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WIDA Focus bulletin with tips on grouping students.

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A website with resources for integrating talk into Math and Science classrooms.

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"Everyone tells us we need to teach this way, but no one has shown us how. This shows us how!"

~ teacher at NSTA conference in 2014

"For the first time in over 20 years of teaching, I'm confident that my students understand this. They don't need to memorize formulas or math jingles. They really understand the math."

~ a seventh grade Algebra teacher

"When I do my walk-arounds, I see 100% engagement in high-level math discussion. That's never happened before, and it's exciting."

~ principal in a participating school

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"Everyone tells us we need to teach this way, but no one has shown us how. This shows us how!" ~ teacher at NSTA conference in 2014 "For the first time in over 20 years of teaching, I'm confident that my students understand this. They don't need to memorize formulas or math jingles.

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This lesson is an amazing example of why Dan Meyer is a mathematician who truly "gets it".

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The Task This task comes from the Mathematics Vision Project, a free curriculum from some sharp Utah educators. This is the first task in their “Secondary One” curriculum, a variation o…

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Resources in Brazilian Portuguese. Also available for Chemistry and Physics.

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A Biologia é uma ciência que estuda a vida em seus mais variados aspectos, importando-se em compreender, por exemplo, o funcionamento dos organismos vivos, a relação desses seres com o meio e seu processo de evolução. Devido a sua complexidade, a Biologia pode ser dividida em diferentes subáreas, como Biologia Celular, Ecologia, Paleontologia, Anatomia, Fisiologia e Evolução.

Tópicos deste artigo

→ Significado

O termo biologia vem dos termos gregos bios, que significa vida, e logos, que significa estudo. Desse modo, podemos dizer que o termo biologia significa o estudo da vida.

→ O que estuda?

Como o próprio nome indica, a Biologia estuda a vida.Seu estudo engloba desde organismos microscópicos até os maiores seres vivos do planeta, analisando-os nos diferentes níveis. Na Biologia, o estudo dos seres vivos realiza-se desde o nível molecular até as interações que ocorrem entre as diferentes espécies do planeta.

Na Biologia, os organismos são estudados em vários níveis. Ao estudar-se uma planta, por exemplo, pode-se analisar sua morfologia, anatomia etc.

Ao aprofundarmo-nos nessa ciência, compreendemos melhor como é e como funciona o corpo dos seres vivos, incluindo o nosso, e também percebemos melhor como os seres vivos interagem uns com os outros e com o meio em que vivem. Somos capazes, ainda, de perceber como as mudanças surgiram ao longo do tempo, como elas favoreceram a sobrevivência das espécies e como os mecanismos evolutivos ainda atuam nos dias atuais.

O estudo da Biologia é extremamente importante, pois, ao compreendermos o funcionamento dos seres vivos, podemos entender, por exemplo, como evitar e prevenir doenças. Podemos também fazer previsões sobre o impacto do ser humano sobre as outras espécies do planetae mesmo como sua ação impacta sua própria vida.

Não pare agora... Tem mais depois da publicidade ;)
Leia também: Os 5 temas de Biologia mais cobrados no Enem
→ Áreas

A Biologia é uma ciência complexa e que apresenta uma série de áreas de estudo. A seguir, veremos algumas dessas e uma explicação simplificada a respeito do objeto de estudo de cada uma delas:

A Evolução é uma área da Biologia que nos permite compreender melhor como os organismos mudaram ao longo do tempo.

Anatomia: tem como objeto de estudo a estrutura dos seres vivos.

Biofísica: enfoca os processos físicos que acontecem nos seres vivos.

Biologia Molecular: tem como objeto de estudo as interações bioquímicas que ocorrem nas células.

Bioquímica: éresponsável por estudar as reações químicas que ocorrem nos organismos vivos.

Ecologia: éresponsável por estudar a interação dos seres vivos entre si e com o meio ambiente em que vivem.

Embriologia: estuda o desenvolvimento embrionário dos seres vivos.

Ficologia: tem como objeto de estudo as algas.

Microbiologia: estuda os micro-organismos, tais como os vírus e bactérias.

Leia também: Conceitos da Biologia que não devemos confundir no Enem

→ Curso

O curso de Ciências Biológicas, também encontrado pela denominação Biologia ou Ciências- Biologia, é o curso adequado para aqueles que pretendem ser biólogos. O curso é oferecido na modalidade de bacharelado e licenciatura e dura, em média, quatro anos (oito semestres).

Na modalidade de licenciatura, o futuro profissional terá contato com as matérias da Biologia e também com matérias voltadas à Educação, como práticas de ensino, políticas educacionais e didática. Ao final do curso, o profissional estará apto a ministrar aulas de Ciências e Biologia para o Ensino Fundamental e Médio, respectivamente. É importante deixar claro que o licenciado pode registrar-se no Conselho de Biologia de sua região e atuar como biólogo.

Após finalizar um curso de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas, o profissional está apto a ministrar aulas no Ensino Médio e Fundamental.

Na modalidade do bacharelado, o futuro profissional não estudará matérias voltadas à Educação, não ficando apto, ao final do curso, a atuar como professor do Ensino Médio e Fundamental. No final do curso, esse profissional poderá atuar como biólogo. Entretanto, sua atuação só poderá ser realizada após o registro no Conselho de Biologia de sua região.

Nas duas modalidades do curso, o futuro profissional estudará disciplinas voltadas para a área de atuação do biólogo. A grade varia de uma instituição para outra, entretanto, a maioria das instituições de ensino oferece as seguintes disciplinas: Anatomia Humana; Anatomia Comparada; Bioestatística; Biofísica; Biologia Celular; Biologia Molecular; Bioquímica; Botânica; Ecologia; Embriologia; Estatística; Evolução; Física; Fisiologia Animal; Fisiologia Vegetal; Genética; Geologia; Histologia; Imunologia; Microbiologia; Morfologia Vegetal; Paleontologia; Parasitologia; Sistemática Vegetal; e Zoologia de Invertebrados e Vertebrados.

Para atuar como biólogo, é fundamental que o profissional, após concluir seu curso, registre-se no Conselho Regional de Biologia da sua região. De acordo com o Conselho, o profissional poderá atuar nas áreas de:

O biólogo poderá atuar, por exemplo, na área de análises clínicas.

Meio Ambiente e Biodiversidade: O profissional poderá atuar em várias subáreas, como bioética, controle de vetores e pragas, ecoturismo, educação ambiental, gestão ambiental, licenciamento ambiental, saneamento básico, mudanças climáticas, entre outras.

Saúde: O profissional poderá atuar em aconselhamento genético, análises clínicas, bioética, saúde pública, reprodução humana assistida, perícia e biologia forense, entre outras.

Biotecnologia e produção: O biólogo poderá atuar nas áreas de bioinformática, biologia molecular, biossegurança, cultura de células e tecidos, engenharia genética, melhoramento genético, entre outras.

Leia também: 03 de setembro - Dia do Biólogo

Observe o símbolo do biólogo.

Pedra: A pedra que representa a profissão de Biólogo é a água-marinha.

Simbolo do biólogo (figura anterior): No símbolo, é possível observar a estrutura do DNA, que forma um espermatozoide em sua base. Esse espermatozoide está fecundando o óvulo (círculo azul) e dando origem a uma nova vida. As folhas no desenho representam a natureza, e o detalhe do espiral na folha representa a evolução e o progresso.

USP. Ciências biológicas. Disponível em: https://www5.usp.br/ensino/graduacao/cursos-oferecidos/ciencias-biologicas/.

FIOCRUZ. Biologia Geral. Disponível em: http://www.juventudect.fiocruz.br/categoria-ciencia/ciencias-biologicas/biologia-geral.

Por Vanessa Sardinha dos Santos
Professora de Biologia

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Biologia, ciência que estuda a vida - Brasil Escola

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Saiba mais sobre a Biologia, uma ciência que se preocupa em entender a vida!

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Algebra, Geometry, and Precalculus resources in Brazilian Portuguese.

