments where students understand that all of their identities are valued.
Dr. Jeff Zwiers is the co-author of The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations (Corwin, 2017) and Academic Language Mastery: Conversational Discourse in Context (Corwin, 2016). He is a senior researcher at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He supports the Understanding Language Initiative, a research and professional-development project focused on literacy, cognition, discourse, and academic language. His current research focuses on communication-based teaching and classroom practices that foster high-quality academic interactions and literacy:

Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks is an assistant professor of reading education at Texas State University. Dr. Brooks' research agenda centers on everyday educational practices that impact the educational trajectories of bilingual adolescents. Dr. Brooks' work has been published in "Research in the Teaching of English," "Journal of Literacy Research," "TESOL Quarterly," and other venues:

Thanks to Valentina, Sarah, Mary Ann, Jeff, and Maneka for their contributions.
Just a reminder;you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first seven years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. Look for Part Two in a few days.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

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Response: Ways to Build Speaking Skills With ELLs (Opinion)

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Valentina Gonzalez, Sarah Said, Mary Ann Zehr, Dr. Jeff Zwiers and Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks share strategies for encouraging English Language Learners to practice speaking their new language.

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Meaningful Classroom Talk:Supporting English Learners’ Oral Language Development

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Meaningful Classroom Talk:Supporting English Learners’ Oral Language Development

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Walqui and Heritage, 2018

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Emily Francis

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Emily Francis

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Corwin

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Unlocking English Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible

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Welcome to the companion website!Chapter 1Figure 1.3: EL and Family Welcoming Checklist Figure 1.6: EL Advocacy Equity Audit

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Larry Ferlazzo, Education Week, 2019

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The new question-of-the-week is:
How do you promote speaking with English-language learners?
Obviously, when learning a new language, it's important to be able to speak it.

This extensive series will consider effective strategies to teach and encourage English-language learners to communicate through speaking their new language.

Today's contributors are Valentina Gonzalez, Sarah Said, Mary Ann Zehr, Dr. Jeff Zwiers, and Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Valentina, Sarah, and Mary Ann on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You can find many categorized and updated resources related to this topic at Speaking & Listening on my resource-sharing blog.
Response From Valentina Gonzalez
Valentina Gonzalez is currently a professional-development specialist for ELLs in Texas. She works with teachers of English-learners to support language and literacy instruction. In addition to presenting, she writes a monthly blog for MiddleWeb focused on supporting ELLs. She can be reached through her website elementaryenglishlanguagelearners.weebly.com or on Twitter @ValentinaESL:
English-learners (ELs) benefit from time to discuss in the classroom using the target language and domain-specific vocabulary. Unfortunately, even today, our students are still not talking enough about academic content in the classrooms. Studies show that most of the talk happening in classrooms comes from the teacher, and when students talk, their answers are at a low level, usually one word or simple phrases. On top of that information, ELs are called on to speak less frequently in classrooms across our country. So the question becomes, how do we promote speaking especially for our ELs in order to advance their language development and see academic growth? When I was a young language learner, I, myself, spent most of my day listening quietly in the classroom. It was ingrained in me from my parents that my job as the student was to go to school and listen to the teacher. He/she held the knowledge, and it was not my role to speak. This was a learned cultural difference that I brought from home to my academic setting. Unless my teacher spoke directly to me, I could go all day without saying a single word except for at lunch and recess with my closest friend. Then when I got home, I told my mom everything I learned that day in school ... only I shared with her in Serbian (our native language). I had very little practice speaking English and using academic vocabulary with my peers. Though speaking at my home using my native language was truly a wonderful bridge for me and helped me to internalize what I learned at school, I wasn't practicing enough academic English vocabulary. That very well could have been a different story. We may not be able to control the language or vocabulary our students use at home, but we have a great deal of control over how they use it in our classrooms. We have to get them speaking regularly using domain-specific vocabulary on a daily basis. As they listen to their peers, they are building more vocabulary. And as they speak, they are growing their own writing vocabulary. And this listening, speaking, and writing vocabulary will also help them build their reading vocabulary. Here are four steps that promote speaking with English-learners: Creating a safe classroom for all students to talk is most important. If an EL is nervous about speaking or making a mistake, chances are they won't try. A classroom that embraces mistakes as opportunities for growth helps to lower the affective filter of ELs. This means we allow for mistakes in speaking. We encourage open questioning and curiosity. We embrace thoughtful communication. We leave space for student to student talk. As teachers, we step aside from the center of the classroom "stage" and allow our students to speak with partners and in groups frequently. Clearly and explicitly model the expectations of talk. Show students what the conversation will look like. What will each participant do? What will they say? What will they look like? Model so there is no ambiguity. Making the communication structure visible is critical for language learners. If everyone knows the expectations, then the target is clear and more easily achieved. We set students up for success this way. I remember before I learned to model conversations how my students would drift away from the conversation. I felt like they were being ornery or off task. I thought it was their fault. But really it was mine. I didn't outline for them what the talk should look and sound like so they just tried and mostly didn't live up to my expectations until I showed them explicitly what the academic conversation should look and sound like. And then guess what? They could do it! And they felt so proud of themselves! Our goal is that our students become independent at everything in life, be it walking, riding a bike, reading, paying bills, and even holding a conversation. But no matter what, they need a scaffold to begin the JOURNEY to independence. For ELs and many other students, structuring conversations alleviates the stress of how to hold the conversation, so they can focus on what's important ... the content. Though turn and talk is oOK every now and then, it is loose and less supportive for students who need a bit more support. I have a few favorite scaffolds for talk in the classroom: think-pair-share, talking heads, and QSSSA. Most of these offer students sentence starters to propel their thought. One problem often seen with partner talk in the classroom is that one partner dominates the conversation. These three methods offer all students an equitable chance to participate in discourse. For ELs who are more shy or resistant to speak, this encourages active participation. As teachers, we've probably all been guilty of playing the question game with our class. We ask a question and immediately call on a student to answer. The students are well aware of this game, and many don't even try to answer unless called upon. Most know who the teacher usually calls on, too. In order to get ELs and all students really thinking and talking, we can employ some wait time, otherwise known as think time. It's quite simple yet completely effective.

We pose a question.

WAIT about 5-10 seconds.

Here I like to provide my ELs with a sentence starter to help propel their thought.