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Matemática: o que é, áreas de estudo, importância

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Clique aqui e saiba o que é a Matemática. Descubra quais são suas áreas de estudo. Entenda qual é a importância do estudo dessa ciência atualmente.

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A website in Brazilian portuguese with resources for all subjects K-8 plus high school math.

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Brasil Escola - O maior portal de educação do Brasil

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O Brasil Escola é o maior portal de educação do país. São mais de 100 mil conteúdos do Ensino Fundamental, Médio e preparação para o Enem e vestibulares. Confira!

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A series of videos demonstrating mathematical concepts - all without using words.

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mathematics math proofs "visual math" "visual proofs" "infinite series" series sums inequalities "proof without words"

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I animate and provide some explanation for classic and newer "proofs without words," which are typically diagrams without any words that indicate how a theorem could be proved. I often pay homage to Proofs Without Words by including some animations without narration (only dramatic music :) ).

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The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf | Grace Lin | TEDxNatick

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The WIDA ACCESS language proficiency test is used across close to 40 states as part of the federal requirement to determine whether English learners continue to need language-development services.

The summative test covers four English-language domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. It is built off of the language-assessment group WIDA's language development standards, and test questions align with content students see in regular classrooms, WIDA experts said. The topics covered in various questions are rooted in math, science, and social studies concepts.

Consistent, quality language instruction and practice across the school day from both general education teachers and specialists is key for English learners, especially as data show that average proficiency scores on the ACCESS test continue to decline after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers and specialists say general education teachers could benefit from understanding the ACCESS test, which is given both online and on paper, and its scoring to help English learners' language development. WIDA provides free sample questions and scoring guides online.

For a snapshot of reading questions from both the online and paper versions of the test, take the quiz below. It features questions provided by WIDA across grade-level clusters, and levels of difficulty within these clusters (known as lettered tiers).

The format has been edited for length and clarity, and the quiz does not feature the adaptive quality of the online test, where difficulty levels increase or decrease based on students' responses to prior questions.

Teachers can try out practice online exam questions across all four domains in the format students experience through WIDA's website.

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WIDA's Test for English Learners: Try Sample Questions

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The WIDA ACCESS test is an assessment used by close to 40 states to determine if students must remain in English learner programs.

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Schools are required to test the progress of their English learners each year to determine whether they still need language instruction services or can exit out of such programs. In close to 40 states, that test is known as the WIDA ACCESS test.

What is the WIDA ACCESS test used for?

Offered both online and in a paper format, ACCESS tests students' proficiency in four domains: speaking, reading, listening, and writing in English. The questions are modeled along academic content they would see in regular classes. For instance, reading questions might be about a science topic. The test is checking for language use in academic contexts, not content knowledge nor social language.

Teachers who specialize in English-language instruction say their general education peers play a key role in prepping students to succeed on the ACCESS test. And researchers who study English-language acquisition agree.

This collaboration between general and specialized teachers is even more critical now, researchers say, because new analyses of national ACCESS scores show that average scores continue to trend down since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For general education teachers to better support language acquisition for the English learners in their classrooms, it starts with familiarizing themselves with the test itself and what scores can tell them about their students' language needs.

"There is a gap between what general education teachers likely know about the WIDA test because they are unable to see it administered," said Missy Testerman, the 2024 National Teacher of the Year and a K-8 English-as-a-second-language teacher in Rogersville, Tenn. "I feel like it's a lot more rigorous than most people are aware of in terms of what our English-language learners are asked to do."

The WIDA ACCESS test covers language use in an academic context

The ACCESS test takes up to four hours to complete, though timing can vary, and is typically split across multiple days in one week.

The 36 states (as well as additional territories and federal agencies) that use the test are part of what's known as the WIDA consortium-which provides common standards as the measure of English language proficiency. The test builds from those standards in terms of levels of difficulty by grade level. It's also an adaptive test-in particular, the online test increases or decreases levels of difficulty (known as tiers) as the student progresses, said Mark Chapman, senior innovation researcher at WIDA. For the paper test, administrators set the difficulty level for each student.

States then individually set the scores students need to get across the four domains to demonstrate proficiency in English. Their scores determine if they remain in an English-learner program or if they can exit.

ACCESS is not a test students can study for. However, students who consistently use and are exposed to language in an academic context throughout the school day are better prepared for the test.

"It's really important to disentangle that everyday social language, that we know many students who were born in the United States and grew up in the United States ... tend to be highly proficient in," Chapman said. (Many English learners were born or grew up in the United States.)

"But that doesn't necessarily mean you can understand the language needed to describe a science experiment, or you have the language to talk through the solution to a math problem. Those are different types of language development, which we're trying to assess."

What is taking WIDA ACCESS like for students?

Both online and paper versions of the test incorporate several visuals that help keep students engaged throughout and serve as additional support for younger English learners and newcomer students still very new to the English language, said Fabiana MacMillan, WIDA's director of test development.

Students select answers from multiple-choice options, write or type out sentences and paragraphs, click and drag images, and even record themselves responding to prompts.

To loop general education colleagues into her work with English learners, Testerman in past years has taken sample questions and practice tests that are freely available on the WIDA website to general classrooms and led activities with the whole class.

"It's really very interesting because sometimes the general education teachers are shocked at how many of their [non-English-learner] students in the general education classroom have trouble with those tasks, particularly around the writing piece," Testerman said.

"I feel like in some cases, it's given my [English-learner] students more respect, because their teachers and their classmates see the types of things that they're having to do on the WIDA test," she added.

What can the results on WIDA ACCESS tests tell teachers about students?

At Volusia County public schools in Florida, Betsy Sotomayor, an English-for-speakers-of-other-languages resource teacher for the district, regularly meets with general education teachers to review ACCESS sample questions and students' scores and what they mean for their general classroom work.

For instance, a student may score low in the speaking portion of ACCESS but high in reading. The teacher can ask: Is that student getting enough time to practice speaking in academic contexts in the classroom?

Teachers then have a better sense of what language practice is needed in general classrooms, Sotomayor said.

"It's just the fear of the unknown. But then once [teachers] understand how valuable this assessment is, they're all in, they're really all in, and they really appreciate it," she said.

General education teachers can improve academic language use for all students

For all educators to better support English learners' language development, they first need the right mindset.

Just because an English learner's vocabulary may not be as expansive as others, or they write in phrases rather than sentences, doesn't mean they're not connecting with academic content, said Leslie Grimm, assistant director of educator learning, research, and practice at WIDA. They may just not be able to express their content knowledge in full in English yet.

"If you go into these contexts thinking 100 percent that you recognize, you affirm, and you respect where they are in their learning trajectory, and what they know and what they can do, I think that you'll set up a more rigorous classroom environment," Grimm said. "Because the reality is classroom environments have to be rigorous to meet any standards, whether it's English-language development standards or content standards."

Whether it's preparing English learners for state standardized tests or the ACCESS test, Grimm has one big piece of advice for all teachers: maximize the opportunities for students to engage across language modalities. (Speaking, writing, etc.)

English learners need opportunities to practice talking and writing in class. Grimm suggests setting up group activities that involve turn and talk where, given a topic, a student may say something and then another says something different, but they're building on that previous idea and expanding on it.

Students should also be given clear directions on what they are doing across modalities. For instance, if a student is asked to describe something that they're noticing in a science experiment and must write that down, what kind of language would they use? They may name what they are studying but then may use a pronoun to describe it later, rather than restate the name.

If at the end of a social studies unit students must engage in classroom debate, there are specific language features used when speaking in a debate that students should practice using throughout the unit.

Testerman said that promoting formal, language use in general classrooms is something that benefits all students, especially since language learning never stops as language itself evolves. For instance, the word zoom used to mean moving at a fast pace but is now more often used to refer to the virtual meeting platform and the verb of using said platform, she said.

But Testerman also recognizes how busy teachers are. It's why she advocates for district leaders to facilitate time for general classroom teachers to plan with English-as-a-second-language teachers so they can review language objectives and learning standards together and come up with a plan on how to best promote language development across the school day.

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What All Teachers Should Know About WIDA's Test for English Learners

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Researchers and specialists say general education teachers play a role in helping English learners' language development.

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Louise El Yaafouri

Academic years 2022-2024 have seen a rapid influx of new-to-English learners- and according to national data and the most recent Presidential Determination for Refugee Intake, that trend is almost certain to continue through the next handful of years. (UNCHR, 2024. Presidential Determination, 2024. US Dept of State, 2024)

Collectively, we're busy meeting the needs of our newest multilingual students in various ways. Many districts have renewed their commitment to impactful ML instruction and equity, bolstering professional development efforts, curriculum, and data-storage platforms to support these moves.

While we're looking ahead toward long-term multilingual student success, we're also juggling the more urgent, triage intake needs, like welcoming, classroom placement, and initial English language assessments. Translation and interpretation have also moved into the critical needs category, in a way that we haven't had to rely upon in the past.

This particular "wave" of new-to-English speakers stands out from recent years in the sheer number of ML students served in such a short time. (If you've been in the ELD sphere for a bit, think 2008-2009.) Even two years ago, an ELD team welcoming a new-to-English student had the luxury of moving more slowly and methodically, leaning almost exclusively on ML instructional best practices as an on-ramp for student engagement, regardless of prior English experience. With stretched capacity, many of us have turned to translation and interpretation tools to support, speed up, and enhance registration and integration processes.
AI Enters the Chat
At the same time that refugee and migrant populations in the U.S. began their steep rise, something else was catching fire: Artificial Intelligence. More specifically, user-driven applications like Chat GPT appeared seemingly overnight- and quickly migrated from the screens of tech folks to the general masses.

We quickly recognized AI's potential to assist with complex translation tasks in the education and social good spaces. As it turns out, artificial intelligence and translation/interpretation are a natural fit- and we'll explore some of the most promising resources here.

Before jumping in, some crucial perimeters. First, overusing or misusing translation aids can create dependency. We want learners to become comfortable exploring the English language in holistic ways. AI-generated responses are one tool in our instructional resource bank. Used appropriately, they can help resolve our most immediate language-access challenges, but overreliance can be harmful. Translation should also be human-verified at every opportunity, especially when communicating sensitive information. Similarly, data privacy should be a central concern when translation is introduced, as a simple matter of ethics and compliance.

With that...let's go! Here are five high-impact AI tools to explore right now:

1. Chat GPT. You probably guessed we were starting here, didn't you? We've heard so much about this application this year, and for good reason.

What's to love: free and easy to access, more accurate than Google Translate, and can be used for virtually any language.

But...: It's important to feed the application precise instructions to generate a clear response.

How to use: Enter Chat GPT ( https://openai.com/ ) and enter your prompt. Be specific about what you want it to do- this is especially important when working in translation. For example: I want you to act as a professional translator and interpreter. I especially want you to be mindful of context and to pay close attention to multiple-meaning words and culture-specific references (like using a baseball analogy in speaking with new-to-the-US populations. Please translate it into Dari. [sample text]. You can also provide additional instructions (please organize your response into a table or graphic organizer, etc). And...viola.

Diffit for Teachers (Beta): Diffit is an education-focused tool designed to support differentiation- but it also packs some impressive translation power.

What's to love: It offers a variety of tools in one place... and the beta version is currently free for teachers! Drop in existing curriculum or generate content from scratch with instant translation. FERPA and COPPA compliant.

But...: Price may be instituted post-beta. Many, but not all languages are available.

Sign up for/into Diffit ( https://web.diffit.me/ ). Enter a question, topic, link, or text in the prompt box and choose a grade level. Diffit will automatically populate the lesson, vocab, questions, etc. Choose the new language from the drop-down menu. Choose an export style (worksheet, graphic organizer, PDF, etc.)

2. DeepL: DeepL is an advanced AI machine with unmatched translation capabilities.

What's to love: A verified tool with exceptional accuracy. Copy/paste text or upload whole documents, PDFs, or slides.

But...: An impressive 32 languages, but no Dari or Pashto. However, Arabic was just added- a promising lead-in to Afghan-based additions!

Simple! Visit DeepL ( https://www.deepl.com/translator ), drop in your text or upload, and watch the translation magic!

3. Canva: Unless you've been living under a rock, you know Canva is a thing- and not just for graphic designers and content creators. It's a great platform for building out presentation decks and activity sheets- but not many know that Canva also has built-in translation capacity!

What's to love: Basic is free and many schools now offer an educator subscription. Easy to use and super versatile.

But...: Translation is Google-compatible- solid in some language bases and not in others.

How to use: Visit Canva () and start or open a project. Select a passage of text (or don't, if you'd like the whole document translated). Scroll down the menu bar at the left of the screen to find "Translate". Select language and done! *Note, you may need to make some adjustments to your design based on the adjusted length of the translated text.

4. Hey Gen: Video translation that instantly changes speaking language with voice match. My personal favorite of the bunch, because there are just so many exciting ways for this to go. Video texts to care-takers or informational shorts for back-to-school night in different languages- the possibilities are virtually endless.

It's something you'll need to see to believe! Start .

What's to love: Innovative, fun, next-level AI. Free to use! Unlike other video translations, it's not a voiceover- it seamlessly clones a person's actual tone, inflections, and facial expressions, even in the new language. Alternatively, for the camera-shy, try selecting an Avatar and uploading a script!

But... Not all languages- Dari and Pahsto are a no-go, at least for now..

How to use: Visit Hey Gen (). Start a new project. Upload the video you want to use. Select the language you'd like to translate to.

Honorable Mentions: Text Cortex (textcortex.com) for Whole Document upload/translate + prompt and Reverso (context.reverso.net) for In-context translation that includes nuanced language like idioms, proverbs, or culture-specific phrases.

Optimizing for Translation
In general, here are general pointers to ensure that your translation efforts- via whatever tool you choose- are as accurate and meaningful as possible!

Communicate Directly: Use short, to-the-point sentences.

Avoid Idioms & Slang:: May not translate well across cultures.

Use Clear Formatting: Bullets, headings, and numbered lists improve clarity.

Consistent Terminology: Stick to the same terms/phrases for repeated concepts.

Use Active Voice: Passive voice can complicate translation.

Limit multiple-meaning words: Row/row, lead/lead, etc.

Provide Context: Context helps in understanding and thus, better translation.

Use High-Quality Images: Ensure images and diagrams are clear and easily translatable.

Avoid Text in Images: Translating embedded text in graphics is difficult.

Consider Cultural Sensitivities: Some content (even colors) may not be culturally appropriate everywhere.

Test the Translations: Always review translated material for accuracy.

Seek Feedback: Ask multilingual colleagues for input.

Utilize Professional Translation Tools: Tools like DeepL, Chat GBT, or Google Translate can be a starting point, but always review results.

Artificial Intelligence tools for translation can be a game changer for schools. They can increase accessibility, and efficacy- and are language-expansive and cost-effective. AI applications come with cautions, too: accuracy issues, privacy concerns, and over-reliance. Used creatively and responsibly, however, AI tools can help us solve critical intake and integration challenges for our newest multilingual students. And if we know anything about artificial intelligence so far- it's that it's here to stay.

Additional Resources:
Harnessing AI to Support Language Acquisition Webinar - 2/28/2024 with Patrick Runnels

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5 AI Translation Tools to Support Multilingual Success - EduSkills, LLC Multilingual Student Database

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Academic years 2022-2024 have seen a rapid influx of new-to-English learners- and according to national data and the most recent Presidential Determination for Refugee Intake, that trend is almost certain to continue through the next handful of years. (UNCHR, 2024. Presidential Determination, 2024.

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NJPSA Guidance Document - Using Option 2 as an Instrument of Equity for Newcomers

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NJPSA Guidance Document - Using Option 2 as an Instrument of Equity for Newcomers

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This document shows you how to utilize Individualized Student Learning Opportunities (aka "Option 2") to grant credit to newcomers and students with limited or interrupted formal education through various pathways.