And then let them all share with a partner or group. This step ensures that EVERYONE talks and not just one individual.

Now I can call on a student at random to share what he/she said or what their partner said.

Wait time is important for ELs because it allows for processing, translating, and building bravery to answer. If we want to promote more talk with English-learners in our classrooms, we, as teachers, have to talk less. Give our students the room to talk more. Amplify their voices and empower them with the confidence to speak up. Their voices are important and hold value. We have to trust that by allowing them to talk, we are unlocking the potential for them to uncover the curriculum rather than us working so hard to try to "cover" it daily by telling them everything. Giving them the power to negotiate for meaning, grapple with ideas, question their thinking and their classmates' thinking will create a space that fosters curiosity and breeds thought. After all, our job is not to teach them facts. They can simply Google anything these days. But rather ,we are here to teach them how to learn and think, communicate, and question and grow as learners each day. Response From Sarah Said
Sarah Said is currently a district-level administrator who oversees English learning and bilingual programs in two elementary school districts in suburbs south of Chicago. Sarah spent over a decade teaching and advocating for English-learners spanning from the early grades to high school age. She has a graduate degree in instructional leadership: literacy, language, and culture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is married and a mother of three who enjoys traveling with her family:
They'll "Drop the Mic One" Day Soon ... Us cool kids "drop the mic" when we give a triumphant speech. The English-learners in our classroom will one day "drop mic" as well in a way that will inspire us and shock us all at the same time. We need to have hope in our students as we support them in developing their speaking skills. There are some people that want to explicitly teach conversation skills to English-learners to a point where the students may find it so amusing that they don't take seriously ... aka bad TPR (Total Physical Response) implementation. And, there are other teachers who think the students will learn speaking skills through sitting there, listening to the teacher drone on and on because their brain will magically acquire a language. Buehler ... Buehler ... Neither way helps. Let's be real, students need to learn oral language in a nonthreatening, nonbelittling, and organic way. If we roll up our sleeves and really try to support our students' oral development as much as we do reading and writing, they will soon enough be able to "drop the mic" and amaze all one day soon! How do we do that? How do we really try to develop the speaking skills of English-learners. We need to do this step by step to really home in on developing skills. Give Them Time and Let Them Listen First, we want to give them time and let them listen. As we go through structure speaking-yes your kids can speak in class-let your newcomer take their time to listen. Sometimes, newcomers go through a silent period; we need to honor it. By honoring it, we can then take baby steps to rich academic conversations. We can then work with that student one on one to develop speaking skills. Later, we can partner them up with a student who will support them. Then we can move them to groups of four students until we get them into full-class discussions. Yes, they can get there. But it all starts with allowing them to listen and be comfortable in that environment first. Building a relationship with you and their classmates will give them the confidence they need to participate in class and begin developing their speaking skills. Use Tech Tools Like Seesaw to Scaffold Speaking in Front of Others For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you would know that I am a huge fan of Seesaw. This application does a world of good for English-learners. Many people know about it's benefits to connect students to families. But it has strong benefits with supporting student voice. I am a proud Seesaw ambassador and very pleased with what the app offers for helping English-learners develop speaking skills. You can learn more by going on Twitter and following the #ELLchat_bkclub discussion on hashtag called #Seesaw4ELs. Seesaw also has great communities on Facebook where people can learn more ideas of others using the application. Based on the assignments you offer, students can record their opinions, they can read and listen to themselves, or they can practice simple greetings on there. They can really go through the application and have tons of practice learning. It is accessible for primary- but can be used in secondary-level classrooms as well. The only people who see what the students have done are the teacher and parents who are added by a family app. Once they are confident speaking on technology, they can then move on to speaking in front of more people. Plan Structured Speaking Activities That Have Appropriate Supports In order to explain this, I will tell you about my own failure. Many years ago, I had moved into a high school English-learner classroom. I wanted to conduct a Socratic seminar in English with newcomers. I gave them a text and an overarching question. I did not model the structure nor give them appropriate roles for the activity. It then became a discussion free for all that became difficult to control. I had to go back to the drawing board later and realize my mistake. I didn't give them enough explanation of the Socratic seminar beforehand. I also didn't model the activity appropriately. I went back at it a week later, I showed them a video of how Socratic seminar should be done. I also gave them a text that was more meaningful to them. And there was an appropriate pre- and post- activity related to the seminar. More wait time was given. I also gave them sentence and question starters to support them. Bingo! We as a class were successful! Building speaking skills in English-learners takes the ability to build relationships with them, a classroom environment that allows freedom to fail, creativity, and well-structured lesson planning. You also have to understand that your students need modeling and the ability to practice their skills. You have to find ways to really give them an equitable chance to develop those skills. Give it time, and one day they will "drop the mic" and have you in awe with their speaking skills. Response From Mary Ann Zehr
Mary Ann Zehr taught core English and history classes to English-language learners for seven years in the District of Columbia public schools. Currently, she is teaching 9 th grade English at Harrisonburg High School in Virginia. She still has some ELLs in her classroom:
To be successful in promoting speaking with English-language learners, I must carefully plan and structure speaking activities. I'm not one of those teachers who can wing it in leading a discussion and get everyone in the classroom participating. Challenging, higher-order questions don't pop into my head spontaneously. I think of these kinds of questions and write them down as part of my lesson planning. I've developed several protocols that support students to speak. One protocol is for student debates. For this protocol, I provide one or two texts about a debate topic. For example, I used the April 30, 2018, New York Times article, As part of my debate protocol, I divide a class into two teams. With The New York Times article, I assigned one team to make the argument that making school more rigorous helps to reduce risky behavior in teens. I assigned the other team to argue that making school harder does not affect teens' risky behavior. In their teams, students read the article and highlight any evidence to support the position, or "claim," that they have been assigned. Then, still in their teams, each person in the group practices speaking the claim and giving evidence and reasoning to support the claim. After the teams have prepared their arguments, I match up students in twos, with a student from each of the teams in each pair, to argue their opposing claims. The class comes alive as each student expresses the arguments he or she has prepared in a one-on-one debate. Lastly, we have a group discussion during which students are free to express their true opinions. Again, students use the format of making a claim and providing evidence and reasoning to support it. I also coach students to use posted sentence stems, such as "I agree because ..." or "I disagree because ..." or "I'd like