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NJPSA Guidance on MLs With Learning Difficulties

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NJPSA Guidance on MLs With Learning Difficulties

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NJDOE Padlet - MLs with Disabilities (2024)

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NJDOE Padlet - MLs with Disabilities (2024)

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Lots of great resources on determining difference vs. disability in MLs

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Resources for parents, FREE services for school districts, and so much more!

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There is a substantial body of legislation, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which protects the rights of these students. Unfortunately, many families of ELs are unaware of these laws and thus cannot advocate for their children. ¡Adelante! Moving Forward!

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Tech giants Google, Microsoft and Facebook are all applying the lessons of machine learning to translation, but a small company called DeepL has outdone them all and raised the bar for the field.
Its translation tool is just as quick as the outsized competition, but more accurate and nuanced than any we've tried.

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DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator

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Translate texts & full document files instantly. Accurate translations for individuals and Teams. Millions translate with DeepL every day.

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Using Option 2 as an Instrument of Equity Slide Deck

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Using Option 2 as an Instrument of Equity Slide Deck

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Creating Equity and Opportunity: Option 2 for Newcomers

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Using Option 2 With Newcomers - NJPSA Document

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Using Option 2 With Newcomers - NJPSA Document

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This two-part series will explore ways we can help English-language learners pursue postsecondary education.

Though the true "fallout" of this decision has yet to be fully seen, one way we high school teachers can begin to respond is to provide specific assistance with college-admission essays to our ELL students, and to all our students of color, to ensure they articulate the impact of race on their life's journey when appropriate.

Targeting Strengths
Tu Vuong is an educator who has worked as a consultant, teacher, and advocate for newcomer families and students. She has been a lead in projects with the Ontario Ministry of Education and Apple Education and has contributed lots of educational content to magazines, blogs and podcasts:
For this response, I will focus on a subset of the ELL population-multilingual learners with limited or interrupted formal schooling. While these students may have limited age-appropriate reading and writing skills, they bring cultural literacies and global competencies unique to their lived experiences. What can we learn about their story to unlearn our existing biases and oppressive stances?

"Not being able to read does not mean that one is empty of stories." (Ocean Vuong)

As these students enter a formal education system, we need to establish initial and ongoing partnerships with learners and their families. Building personalized relationships means we are engaging in continual, intentional dialogue to understand learned skills through their lived experiences, strengths, and educational and career goals.

In contrast to imposing our narrow views of what learning should look like, by centering on students' comprehensive experiences, we can create an educational plan and daily course curriculum that targets their strengths and knowledge. Building on these competencies while also affirming and amplifying students' identity in the curriculum will foster meaningful growth and allow students to thrive. In planning for newcomer students, we must be attentive to their unique stories and provide multilingual educational supports and pathway planning that is individualized to each learner to help them reach their goals throughout high school and at postsecondary.

These tenets can be the foundation that create an inclusive, collective new space where all aspects of learning are not only considered but formally recognized and would mark a breakthrough in structural barriers.

Show Possibilities
Michelle Makus Shory, Ed.S., is a lifelong language educator who has taught grades K-12. She currently serves her district as an instructional lead for digital innovation, adjuncts for local universities, and co-creates weekly resources for educators at bit.ly/ell2point0 Show That It Is Possible : Share Other Pathways
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, English-learners make up more than 10 percent of students in public schools, and there are more than 5.1 million English-learners in the United States. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education has found that fewer English-learners expect to attend college (10 percent) than their native English-speaking peers (34 percent). Further, according to the Pew Research Center, immigrants (many of whom are English-learners) are three times less likely to have a high school diploma. To support English-learners in postsecondary education, educators can help students in two ways: showing English-learners that postsecondary education is possible and exploring multiple postsecondary pathways.
One Last Thing
Additionally, culturally and linguistically diverse students need clarification on the pathways to postsecondary education. Talk to students about the FAFSA, common applications, and tests like the ACT and SAT. It's important to demystify the process. Encourage students to explore a site like Cappex to learn about various postsecondary institutions or FastWeb to find personalized recommendations for scholarships. Schools should make college information available in multiple languages and have interpreters (or access to interpretation services) available during parent meetings.

While sharing information about college with everyone is important, students shouldn't feel shame about not wanting to attend a four-year college. Many high schools embrace an academy model that prepares students for work and/or college. For example, students in Louisville, Ky., can participate in the Academies of Lousiville, a program that provides an industry certification and opportunities to earn college credits. A remarkable aspect of this program is that it allows students to have hands-on training in health care, engineering, or other areas of interest before leaving high school. This valuable experience will enable students to make an informed decision about their college major-or enter the field in an entry-level position.
Jody Nolf is an associate language and literacy specialist at Vista Higher Learning. For more than 20 years, she taught English and reading to middle and high school students. Six years ago, she transitioned into the world of ESOL as a full-time coordinator and advocate for multilingual learners, creating professional development and working with educators around the United States. You can follow Jody on Twitter @jodynolf:
Finally, when encouraging culturally and linguistically diverse students to pursue postsecondary education, it's most important to start with a conversation. Have a one-on-one with students to ask them about their interests and aspirations. Introduce them to a career-exploration site like Occupational Network Online or a site like 16 Personalities that explore different personality types if they aren't sure where to begin. Creating an open dialogue about postsecondary plans and sharing your journey can be especially powerful.

A 'Supportive Culture'

Creating pathways to colleges and careers is an important consideration in the education of secondary English-learners (ELs). Educators and institutions must provide equitable opportunities for ELs to pursue postsecondary education. However, some schools lack sufficient resources to provide those pathways to success for their ELs. Such resources include a culture of acceptance and inclusiveness within the school walls that all staff members support, robust ESL and counseling teams to serve as advocates for students and their families, and partnerships with organizations and agencies that sometimes exist outside of the school community.

Having a culture of inclusiveness within the school is an important first step in supporting and encouraging ELs to pursue postsecondary education. There needs to be a firm belief that all students can learn and be successful, including students from diverse backgrounds. The more students hear the words, "I believe in you" and "You can do it," the more they will understand that adults, especially their teachers, support them in their efforts to grow and continue their education. Educators need to focus on learners' assets (referred to as asset-based learning) and use those assets as bridges to opportunities for learning. By focusing on EL's strengths, schools foster a culture of understanding and of cultural acceptance.

Once the supportive culture is established within a school, strong teams need to be in place to advocate for EL learners and their families. Some EL families, depending upon their circumstances, do not have access to postsecondary resources, and therefore, they rely upon the schools to provide all available information. However, without a strong team of advocates, the families are often still left wondering what opportunities are available for their children. They might not understand the application process or financial-aid availability, daunting tasks for many families, regardless of background. Supportive teams within a school specifically address these needs in ways that support ELs. For example, some schools host college-information events facilitated in multiple languages, often during evening hours to accommodate working families.

Even if the above two components are present within a school, it often still "takes a village" to wholly support EL students in their postsecondary endeavors. Many schools simply cannot do it alone. However, communities often have agencies geared toward assisting students and families to make college or career training a reality. It is in a community's best interest to help these families so that there is a strong, educated workforce, especially a diverse workforce comprised of various cultures and spoken languages.
What can schools do to specifically support and encourage ELLs to pursue postsecondary education? Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign-new ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 11 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.
The desire for a diverse workforce is what drove me to create a partnership with my local state college. This one-of-a-kind partnership brings Spanish-speaking middle school ELs to the college to tour the campus and perform a DNA extraction. What makes this event unique is that the entire experience is facilitated in Spanish. Therefore, newcomers can learn about postsecondary opportunities in their new country. Students can also see educators who have similar experiences and backgrounds: former ELs who immigrated to the United States, learned a new language, and earned their high school diploma. Equally important, students bring memories of this experience home to their families to share in their dreams of postsecondary success.