to add ..." I've used this same protocol successfully for students to debate whether military recruiters should be permitted in schools, whether the United States should celebrate Columbus Day, and whether schools should permit students to have cellphones in class. Another protocol I've used to promote speaking is reciprocal teaching. With this protocol, I divide a class into teams of four or five students. I assign each team the task of preparing to teach and then teaching a chapter of a book or scene of a play. For example, in 12 We read the first scene of the play together. Then I assigned other scenes of the play to different teams of students. As part of the protocol, I give them an activity packet with specific instructions for the structure of their planning and execution of a lesson. For example, each student chooses a role, such as to be the wordsmith-whose job is to lead the selection of vocabulary words that need to be taught-or connector-who ensures that each student has created a discussion question, or summarizer, or discussion leader. With "Blood Wedding," teams of students read aloud their assigned scene and then picked an excerpt of two pages to teach. After teams had prepared their lessons, they carried out reciprocal teaching by exchanging lessons with another team. When the planning and reciprocal teaching are going on, the students are talking. And because the students have roles, everyone speaks. I provide some guiding questions. In the activity guide for "Blood Wedding," I prompted analysis with questions: What does the character do and say about gender roles? (I asked them to write quotes). Does the quote reinforce or challenge traditional gender roles? But students also are required to create open-ended questions of their own, which they use to lead discussions. After reciprocal teaching, we also typically hold a Socratic seminar to discuss the text that we have read. I give grades for speaking, just as I do for reading and writing. During debates and reciprocal teaching, I circulate to make sure I hear each student speaking and give a grade for it. I often host guest speakers to my classroom. Before the speaker arrives, students have a chance to prepare a question. Then, to receive a grade, they must ask at least one question or make one comment during the class period. Nevertheless, I still have a couple of English-language learners who are reluctant to speak and will do just about everything in their power to avoid it. Sometimes a student will take a zero, rather than speak aloud. Recently, I've experimented with having students make voice recordings and send them to me electronically. I've created assignments for students to reflect on a particular teaching unit. Usually, I give them five questions and ask them to choose to answer three in a voice recording that lasts for at least one minute. I grade the reflection with a checklist based on the speaking rubric from the WIDA Consortium. Students earn points, for instance, for using several content words from the unit and elaborating on their ideas with examples. They use the online program, vocaroo.com, to record their reflections and send them to me. The first time I required students to make a voice recording, they were reluctant to do it in class. Some came and made their recordings in my classroom at lunch to avoid having other students hear them. But the second time I required them to make recordings, most students seemed to have overcome their reluctance. (I want to see them do the recordings so I can ensure they are not reading from notes. I want them to speak without using notes). Recordings help me get a good sense of how each student needs to improve his or her speaking. Because I can replay recordings, I get information about how students speak that I often miss by hearing them speak only in class. Some need to use more transition words. Some need to speak in complete sentences. Others need to provide more examples. I evaluate and reflect on my students' speaking skills in the same way that I do for other domains of English and I use that knowledge to inform my teaching. Response From Dr. Jeff Zwiers grade English, we read and analyzed the play, "Blood Wedding," by Federico Garcia Lorca. We analyzed the play particularly for what it said about traditional gender roles. Give students authentic and engaging ideas to talk about. This seems obvious, but we have seen way too many lesson activities in which students speak to show some knowledge of grammar or word meanings-mdash;not to communicate engaging ideas in authentic ways. And some folks think that students at beginning and intermediate levels of proficiency need the boring basics and shouldn't be asked to communicate yet. Hogwash! All students deserve tasks in which they use language to communicate with others to get interesting things done and made. One of the advantages of paired conversations is that students are more likely to be engaged with one other person who is either listening or talking to them at any given time. There is less opportunity to "check out." Think about when you are sitting in a conference session, not paying excellent attention, and the speaker asks you to turn to a partner and answer a question. Suddenly, you are more engaged. Most of you. And if the topic or question is interesting or useful to you, then the engagement goes up even more. But remember that English-learners can be shy and reticent to talk, especially in large groups. Many English-learners need to develop stamina in creating complex ideas and concepts with peers by engaging in sustained conversations. They need the motivation to communicate (talk and listen) and to push themselves to talk and listen beyond their usual "bare minimum just get by" levels of participation. As teachers, we want them to get so engaged that they forget they are learning. We want to immerse them in meaningful language use. Recently, our work has focused on student conversations in elementary settings. There are many activities that attempt to promote meaningful uses of language. For example, a common one is the think-pair-share, or turn-and-talk. However, by teaching and modeling core communication skills, teachers can take these strategies to the next level. English-learners, even primary-grade students, will be more engaged and learn both content and language from each other. During academic conversations, students practice active listening as they create and negotiate ideas. How powerful can your student dialogues become? Response From Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks "Worried About Risky Teenage Behavior? Make School Tougher," by Austin Frakt, as a text for one debate .The article caught my eye because the Learning Network of The New York Times developed activities for its use in the classroom. "I don't speak English fluently, but I understand it and I know how to speak and write it ... not the best. But they [teachers] think that just because we look like Mexicans that they need to keep repeating, repeating, repeating ... like the ones who learn Spanish first they don't think we are going to understand it and they keep us like away from the other ones that know English." -Francisco, a high school student After Francisco (a pseudonym) shared these thoughts, I was surprised. His comment surprised me because over the three months that I had observed him in his high school English/language arts class, he rarely said a word. He spoke so little that because of his English-language learner (ELL) classification, I was unclear as to how much he could communicate in English. Toward the end of our interview, I shared my initial assumptions about his English abilities with Francisco. He responded by recounting experiences of teachers assuming that he could not speak English because he sat near students who (unlike him) were recent immigrants from Latin America. He shared his frustration with being spoken to by white English-speaking teachers in broken Spanish because they assumed that he did not know English. Moreover, he understood white teachers' disrespect toward those they perceived as Latino immigrant students as emblematic of racial dynamics that he witnessed outside of school. His decision to remain silent during class was a way to ensure that his intellectual and linguistic dignity would be protected. My conversation with Francisco situates my response to this week's question within the importance of perceptions about race in English-language teaching. I highlight two areas of learning that are fundamental to educators setting the groundwork for students, like Francisco, to believe that their contributions are important in the classroom.

1. Learn about the linguistic and educational experiences of ELLs in your classroom.

Francisco shared how educators' assumptions about his English proficiency contributed to his silence within the classroom. Create opportunities for students to share their educational and linguistic experiences to allow educators to avoid these types of mistakes. Importantly, this does not mean asking students to respond to direct questions about these topics in front of the entire class. This type of information can be integrated into "getting-to-know-you" projects like linguistic autobiographies, linguistic surveys, identity collages, and other such classroom activities.

1. Learn about the racial histories of the United States and the countries with which your students have connections.

As Francisco's comments illustrate, students come into the classroom with histories of being treated certain ways because of their racial identities. Educating ELLs, most of whom also belong to minoritized racial groups, requires recognizing the impact of racism inside and outside of the classroom. Educators who understand how race and racism operate can make informed decisions about how to best incorporate students' identities into instruction, avoid racist practices within their classroom, and can advocate on behalf of their students. While learning about these topics through reputable external resources (e.g., documentaries, articles, etc.) is necessary, students can also teach educators through sharing their own experiences. For example, teachers can design activities in which students talk about resilience within their communities. Students who are identified as ELLs (like all other students) are multifaceted individuals. As a result, the racial dynamics that impact the rest of society also impact their learning. If educators want to create spaces for ELLs to use their voice, it is necessary to create classroom environments where students understand that all of their identities are valued.
Dr. Jeff Zwiers is the co-author of The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations (Corwin, 2017) and Academic Language Mastery: Conversational Discourse in Context (Corwin, 2016). He is a senior researcher at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He supports the Understanding Language Initiative, a research and professional-development project focused on literacy, cognition, discourse, and academic language. His current research focuses on communication-based teaching and classroom practices that foster high-quality academic interactions and literacy:

Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks is an assistant professor of reading education at Texas State University. Dr. Brooks' research agenda centers on everyday educational practices that impact the educational trajectories of bilingual adolescents. Dr. Brooks' work has been published in "Research in the Teaching of English," "Journal of Literacy Research," "TESOL Quarterly," and other venues:

Thanks to Valentina, Sarah, Mary Ann, Jeff, and Maneka for their contributions.
Just a reminder;you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first seven years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. Look for Part Two in a few days.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

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Response: Ways to Build Speaking Skills With ELLs (Opinion)

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Valentina Gonzalez, Sarah Said, Mary Ann Zehr, Dr. Jeff Zwiers and Dr. Maneka Deanna Brooks share strategies for encouraging English Language Learners to practice speaking their new language.

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Teaching Channel

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ELA.SL.K.1a

Common core State Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

SL: Speaking and Listening Standards K-5

K: Kindergarten

1a:

Participate in collaborative conversations with
diverse partners about kindergarten topics and
texts with peers and adults in small and larger
groups.

a. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g.,
listening to others and taking turns speaking
about the topics and texts under discussion).

b. Continue a conversation through multiple
exchanges.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How does Ms. Iwaszewicz strategically use partners and groups during the lesson?

2. How did Ms. Iwaszewicz's previous lesson prepare her students for this activity?

3. What strategies does Ms. Iwaszewicz use to ensure equitable participation?

4. What will she do differently next time?

School Details

Lafayette Elementary School
4545 Anza Street
San Francisco CA 94121

Data Provided By:

Teachers

English Language Arts Math Science Social Studies / Kindergarten 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 / Coach

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Kindergarten students in Elizabeth Iwaszewicz's class work together to create and present posters about American symbols. First, Elizabeth reviews the discussion norms and gives her students a chance to warm up with their partners. Next, students move into groups where they read and record facts about an American symbol.

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Teaching Channel

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. What makes the 1-3-6 process successful?

2. Why is it valuable to have students work individually before forming groups?

3. How does working in groups of three prepare students for working in groups of six?

School Details

Alief Early College High School
2811 Hayes Road
Houston TX 77082

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Collaborative Group Work with the 1-3-6 Protocol

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Students in Kevin Sevin's AVID class work individually, in groups of three, and finally in groups of six. By working individually, students have a chance to dive into the assignment before collaborating with others. In groups of three, students hear each others' thoughts and then pair up with another group to form groups of six.

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Participation Protocol for Academic Discussions

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Participation Protocol for Academic Discussions

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Teaching Channel

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How does using this structure affect students' discussions?

2. Why does Ms. Nguyen scribe what students say?

3. How does Ms. Nguyen track students' participation?

School Details

Westlake Middle School
2629 Harrison Street
Oakland CA 94611

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Participation Protocol for Academic Discussions

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Enjoy your first video for free. Subscribe for unlimited access. Have questions about subscribing? Click Here to learn more. Enjoy your first video for free. Subscribe for unlimited access. Have questions about subscribing? Click Here to learn more. How does using this structure affect students' discussions? Why does Ms. Nguyen scribe what students say?

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Stronger & Clearer: 4th Grade Science Video Cip

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Stronger & Clearer: 4th Grade Science Video Cip

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Zwiers, J.

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Teaching Channel

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ELA.SL.11-12.1a

Common core State Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

SL: Speaking and Listening Standards 6-\x80\x9312

11-12: 11th & 12th Grades

1a:
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one on
one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11-\x80\x9312 topics,
texts, and issues, building on others'\x80\x99 ideas and expressing their own clearly and
persuasively.

a. Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under
study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts
and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well reasoned
exchange of ideas.

b. Work with peers to promote civil, democratic discussions and decision making,
set clear goals and deadlines, and establish individual roles as
needed.

c. Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe
reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a
topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote
divergent and creative perspectives.

d. Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims,
and evidence made on all sides of an issue; resolve contradictions when
possible; and determine what additional information or research is required
to deepen the investigation or complete the task.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How did Ms. Paraiso adapt the Socratic Seminar format?

2. What strategies does Ms. Paraiso use to help English Language Learners?

3. Why is it helpful to look at everyone's feedback before looking at individual feedback?

Teachers

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Adapting Socratic Seminar: Senior Project Reflection

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12th grade ELA teacher Johanna Paraiso has students adapts the Socratic Seminar format when having her students reflect on their senior research projects and presentations. Before this class, students participated in a culminating presentation. They begin class by reviewing everyone's feedback and discussing what they noticed.

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Teaching Channel

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. What are academic conversations?