Thanks to Tu, Michelle, and Jody for sharing their commentaries.

The question of the week is:

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How to Create College and Career Pathways for English-Learners (Opinion)

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To start, the adults in students' schools should show they believe in ELLs' abilities to succeed in postsecondary education.

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As educators look to leverage the prized collection of edtech solutions they've added to their toolbelts over the past few years, more and more are ChatGPT as a viable resource for enhancing student learning and engagement. Yet, professional development as it pertains to generative artificial intelligence is lacking. Fortunately, OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have you covered.

Last week, the company released its " Teaching with AI " guide for educators wanting to use ChatGPT in their classrooms. The guidance includes insight from educators who are already using it to enhance learning and streamline tasks as well as some example prompts you can copy and paste directly into ChatGPT and try out yourself.

According to feedback from educators in both higher education and secondary education, they're using ChatGPT for the following purposes:
Role-playing challenging conversations
One professor of instructional technology at Old Dominion University invites her students to use the tool as a "stand-in for a particular persona," according to OpenAI. Students can debate with the AI, which will then point out the weaknesses in their arguments. According to the professor, leveraging the tool in this way "helps students understand their material with added nuance and new perspective."
Building quizzes, tests and lesson plans
A professor at Universidade da Coruña in Spain recommends educators use it as an assistant to create various materials needed for instruction. They can do so by sharing the curriculum with ChatGPT and then asking for a "fresh quiz" or "lesson plan ideas that use modern or culturally relevant examples," according to OpenAI.
Supporting non-English speakers
Another professor at the University of Johannesburg encourages students who don't speak English outside the classroom to leverage ChatGPT for translation assistance, which inevitably improves their written and spoken English.
Teaching critical thinking
Lastly, this high school computer science teacher at the American International School in Chennai, India, compares teaching students about AI tools to educating them on how to responsibly navigate the internet. She encourages students to think about the answers produced by ChatGPT and discern whether they're credible or not. "The goal is to help them 'understand the importance of constantly working on their original thinking, problem-solving and creativity skills,'" she told OpenAI.

Free example prompts from OpenAI

If you're interested in incorporating these ideas to streamline your daily tasks, OpenAI offers four ChatGPT example prompts written by Ethan and Lilach Mollick, professors and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Interactive.

The prompts enable educators to do one of the following: create lesson plans; craft effective explanations, examples and analogies; help students learn by teaching; or create an AI tutor.

Users can simply copy and paste the prompts provided by OpenAI into ChatGPT while incorporating their specific curriculum material and within seconds have one of their mundane daily tasks completed. For instance, here's a look at the example prompt for creating a lesson plan:
You are a friendly and helpful instructional coach helping teachers plan a lesson. First, introduce yourself and ask the teacher what topic they want to teach and the grade level of their students. Wait for the teacher to respond. Do not move on until the teacher responds. Next, ask the teacher if students have existing knowledge about the topic or if it is entirely new. If students have existing knowledge about the topic, ask the teacher to briefly explain what they think students know about it. Wait for the teacher to respond. Do not respond for the teacher. Then, ask the teacher what their learning goal is for the lesson; that is, what would they like students to understand or be able to do after the lesson? Wait for a response. Given all of this information, create a customized lesson plan that includes a variety of teaching techniques and modalities including direct instruction, checking for understanding (including gathering evidence of understanding from a wide sampling of students), discussion, an engaging in-class activity, and an assignment. Explain why you are specifically choosing each. Ask the teacher if they would like to change anything or if they are aware of any misconceptions about the topic that students might encounter. Wait for a response. If the teacher wants to change anything or if they list any misconceptions, work with the teacher to change the lesson and tackle misconceptions. Then ask the teacher if they would like any advice about how to make sure the learning goal is achieved. Wait for a response. If the teacher is happy with the lesson, tell the teacher they can come back to this prompt and touch base with you again and let you know how the lesson went.

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Future of Education Technology Conference

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4 easy ChatGPT prompts educators can use to streamline tasks

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As educators look to leverage the prized collection of edtech solutions they've added to their toolbelts over the past few years, more and more are ChatGPT as a viable resource for enhancing student learning and engagement. Yet, professional development as it pertains to generative artificial intelligence is lacking.

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A way to get "just right" resources on anything.

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I have shared many columns about how teachers might want to consider-and how they might not want to consider-using artificial intelligence in the classroom.

You can see many of those previous posts here. You can also see many more ed.-related resources here, including two animated videos about AI in education that Katie Hull and I did with Education Week.

Today's post focuses on using artificial intelligence with English-language learners (as did a previous one).

Few teachers have had more experience applying AI tools with ELLs than Svetlana Kandybovich, and she agreed to contribute to today's post. Svetlana includes links to free AI tools she has created for teachers to use with students.

Opportunity or Remix?
Svetlana Kandybovich is a teacher, teacher trainer, and materials writer with more than 20 years of international ELT (English-Language Teaching ) experience. She shares her insights on teaching, learning, and professional development with fellow educators and teacher trainers through her blog, ELTcation. What Makes GenAI Effective?
Do GenAI-powered tools offer new opportunities for language teaching and learning, or are they simply old school concepts remixed with AI technology?

The ease of creating GenAI-powered tools has led to an "AI rush" among edupreneurs, offering various tools promising to revolutionize language learning by making it more engaging, personalized, adaptive, and inclusive. However, as with any other new or emerging technology, without proper integration into our practices to ensure it truly adds value to learning, this potentially powerful technology might just end up being wasted.

A tool is effective when it adds value to learning. Following the , the impact of a new tool is higher when it transforms learning by redesigning or redefining the pedagogy and introduces new possibilities that were previously unimaginable. Put simply, a tool is most valuable when it is indispensable and helps teachers create a better learning environment than any other methods or tools available.
Image by Svetlana Kandybovich Key Elements
When used effectively, every tool has the potential to improve learning and learning outcomes, but it's the that truly makes it work.

GenAI Use Cases
When it comes to effectively using and integrating GenAI, three things are key: the teacher's expertise, understanding GenAI, and being creative. They are all tied to how GenAI works, which can be likened to a game of chance. While we can manage the input, no one has complete control over what comes out of GenAI (and likewise, nobody has fully understood its capabilities yet). This highlights the .

To achieve quality results, teachers should have a clear idea of their desired output and the ability to evaluate, iterate, and fine-tune it further. Teachers' AI literacy is essential for addressing the limitations and risks associated with GenAI, while to push boundaries, explore new activities and tasks, and unlock the technology's potential to make learning even better.

We can discern quite distinct ways in which language teachers use GenAI by studying their experiences shared in blog posts, social media groups, forums, and during webinars and conferences.

The largest group by far involves replicating and automating existing practices. Many examples of this can be found, ranging from direct use of large language models (LLMs) or single solutions and apps like , , or , to various platforms built on top of LLMs designed for educators of various subjects, such as or , and for language teachers in particular, such as or . These platforms enable teachers to create a wide range of worksheets, develop lesson plans, write texts on any topic and for any proficiency level, and design . They leverage the capabilities of LLMs, particularly their superfast text generation. The idea is to save time, but speed isn't everything.

Sometimes, just like with any other third-party tool, your pedagogical approach may differ from that of platform developers. Therefore, what these platforms churn out might not fit your needs perfectly. Without the right customization options, they might only provide a quick solution that doesn't truly benefit your learners, leaving you needing to invest more time to fix things up.

and the creation of multimodal resources are two of the areas where GenAI can provide invaluable support for language teachers. For instance, with tools like for generating synthetic voices, and a range of image-, animation-, and video-generation tools such as , , or , we can create diverse multimodal materials and activities. Achieving this without such technology would be extremely challenging, if not impossible.

The impact level increases when tools are customized to meet specific needs and provide teachers with customization functionality, allowing them to incorporate their unique contexts and experiences. For instance, I have developed two tools to aid language teachers in brainstorming and designing personalized activities for their learners.