2. Why is it important to value oral language?

3. How can you engage students in academic conversations?

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Academic Conversations with ELLs: Series Overview

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Discover how to engage ELLs in academic conversations. Maria Santos and Jeff Zwiers provide an introduction to a video series on academic conversations. Jeff describes the importance of oral language while Maria introduces how OUSD has been focusing on academic conversations.

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. Why does Ms. Brewer give students the option of using sentence frames?

2. How can you create a sentence frame that encourages varied responses?

3. What makes sentence frames an effective strategy for English Language Learners?

School Details

Stevenson Elementary School
14220 Ne 8th St
Bellevue WA 98007

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Using Sentence Frames to Jumpstart Writing

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To help her students get writing, fifth grade teacher Stacy Brewer gives her class sentence frames. The sentence frames help students start writing by providing them with a structure to work with. Stacy describes how this strategy is particularly helpful for English Language Learners because it provides them with language and makes writing less intimidating.

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Scaffolding Instruction for ELLs Resource Guides

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Scaffolding Instruction for ELLs Resource Guides

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engageNY

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The New York State Education Department is no longer supporting the EngageNY.org website and it will no longer be available for use after April 15, 2022. NYSED encourages educators to download any EngageNY content they wish to use in the future.

All ELA and mathematics curriculum files will be available at the links below, and will remain free and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license.

Archived EngageNY Curriculum Files:

Grades 3-8 ELA and Mathematics Test Materials:
Questions regarding this change may be directed to the EngageNY Help Desk.

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The New York State Education Department is no longer supporting the EngageNY.org website and it will no longer be available for use after April 15, 2022. NYSED encourages educators to download any EngageNY content they wish to use in the future.

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Frayer Model Pre-Identified  and Pre-Taught Vocabulary

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Frayer Model Pre-Identified  and Pre-Taught Vocabulary

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Differentiating Instruction and Practice: Practical Steps for Implementation 

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Differentiating Instruction and Practice: Practical Steps for Implementation 

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CDL: The Center for Development and Learning

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Supporting English Language Learners Through Station Rotations

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Supporting English Language Learners Through Station Rotations

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Juliana Finegan & Nithi Thomas, 2018

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ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

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Staehr Fenner, 2014

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Available Formats

ISBN: 9781452257693

Paperback

Suggested Retail Price: $34.95

Bookstore Price: $27.96

ISBN: 9781452278407

Electronic Version

Suggested Retail Price: $30.95

Bookstore Price: $24.76

Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email sageheoa@sagepub.com. Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html.

1. Need for Advocacy for English Learners

2. Creating a Shared Sense of Responsibility for Teaching English Learners

3. How ESL Teachers Can Collaborate to Expand Advocacy Efforts for ELs

4. Advocacy Overview for School and District Administrators

5. Increasing EL Families' Involvement Through Building Their Advocacy Capacity

6. Advocacy Through Effective Instruction of ELs

7. Advocating for ELs in Assessment

8. Advocacy for ELs' Success Beyond Grade 12

(1) A comprehensive resource which raises educators' awareness of the areas in which ELs need advocacy and offers practical suggestions for EL advocacy
(2) Provides an overview of research that informs EL advocacy in each chapter and tools to apply the research on the ground (3) Focuses on hands-on professional development activities to build a sense of responsibility for ELs' achievement in school and beyond
(4) Includes checklists for schools and districts to use to provide a framework to guide their discussion of ELs' advocacy needs in a number of areas
(5) Contains an abundance of practical examples of EL advocacy in action, taken from a variety of schools and geographical regions
(6) Weaves in voices of EL advocates at the school, district, state, and national levels (including Tim Boals, Catherine Collier, and Margarita Pinkos)

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Available Formats ISBN: 9781452257693 Paperback Suggested Retail Price: $34.95 Bookstore Price: $27.96 ISBN: 9781452278407 Electronic Version Suggested Retail Price: $30.95 Bookstore Price: $24.76 Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email sageheoa@sagepub.com.

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Supporting English Learner's Oral Language Development

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Supporting English Learner's Oral Language Development

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Walqui & Heritage, 2018

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Consider this interaction between a teacher and his students, most of them English language learners, in a ninth-grade English language arts class:

Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen?

Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl.

Teacher: Very good. And Rosa, who is the main character in this novella?

Rosa: I guess the main character is Kino, although his wife, Juana, is also important.

Teacher: That's right. And why do we say The Pearl is a novella? Jim?

Now contrast it with the interaction other ninth-graders had in their English language arts/English language development class:

Teacher: As we begin to explore this short story, "The Necklace," written by a French author from the 19th century, Guy de Maupassant, I am inviting you to read the first four paragraphs with your partner using types of "Question-Answer Relationships."* We have practiced this process several times, so unless we require some explanation-[students signal they do not]-then, please get started. As you engage in reading and discussing, I would like you to focus on the character Mathilde and think about what kind of person she is. We will then focus on the problem she faces.

Rodrigo (after reading the first paragraph of "The Necklace" aloud to his partner, Martha): OK, I am going to ask you a "think and search" question. Did Mathilde grow up in a rich family?

Martha: I am not sure. I think no, because the paragraph says she could not marry a "rich and distinguished man" and had to marry a little clerk. Is that an employee? [Rodrigo nods his assent.] I guess it is because she is not rich. But she was very pretty and charming, right?

So now I am going to read the second paragraph. [She proceeds to read aloud to Rodrigo, then pauses and thinks.] I am confused, so I guess I will ask you a think and search question. The text says "with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth." Is the author saying that for women, money does not matter? Why did she marry a clerk then?

Rodrigo: Yeah, I agree. I don't fully understand. You said she was pretty but not rich. Now the second paragraph says that's in place of family and birth, so does that mean richness? Does it not matter if women are pretty? Does it matter or doesn't it matter? [Both students decide to raise these questions later during the whole-class discussion. Then Rodrigo proceeds to read the third paragraph to Martha.]

We have all observed classes resembling the first example, where the teacher already knows the answers to the questions being asked, as do most students. The exchange is just an exercise in reiterating the known using complete sentences. In contrast, students in the second example must actively consider the possibilities related to the text, by asking and responding to questions that reveal their understanding.

How do we ensure that all English language learners have opportunities to productively use oral language in academic settings? And how do we ensure that teachers leverage the power of classroom interactions to simultaneously foster language development, content knowledge, and analytical practices? In this article, we offer answers to these questions-and clarify common misconceptions-by presenting guidelines supported by both research and classroom practice.

A Framework for Oral Language

If English language learners (ELLs) are going to productively engage in classroom discourse and express their thinking related to content learning goals, teachers must create a trusting classroom culture in which students feel that whatever level of language they can produce, their contributions will be valued by their teacher and peers and will never be subject to ridicule, sanctions, or negative comparisons. ² Establishing classroom norms such as close listening to understand the ideas ELLs are conveying and showing respect to each other during their interactions (learning, of course, from the models their teachers provide) is essential for successful oral language use. Students need to know that interrupting their peers as they are formulating ideas and finishing their sentences for them are not desirable classroom norms.

As teachers plan to engage students in oral interactions, the framework shown in Figure 1 below can help guide their support for their students' work and language development. The framework comprises six interconnected levels.
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First, teachers need to ensure that students clearly understand the purpose of the interaction they are being asked to undertake. For example, are they supposed to read a text and elaborate their thinking, highlighting what they understand and what they don't? Are they engaged in describing a scene to somebody who has not seen it? Are they being asked to make a prediction after observing phenomena they will later investigate?

Second, teachers need to make sure students have ideas upon which they will elaborate. For example, have they noticed the most important aspects of the scene (the background, main character(s) presented, what they are doing, other relevant details) on which they will center their description?

Third, teachers need to help students organize their thoughts and ensure their language follows specific patterns. For example, descriptions of a scene from a text cannot begin with sentences such as, "He kicks it, it breaks." Students need to first indicate the setting of the scene, then introduce the characters, describe them, and explain what they are doing. This sequence is essential to help participants engaged in a conversation paint pictures in their minds. Organization is marked by phrases that can be provided to students as formulaic expressions (which we discuss later in this article) to use: ³ "The picture we have shows a..." "We can see a..." "Our scene takes place in a..." "Based on my observation..." "The two historical contexts are..."

Fourth, teachers need to consider the types of sentences students produce and judiciously highlight how they may be combined and expanded to produce more complex language. Increasing complexity can be accomplished with the use of connectors and conjunctions, such as "besides," "furthermore," "additionally," "however," etc.

Fifth, teachers must pay attention to the words students use. Is one word repeated several times in an interaction? If so, teachers can take the opportunity to introduce a synonym. Do students incorrectly or imprecisely use a term? Teachers can take a moment to clarify usage and meaning.

Finally, when students are ready to present their work to others, teachers can focus on the pronunciation of carefully selected elements-only those that interrupt understanding.
Traditionally, many educators have been taught to focus on correcting student utterances by zeroing in on form and not on meaning. As a result, our framework may initially feel counterintuitive, but the more educators rely on it, the more it will assist them in supporting students' language growth.

Productive Talk

As a general pattern, we educators often talk too much, no doubt influenced by our "apprenticeship of observation" that began when we were students ourselves. ⁴ However, given the centrality of talk in learning, this pattern needs to change. By some estimates, ELLs spend less than 2 percent of their school day in oral interaction. ⁵ Teachers must find ways to provide students learning opportunities that engage them in productive talk and then listen carefully to the language they use in order to support their continued growth.

By productive talk, we mean speech that has the following characteristics:

Has depth: the specific idea being discussed is central to the theme of the lesson, is presented in interconnected ways, and engages students' analytical thinking.

Is sustained: one student's statement is followed by another student's response, which extends, refutes, or questions what was first said.

Is student controlled: students control what they say, not the teacher. But teachers set up parameters for the interactions, sometimes framing questions that start the conversation. These questions are intended to communicate new related ideas, propose counter ideas or examples, and in general enhance the theme at work.⁶

Now consider these characteristics in an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class, which comprises students with varied levels of English competence. ⁷ "Language" is the theme of the students' exploration, and this was the third class on the topic. Table 1 below shows the deliberate moves of the teacher, Mr. DeFazio, during the lesson and the students' interactions. The text in the table indicates the multiple instances of productive talk that he promotes with his directions and actions.
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Let us look more closely at a specific interaction that occurred in the lesson after a student, Lavinia, reads the beginning of a letter she wrote about animal communication, and another student, Julio, reacts to one of her statements that animals do not have language.

Julio: Animal communication is not a language? It is a language-that's what I think-because they are communicating with each other.

Lavinia: But they don't speak.

Class: [Many students agree with Julio, saying "Yes, they do," or nodding.]

Julio: You said a language can have words, sounds, gestures, and everything.

Class: [Many students are in agreement with Julio's ideas once again.]

Lavinia: But they don't have words. They don't say "mama."

Julio: They don't need to. They have other characteristics. In animal language, some of the characteristics that you said are present-sound, pitch, gestures-so it is a language.

Mr. DeFazio: Julio is arguing very strongly that animal communication is language. Lavinia is saying that it's not. What do you think would be a way to help them resolve that argument in their writing?

Class: [The discussion continues and a resolution emerges. Then Julio reads a section of his letter.]

Mr. DeFazio: A lot is going to depend on how you define language, OK? You can define it in such a way as to exclude what animals do; you can define it in a very broad way, as a system of communication that includes everything. You are going to find linguists and zoologists who disagree, and if you are interested, I can give you some readings that were in the journal Science last year, people arguing back and forth.

Julio (reading his letter): First of all, I think that language is a way to inform others around you, your feelings, or just a simple thing that you want to let people know what is the deal. And it can be expressed by saying it, looking at a picture, or hearing it, you know what I'm saying? I don't know if you have heard about the kangaroo rat that stamps its feet to communicate with other rats. It's really funny 'cause we humans have more characteristics to communicate to each other, but we still have problems to understand other people. Characteristics like sound, grammar, pictures, and body language are some of them, while the rat only uses the foot. [Julio stamps the ground.]

Mr. DeFazio: Excellent! [The class applauds.] I never even heard about the kangaroo rat. Nice job, nice job. [Mr. DeFazio shakes Julio's hand.]

Applying the framework illustrated in Figure 1 to this interaction, we notice that students are clearly aware that the purpose of this exercise is to compare diverse positions on communication and to debate whether animals have language or not, providing evidence for their positions. They have ideas, and they choose which ones to debate based on a diversity of opinions. Mr. DeFazio's opportunity to correct student work, suggest changes, ask for elaboration, and so forth comes in the letters he is asking his students to construct. This written product is intimately tied to oral production. Oral activity feeds into writing, and writing produces oral activity.