The helps language teachers come up with quick activities for the classroom, while the is crafted to generate role-play scenarios and role-play cards tailored to learners' needs and learning objectives. Both tools tap into the content-generation powers of LLMs and are great for sparking ideas. But what really makes the magic happen is when teachers put their own twist on things, adding their personal touch and context details.

One novel use case involves the creation of AI-powered chatbots using to simulate real-life interactions and offer new learning experiences. These chatbots can be designed as both stand-alone activities and as part of specific lessons. You can assign a particular persona to a chatbot, whether it's an imaginary character or a famous person, and it will act accordingly. For example, in the , learners engage in dialogue with Alex the chatbot to uncover the story's details as narrated by Alex.

to support my learners, each with different objectives that define their behavior and language. For instance, I've developed to assist my intermediate and upper-intermediate learners in practicing conversation skills across various scenarios. Essentially, it acts as a conversation scaffold, guiding learners through dialogues by thinking out loud, explaining why it responds as it does, clarifying expectations, and providing gentle and encouraging feedback. This chatbot is not a replacement for classroom conversation practice; it's a supportive tool that extends learners' practice, preparing them for real-life conversations.

Two important elements of using chatbots effectively in language learning are their design and monitoring. To prevent chatbots from becoming just one-time engagement tools, . From my observations, even proficient learners often struggle with unfocused chatbot interactions, when they are simply instructed to "go and chat," resulting in minimal learning value. Additionally, circling back to the issue of control over GenAI output and its associated risks, it's essential for teachers to closely monitor learner-chatbot interactions and quickly adjust chatbot tasks and behaviors as needed.

As GenAI continues to advance, we will discover even more new ways it can enhance and transform language learning. Yet, its effectiveness truly depends on the skill level of the teachers, their understanding of AI, and their ability to think creatively.

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 12 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list here.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

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How to Use AI Tools to Support English-Language Learners (Opinion)

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There are many free tools available to educators, but a desired output is key to good results.

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Top 4 MagicSchool Tools for ESL Teachers

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Practices to Increase ML Participation in AP/Gifted Courses

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Practices to Increase ML Participation in AP/Gifted Courses

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Brief PD modules on various EL-related topics.

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Comprehensive Educator Modules — CUNY IIE

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CUNY-IIE has worked together with educators and community members to create professional development modules around the Supporting Immigrants in Schools Video Series videos. Each module features a set of activities and guides to help educators learn, act, and advocate in the classroom.

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Civil Rights Principles for ML Education (Federal)

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Civil Rights Principles for ML Education (Federal)

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Available in multiple languages for parent empowerment.

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The Leadership Conference Education Fund

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The Civil Rights Principles for Multilingual Learner Education details how decision makers at all levels can ensure an equitable education system that offers meaningful equal opportunity and success for all children, including children whose first language is a language other than English. We are all fortunate that there are so many children in the United States who are learning more than one language between their homes and their schools. This powerful asset enriches their own lives and education, and it sets them up to be builders of our multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual democracy. In order to ensure that children who speak more than one language have access to and are included in comprehensive, diverse, and high-quality education settings, we seek policy that reflects the following principles. The civil rights community calls on decision makers at all levels to create and maintain an equitable education system for children by incorporating these principles into all relevant policies.

Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes ofwebsite accessibility

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Civil Rights Principles for Multilingual Learner Education

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The Civil Rights Principles for Multilingual Learner Education details how decision makers at all levels can ensure an equitable education system that offers meaningful equal opportunity and success for all children, including children whose first language is a language other than English.

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Getting students to use the language of math. If they can talk about it, they can do it!

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Although this is not an ML-specific classroom or strategy, no student is a native speaker of academic language, and differentiation strategies are included to help all students talk about Math.

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Machine Learning

Around the world, these seven teachers are making AI work for them and their students
Welcome to The Markup, where we use investigative reporting, data analysis, and software engineering to challenge technology to serve the public good. Sign up for , a newsletter that delivers our stories and tools directly to your inbox.
AI seems to be everywhere these days-and more and more, that includes the classroom. Teachers are racing to reckon with the kinds of AI tools, like ChatGPT, that let students breeze through assignments. But beyond discussions of what counts as "cheating," what happens when teachers use AI?

Frequently overworked and underpaid, teachers are less often talked about as users of time-saving AI tools. This raises many questions: Can such tools be trusted to create curriculum? What happens to the student data that gets fed into any of the myriad new AI startups? Will human teachers one day be replaced?
K-12 STEAM Coordinator at Pittsburgh Public Schools (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
In this article, seven teachers across the world share their insights on AI tools for educators. You will hear a host of varied opinions and perspectives on everything from whether AI could hasten the decline of learning foreign languages to whether AI-generated lesson plans are an infringement on teachers' rights. A common theme emerged from those we spoke with: just as the internet changed education, AI tools are here to stay, and it is prudent for teachers to adapt.

When I first approached Vincent Scotto, a STEAM coordinator at Pittsburgh Public Schools, he tested me. Before honoring my request to interview him about how his district uses AI, he asked me to prove I was a human. Prior to this, I had never considered myself a robot, but here's what I wrote in my initial message to Scotto:

As I read it over, it was humbling to realize how effortlessly an AI language model could have spit out my message. I braced myself for a conversation with someone I assumed would be a steadfast AI skeptic.

After I passed his challenge, however, I soon learned that he was not such a Luddite at all. Scotto's views echo the views of many teachers I talked to: with the right safeguards, AI tools can save teachers enormous amounts of time while giving students new, creative ways to explore and practice material.

Scotto has worked in education for over 15 years, starting as an elementary school teacher focused mainly on math and science and working up to his current position as a STEAM coordinator. When he realized that his district did not have a plan for computer science education, he worked to help make one, turning it into a "big focal point" of his district. With the aid of a Pennsylvania state grant, Scotto has worked to make Pittsburgh Public Schools "more 21st century ready," including readying the district for the coming wave of generative AI.

"Most of my role is expanding teachers' ability to serve students in the way that they always intended when they became a teacher," he said. But the reality of being a teacher is often very different from how budding teachers imagine it to be. "I'm meeting with a teacher and I'll ask them how things are going, and usually it's 'I'm swamped,' you know. 'I don't have time to talk right now, I still haven't submitted my lesson plans' or something to that effect."

Scotto said he is always looking for new tools to save teachers time, and generative AI is one of his favorite new recommendations-especially tools that are geared toward teachers who are less familiar with technology. MagicSchool AI, a suite of educational AI tools, is one of the most user-friendly tools that Scotto has found, and he frequently demonstrates it to busy teachers.

"I'll ask them, 'What's the topic that you're going to do for next week?'" he said. Then he plugs the topic into MagicSchool AI, along with his estimation of how much class time that teacher has to teach the particular subject, and lets the AI generate a set of lesson plans. "When a teacher sees how fast [the AI works], they immediately sign up."

One of Scotto's greatest fears is privacy, and he recommends that teachers not put any personally identifying information about students-even anonymous demographic information-into AI tools, unless the tool has been specifically approved by the district's board of education. "For example, 'My class has 7 Black students, 3 White students'... don't even put information like that because eventually it becomes a collective of information that you've input and... they could make a profile on your students." He said he worries that the data could be shared or sold to third parties which may use that data for different purposes, putting students at risk now or "50 years from now."

"We cannot rely on 'the goodness' of an organization that intentionally collects data," Scotto said.

He also stressed the importance of AI policy in protecting students: "People on the ground level, without guidance, may make decisions that [break] policy or law unintentionally. Without AI policy at the federal, state, and local level, these accidents can happen and likely are happening in isolation," he said.

On the issue of copyright, his views were mixed: "Any teacher will tell you that they have borrowed and stolen every idea they've had for their classroom. Not a single teacher I know believes they have an original lesson plan."

He referred me to Teachers Pay Teachers, an Etsy-like online marketplace for teaching materials. "Kids just deserve the best education they can get, and if that means borrowing lesson plans from a bot, I'll take it. If we're just teaching lessons, it doesn't really matter where we got it from. And if the large corporations such as, you know, Pearson, want to sue an individual teacher for copying their stuff with AI, good luck. We're all in trouble. It is a battle they will lose in the end, because we'll just stop purchasing their material all together. So it's a double-edged sword in that way."