In terms of productive talk, in Mr. DeFazio's class, students' analytic thinking is engaged, their interaction is sustained, and they control what they say. Mr. DeFazio has chosen a theme for the lesson that appeals to the students, and he has deliberately planned their active engagement throughout. As a result, the interaction engages students in deep thinking as they compare views on language.

Now that we have seen the characteristics of quality interactions for ELLs in practice, in the next section, we provide guidelines for promoting quality interactions during content lessons.

Six Guidelines for Promoting Quality Interactions

1. Design lessons that involve ELLs' participation in subject-specific and substantive oral practice to accomplish clearly defined lesson goals: Planning a lesson always begins with establishing the destination: Where do teachers need to lead students? Teachers should ask: Are my goals closely related to content standards? What is the knowledge that will be constructed? Which analytic practice will be promoted? What is the language (beyond isolated words or sentences) that will need to be developed? Unless teachers themselves are clear about the goals of a lesson, they will not be able to plan the tasks and activities that support students' language and conceptual development.

2. Construct tasks that appropriately scaffold student participation and growth: Tasks need to be deliberately constructed to engage students in working beyond their current competence. Such tasks should promote worthwhile interactions for students to acquire new conceptual understandings and analytical skills and language. They should also have appropriate scaffolds, which entail teachers closely observing students to ascertain whether the support is working, whether it is still needed, or whether it needs to be modified or replaced.

3. Make sure the task is designed to meet its purposes and the materials used are appropriate to support students working at the edge of their competence successfully: Learning is most effective when tasks are designed to match students' current competencies and also challenge them to move forward, with support.

4. Make sure that activities or tasks follow and precede others logically to build coherent lessons: Leading students to increasingly more complex demands is essential if teachers want their lessons to flow smoothly and to incrementally build ELLs' understanding.

5. Integrate reading and writing into oral development activities: Oral interaction while reading texts not only allows ELLs to understand the text more deeply but also helps them develop awareness of what they understand as they read and what they can do to solve problems in reading.

6. Be selective in addressing errors and intentional in providing feedback: When ELLs use English to develop their understanding of content and their use of analytical practices, often their language will be neither accurate nor fully formed, although the intent of their communication will be apparent. Imagine, for a moment, the impact on ELLs' motivation and self-esteem if teacher responses to inaccuracies constituted a constant flow of error correction. Instead, consider formative feedback to students as invitations to understand how they are progressing in language development and to provide a resource for how they can advance. When feedback is given to students about language while they are learning discipline-specific content, the feedback should focus on language so that students can make sense of the academic content, rather than on correcting errors of language production. As such, feedback can increase the students' awareness and help them troubleshoot their own performance and eventually correct their own language.⁸

There is no hard and fast rule about how much feedback students should receive or how often it should be provided; this is a decision teachers will need to make for themselves, given their knowledge of their students, their language and content goals, and the students' current language use. However, because of the powerful impact that feedback can have on learning, ⁹ we advise teachers to make providing feedback a regular and routine part of their classroom practice.

Common Misconceptions

Designing and facilitating meaningful classroom talk is essential for ELLs-indeed for all students-to develop more extended and sophisticated language use while simultaneously learning subject matter. Yet in too many U.S. classrooms, we find ELLs sitting silently, watching their teachers do all the work, and waiting for opportunities to fully engage cognitively and linguistically.

By way of concluding thoughts, we outline five pitfalls to avoid in thinking about language learning, and we provide suggestions for how teachers can engage students in sustained, high-quality classroom talk.

Misconception 1: Sentence frames that provide students with a way of expressing their ideas about specific situations are helpful to them.

A sentence frame is basically a fill-in-the-blank type of activity that invites only one correct answer. Sometimes it can be open and provide starters for students (also called sentence starters for this reason) to be filled in any way. However, these starters may not provide students with phrases they can use time and time again in academic situations. ¹⁰ For example: "The main character in The Pearl is a modest and loving man, furthermore..." "His wife, Juana, loves Kino and Coyotito, their baby, and because of that..."

In addition to using sentence frames, we suggest teachers use formulaic expressions, which are phrases that help start or link ideas and can be used in many situations. Initially, students learn them as unanalyzed chunks, almost as if they were one word. Later on, as students learn more English, they begin to realize the formulaic expressions are formed by several words. Formulaic expressions are extremely useful in students' development of English and in making their interaction with peers possible and more effective. Examples of formulaic expressions are: "I agree with you, and I can add that..." "May I suggest a couple of other ideas? One example I can offer..."

Misconception 2: Correct mistakes students make as they talk or they will "fossilize."

Historically, correctness has been regarded as paramount in second language learners' use of English. More recently, however, researchers' attention has shifted to the larger components of communication, as discussed before: purpose, ideas, organization, types of sentences, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Fossilization, a concept popular in the 1980s, refers to the inability of second language learners to learn the correct forms of language if they continually misuse them. Our perspective, consistent with that of multiple applied linguists, is that language keeps evolving as a result of continuous practice. It may fossilize if it is no longer used productively or receptively. However, in their schooling, students will be invited to engage in uses of language continuously, and thus, they will have ample opportunities to correct themselves or be corrected by others.

Misconception 3: Rather than correcting students' ungrammatical oral language, it is better to provide them with recasts, which model correct English in response to students' mistakes.

It is common for teachers to believe that rather than correcting a student's mistakes-and putting him or her on the spot-it is better to repeat what a student has said, this time changing the student's utterance into grammatical English. They think that recasting saves a student's face and that it is a less authoritarian approach.

Research, however, shows that these implicit corrections may not be productive. ¹¹ Students do not take teachers' recasts as corrections, but rather as reiterations of the idea and as acceptance of students' comments as being right. When the time is appropriate to focus on selected language forms to study and correct, the correction and expansion activity needs to be made explicit.

Misconception 4: Sustained, focused interactions are possible starting in fourth or fifth grade, but lower elementary students are not mature enough to carry them out because they get too impatient with the task and with each other.