His concerns from AI and copyright come not from the classroom, but on a personal level. "I'm into music and art, and there's a big worry that artists will lose their jobs, their life blood, because we're having AI create renditions of Andy Warhol, like, peaches, you know. So I personally don't use those just because I have personal connections with people that it upsets."

However, Scotto said that he did not have a "moral qualm" for a couple reasons: "People who really care about art are not buying things that were created by, you know, pixels. They're looking for a human-created thing with brush strokes and all these things."

Second, Scotto frequently searches online for Creative Commons images to use in his presentations, and sees no harm in asking an AI to step in. "Could I use a graphics AI to come up with something really quickly, and it would serve my purpose? I sure could. In that instance, it would be innocuous." Trying to sell AI art or pass it off as your own, however, is "where... it gets into a conundrum."
Teacher at Olney High School, Philadelphia
Ultimately, just as the calculator revolutionized how students approach math, Scotto thinks AI will change education and teachers should start to adapt. "You've got to get in front of [AI] even if you don't have the kids use it. You've got to know what this is, what it's capable of."

Sean Fennessy, a geometry teacher, has been in and out of education for around 15 years, dabbling in IT, web design, and activism. His diverse teaching experience has led him to embrace an "unschooling" approach driven by exploration. He uses ChatGPT heavily in the classroom to teach students a lot more than just how to solve math problems.

"So what I do with AI for example, in my classroom, is I have each class have a government, or each class is a country. And I vested them with resources." Fennessy uses ChatGPT to create a fictional universe, "Fennlandia," in which students hold elections, stage uprisings, and even purchase snacks in the classroom. He uses the paid version of ChatGPT, allowing him to create a custom chatbot that is confined to this fantasy world.

What does this have to do with geometry?

"The most important part [of geometry] is the application of logic, right? I mean, no one's going on doing trigonometric functions in the real world... And honestly all of the ones who do, they're gonna [use] a calculator, right?"

Instead, Fennessy teaches students how to use ChatGPT to code their own small applications to solve problems by using clear, logical language: "AI is going to be really literal about what you're putting in," he said, so students must learn to be precise with their instructions. When he demonstrated this approach to his principal in an impromptu classroom observation, his principal was enthusiastic.

His motivations aren't hidden: "I understand geometry is the end of the line for a lot of my kids. And so, what am I going to give them that's gonna be useful when they leave here?"

Beyond Fennlandia, he's used it for other tasks, like generating letters of recommendation for students. He likens ChatGPT to his own children and has watched its skills evolve at roughly the same pace. "It really felt like I was talking to an incredibly bright and amazingly knowledgeable version of my five-year-old for a little while. And then it kind of moved on and I'm like, oh this is like talking to my nine-year-old." Today, he says, "It's a college [level] or beyond."

Of course, not all of Fennessy's uses for ChatGPT are fantasy. One thing he's working on for the next semester is creating longer projects that students can complete concurrently with each unit of the geometry course. "One of the problems with projects, especially in math, is always like hey, here's this project that's supposed to be a capstone... but you haven't learned half of [the material] yet." Fennessy hopes to use ChatGPT to fix this problem by creating projects that unfold over time, to see the bigger picture of how to apply their skills.

Fennessy isn't frustrated when students cheat with or without AI, but it "doesn't look like a really good use of [students'] time," he said. If he catches a student cheating, he asks them to solve new problems on the board to test their understanding.
Tech Integration Specialist at Ozark City Schools (Ozark, AL)
As far as worrying about whether technology will ever replace him, Fennessy says he firmly believes the "emotional support of a teacher cannot be replaced." If AI helps his ability to be a cheerleader for his students and spend more one-on-one time with them, then he said he is all for it.

Kim Maybin taught seventh-grade language arts for the majority of her career. When the opportunity to become a technology integration specialist opened up, she jumped on it. Now she oversees around 200 teachers in her district, training them on using emerging technology to be more effective and efficient with what she calls a "work smarter, not harder mentality... because you're literally exhausted in that classroom," she said.

When recommending tools for teachers, cost is one of her main factors: "I'm always looking for something free because we don't have a lot of money to spend on tools."

Maybin frequently mentors teachers on how to create custom material for different students using AI tools. As a middle school teacher, she often found herself creating additional structure or "sentence starters" to help struggling students complete their assignments and generating multiple versions of tests that target different depths of knowledge, depending on individual student needs. "Why not let [AI] make the two tests for me? Because now I have more time to focus on the bigger needs in my classroom."

Maybin thinks it is imperative that teachers get familiar with AI and teach students how to use it appropriately. "If you don't teach the students how to use it, they are gonna abuse it," she said. Many of the teachers Maybin works with are initially afraid of the potential for students to cheat with AI, and so they try to stay away from AI in all forms. But if a teacher never mentions AI, she said, students might think they are getting the upper hand on an unaware teacher. "When the students are using it, [teachers are] like 'They're using AI!' and, well, you didn't mention it!"

Instead, she feels teachers need to get more creative by creating "AI-proof" assignments. It's less difficult than it may sound. Tools like ChatGPT are terrible, she said, at tasks like solving an AP English exam because they don't have emotions or personal experiences that AP graders are looking for. Requiring students to thoughtfully decide which aspects of their own lives are relevant to the topic of an essay engages them in the subject in a uniquely human way.

Maybin's district may be a barrier to the adoption of AI by students and teachers alike. Due to privacy concerns, her district initially banned all AI tools. It took convincing from Maybin for her district to begin opening access to AI for teachers, but even then, each application has to be explicitly approved. The tools are still off limits for students, who use locked-down Chromebooks that permit only a small number of education-related programs-both for privacy reasons and concerns about plagiarism.
Executive Director, Rural Literacy Solutions (Tamale, Ghana)
For teachers who are excited about AI tools, Maybin said they should be aware of being overly trusting of the tools' accuracy. Maybin recalled that her colleague recommended teachers query ChatGPT about how comfortable it was with a certain topic on a scale from one to 10. "And if ChatGPT gives you nine or 10... it's really comfortable. [If] it gives you three or four... you need to check it," although she recommends verifying ChatGPT's responses no matter the level of its claimed expertise.

Tamale, Ghana is one of the fastest growing cities in West Africa. It is also the capital of Northern Ghana, the region of Ghana with the lowest literacy rates across all ages. Peter Amoabil has been fighting to change that. A teacher for over 14 years, Amoabil balances his duties as a full-time teacher with directing Rural Literacy Solutions, a nonprofit he founded in 2019 to close the literacy gap by offering after-school English literacy programs in partnership with local primary schools.

Recently, Amoabil has been sharing new AI tools to help his teachers. I told him that when I tested an AI tool to generate an explanation of a random topic at a second-grade reading level, the text included words that a second-grade student would not be expected to know. As it turned out, Amoabil found the same thing. "The secret about AI is picking the right tool you need at the moment," he said.

Another challenge he sees with AI tools is their understanding of local languages. English is the national language of Ghana, so students are expected to read and write English, but the most widely spoken language in northern Ghana is Dagbani. Amoabil has used translation tools several times to translate textbooks into Dagbani, and he often needs to manually edit the translation afterwards to correct inaccuracies.

Despite the challenges, he's a big fan of many of the tools, including Storybook AI, which generates stories based on a prompt. Amoabil's teachers have found it to be a great way to create additional reading materials for students to practice reading, while also keeping students engaged by letting them generate stories on any topic they are interested in. He said his students are fascinated by AI and often ask how it works.
Training Coordinator in the Foreign Language Teaching and Resources Center, National Taiwan University
Amoabil's teachers range in age from 26 to 59 years old-60 is the retirement age in Ghana-and most of them are excited about using AI tools. The benefits of Amoabil's after-school programs are clear: he's seen English literacy rise substantially for enrolled fourth graders. Amoabil credited AI for some of the improvement, saying that it has helped teachers with a large portion of their workload.