Recently, during an open house at an elementary school in Portland, Oregon, one of us (Aída) had the opportunity to visit three classes. The first one was a kindergarten class. The teacher, Mr. Andanen, was preparing students to read and discuss Julius, the Baby of the World, a book by Kevin Henkes, an author the students were already familiar with because they had enjoyed reading three of his other books in class.

To introduce the book, Mr. Andanen set up nine stations around the room and invited students to walk through them. At each station, a picture illustrating a scene from the book was prominently displayed. Students were asked to rotate around the stations every three minutes. At each station, students needed to stop, look at the picture, and explain what they noticed. The teacher had asked students to use a "talking stick" so that the turns to speak were democratically divided within the group at each station. Peers had to listen attentively to the speaker and agree with, disagree with, or expand on what the student said. Formulaic expressions such as "In this picture, I notice..." and "I noticed that, too, and I want to add..." were familiar to the group. At one station, Aída heard the following exchange:

Student 1: I notice a woman holding a big baby. Her mouth is open. I think she is crying.

Student 2: I also noticed she had her mouth open, but I don't think she is crying. I think she is singing.

Student 3: I also noticed the woman with the big baby, and I want to add that he is very heavy. Perhaps that is why she is screaming.

The exchange shows that Mr. Andanen has created an environment that enables young children to notice and use language in purposeful ways. Although the students were only in kindergarten, they clearly articulated their ideas and listened to others. They showed they will soon be ready to start exploring the book more deeply so that they can eventually write an opinion piece based on evidence from the text about which Henkes book was their favorite.

Misconception 5: All students in a class need to master the same levels of oral development as a result of participating in lessons.

Because not all students in a class will be at the same starting point, a robust activity provides multiple entry points for all students to engage as they learn. The important idea is that they should all be gaining-not that all of them will arrive at the same point, in exactly the same way, developing at exactly the same level. This would only be possible if what is learned is limited, and if the learning demands recall. This is not necessarily what we want in education. Rather, we want to produce individuals who are thoughtful, engaged, and conscious of their own development.

English language learners bring valuable assets and immense potential to school. The role of educators is to realize that potential in deep and accelerated ways. Each classroom teacher must ensure the path to that development is paved with meaningful interactions to help students develop language skills, gain conceptual understanding, and learn academic content. Our students deserve no less.
Aída Walqui is the director of the teacher professional development program at WestEd. Previously, she taught in the Division of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Margaret Heritage is a senior advisor at WestEd and was previously an assistant director at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles.
*Taffy Raphael's Question-Answer Relationships framework ¹ is intended to call students' attention to the kinds of questions that may be asked about a text. In this class, students work in pairs, announcing first the type of question he or she will ask to increase the other student's awareness of the types of meaningful connections the question seeks. ( back to the article)

Endnotes

1. Taffy E. Raphael, "Teaching Question Answer Relationships, Revisited," The Reading Teacher 39 (1986): 516-522.

2. Alison L. Bailey and Margaret Heritage, Progressing Students' Language Day by Day (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2018).

3. See Rod Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education, 2005).

4. Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

5. Diane August, referenced in Ivannia Soto-Hinman, "Increasing Academic Oral Language Development: Using English Language Learner Shadowing in Classrooms," Multicultural Education 18, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 21-23.

6. Aída Walqui and Leo van Lier, Scaffolding the Academic Success of Adolescent English Language Learners: A Pedagogy of Promise (San Francisco: WestEd, 2010).

7. Anthony DeFazio and Aída Walqui, Where Do You Want to Go Next? (San Francisco: WestEd, 2001), DVD.

8. David J. Nicol and Debra Macfarlane‐Dick, "Formative Assessment and Self‐Regulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice," Studies in Higher Education 31 (2006): 199-218.

9. See, for example, John Hattie and Helen Timperley, "The Power of Feedback," Review of Educational Research 77 (2007): 81-112.

10. For more on sentence frames, see Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition.

11. Ahlem Ammar and Nina Spada, "One Size Fits All? Recasts, Prompts, and L2 Learning," Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28 (2006): 543-574; Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition; and Roy Lyster, "Differential Effects of Prompts and Recasts in Form-Focused Instruction," Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26 (2004): 399-432.

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Consider this interaction between a teacher and his students, most of them English language learners, in a ninth-grade English language arts class: Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen? Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl. Teacher: Very good. And Rosa, who is the main character in this novella?

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I gathered my students on the carpet. Partners were sitting next to each other. I said, "Today boys and girls we are going to focus on our accountable talk. You will see that if you are a person 1 that you have a card with a mouth on it. If you are a person 2 you have a card with an ear on it. These cards tell you what you are going to be responsible for today with your accountable talk. If you are a Person 1 you are going to speak first. This is what you are responsible for:

Looking at my partner

Telling my partner what I think

Use evidence from that text

Use evidence from the illustrations

Speaking in complete sentences

If you are a Person 2 you are going to listen first. This is what you are responsible for:

Looking at my partner

Listening carefully to my partner

Asking my partner "Why do you think that?"

Asking my partner "What is your evidence?"

D oes everyone understand what they are responsible for? I am going to start us off and I am going to model exactly what I want to see from you. I am going to choose ________ as a partner. ( I chose someone who can read the card independently and is pretty good with reading comprehension so they could model this well with me.) Look and listen carefully."

Then I read and asked the first question. I said, "OK. I'm person 1 so I have to look at my partner and tell them what I think. Well, I think that spring fever is feeling tired because he wants to go and play because the weather is nice now after a snowy winter. Now my partner has to look at me and listen to what I just said. What did I just say spring fever meant ____________? Now what do you have to ask me ____________? " My partner asked me why I though this and what my evidence was. I answered, "Well if I look at the picture Big Anthony is leaning against his shovel and he looks sad at the bottom of the page. The story also says he is dragging his feet. That tells me that he is probably tired." I also told the students that we will have time to share our ideas with the whole class.

I asked the students if they understand what to do. I told them I would be looking and listening to make sure they really pay attention and do their jobs. I also told them that after they take turns with their card, they will get to switch jobs with their partner for the next turn. This way each partner will have a turn at listening and speaking.

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Introduction to Accountable Talk With "Big Anthony and the Magic Ring"

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In this lesson, students will take a more active role in their learning by discussing a read aloud with their partners. The teacher will become more of a facilitator in the lesson and allow the children to "wrangle" with the content.

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Jeff Zwiers