Aaron Shi taught English for over nine years before becoming a teacher training coordinator at the Foreign Language Teaching and Resources Center at National Taiwan University (NTU) in 2022. He mostly works with experienced professors and teachers who've been teaching English and other foreign languages, including many who have been teaching college for 10 to 20 years.

Among the teachers that Shi trains, he said he has found older teachers to be generally more interested in learning about AI tools than younger ones. Shi said that many young teachers were too busy fighting for tenure to consider new teaching methods or that they simply felt more comfortable experimenting with AI tools on their own.

One of the most powerful uses of AI, according to Shi, is to create free teaching materials. He envisions a world in which AI can provide personalized learning materials for each student without the prohibitive cost barrier of standardized textbooks.

About 60 to 70 percent of courses at NTU are taught in English, and that number is likely to increase as the Taiwanese government pushes for English to become a required language by 2030. Some of the greatest opposition to this policy has been from teachers: The National Federation of Teachers Unions (NFTU) has argued that teachers are not prepared to teach subjects in English when they are not fluent in English themselves, and students may suffer for the same reason.

Shi said AI tools can help facilitate cross-cultural communication in ways that support and even go beyond the government's goals for bilingual education. He said that even if a student does not learn English well, AI tools can help students interact with the English-speaking world. This is especially true for students who choose to stay in Taiwan after graduation and who may not use English frequently in the future compared to those who move abroad.

However, tools that remove language barriers also pose a threat to languages themselves, Shi said. Shi said that the rapid adoption of AI tools may accelerate the decline of Taiwanese languages. According to Shi, Taiwanese people don't want to speak the same Mandarin language that people in China speak for political reasons, and mainstream AI language models don't incorporate enough Taiwanese Mandarin sources for results to sound natural.

Along with the rapid adoption of TikTok by young Taiwanese-which he said features predominantly content from China-Shi sees a continuing decline in the standard for Taiwanese Mandarin, as people become less able to differentiate between "authentic" or "good" Taiwanese Mandarin and Standard Chinese.

The same is true for other Taiwanese languages, like Taiwanese Hokkien and the indigenous Formosan languages. "It is hard for AI to be proficient in these languages due to the very limited amount of data," he wrote in a Facebook message after our interview. "I think the Hokkien dialect (or the Taiwanese language) can also be difficult for AIs to learn, but the number of active users of this dialect/language is, at least, much more than those of the Formosan languages."

Shi said AI won't support indigenous languages because it's not commercially viable to use them. He also said some of these issues are baked into the education system. According to Shi, many parents think it's O.K. for primary schools to teach indigenous languages in those areas, but in secondary school, students start competing to gain access to better colleges, so they need to learn Chinese and English in order to stay competitive.
Curriculum Director and EdTech Influencer, Michigan
Shi said that teachers remain essential to the classroom for the foreseeable future. Even if it is possible to generate teaching materials for an entire course with AI, two teachers might create entirely different versions of the same course simply because of how they prompt the AI. He said this highlighted the importance of educators: knowing how to plan and organize a course requires human insight.

Karle Delo, a science teacher and curriculum director in Michigan-and edtech influencer as "CoachKarle" on TikTok -shares reviews of AI tools with teachers worldwide. She has personally tried and reviewed hundreds of AI tools for teachers, and she walked me through how a teacher might apply them in practice.

Delo had me imagine a teacher trying to find an exciting way to teach a lesson on volcanoes and earthquakes. There are five ways she describes AI tools as being handy for this lesson:

They can be a brainstorming buddy for creative ideas. "Maybe AI could help me think of a 'Would you rather?' question or a real-world scenario."

AI tools can parse a video about volcanoes that the teacher might play for students, and generate a bullet point summary for students to refer to.

An AI could differentiate learning and reproduce an article about a real-world earthquake at different reading levels for different students.

The AI can take real-world earthquake data and write an easily readable analysis. "Normally I'd have to purchase a really, really good curriculum, or I'd have to spend a lot of time putting [the data] in a format that my students can digest because if I just look up earthquake and volcano data, it's probably going to be not in a very student-friendly format."

AI is great at generating review questions for students to practice the material.

While AI tools can be powerful for teachers, Delo reminds teachers that they need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. "AI could be used to create busy work for kids and that's not very meaningful," she said, and teachers might end up with boring slide decks and low-quality multiple-choice quizzes.

Delo said that since the internet made just about anything a Google search away, science education has evolved from lecturing on rote facts to engaging students in a process of analysis. In the same way, she believes teachers should approach AI with honest conversations about its potential.

Some teachers see AI tools as closing gaps in access to quality education materials. According to Delo, there is a common misconception that all teachers at all schools are expected to create their lessons from scratch. In reality, it's common for teachers and districts to purchase curricula from various companies. In the past, this has led to wealthier schools having access to better curricula, while less wealthy schools need to create more content on their own. But AI can help bridge that gap. "If I were a parent, I would want my kid to have a teacher that uses AI," she said.

She cautions teachers, however, to adhere to privacy laws regarding the use of AI tools. "I know ChatGPT is not approved for use by anyone under the age of 13. When an AI tool has an age restriction, schools better follow it."
Teacher at Olney High School, Philadelphia
Ultimately, Delo does not see AI replacing teachers anytime soon. "When you think about your favorite teacher, it's usually a teacher who inspired you. I've never really been inspired by AI. I've gotten excited about it, but I've never been like 'Wow, this ChatGPT really believes in me today, and that feels good,'" she said. "If technology could have been a replacement or a silver bullet for education, then students would [have] come out of the pandemic with flying colors. And we didn't see that. We saw that a lot of students struggled with online learning. So I do think the human element of teaching is so important."

Nathaniel Decker, an English, poetry, and public speaking teacher in Philadelphia, said he was worried that AI tools would change expectations of teacher productivity. "Teachers using these AI programs to be efficient and save themselves time is great," he said.

"I'm not anti-technology, anti-automation. I'm anti those things replacing the opportunity for people to make a living off of their work," he said. Decker, who is involved in the school union, said that teachers should have control over their own use of AI. "I'm fine with teachers using AI, as long as we're not forced to use AI."

Decker also said teachers should be contractually in control of their IP, and that they should not be forced to give up their lesson plans to be used in an AI model. "I don't trust that the people in charge are gonna have everyone's best intentions at heart," he said.

One useful area of AI tools for Decker is making sure that teaching materials hit certain mandatory standards from the district and discovering how existing materials might cover more standards than anyone realized. "I intend for this [lesson] to teach this skill, but [it] is also touching on these 12 other skills... That's a cool way to use [AI] that I never would have thought to use."

When it comes to students using AI, Decker said, "Anything involving text, writing, or speaking is gonna be the trickiest" to handle as a teacher. When a student submits work to Decker that doesn't make sense, he has a hard time telling whether the student is making a purposeful creative choice, struggling with the material, or using an AI to generate their work. He cares less about the end product than the creative process, so he does not want students using AI to skip this process. ChatGPT is still banned on Olney High School's network.

Some teachers have begun to use AI to evaluate student work, but he said that teachers disagree on when it's appropriate to do so. Decker said, "From an English teacher's perspective, reading essays and poetry and giving feedback [with AI], I don't think [teachers] should do that. I don't know how they could do that in a way that's differentiated to each students' needs."

Decker said that he'd like an AI tool that could help find common problems across all student work for a topic. "If... AI could tell me, 'This many students understood it, this many didn't, here's the issues that they had,' that could be incredible," he said.

Eyeing the stack of papers that need to be graded over winter break, he said that he wished he could give feedback to students sooner, but he just didn't have the time.

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Teachers Are Using AI to Create New Worlds, Help Students with Homework, and Teach English - The Markup

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Around the world, these seven teachers are making AI work for them and their students

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Available online in multiple languages.

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Types of National Origin Discrimination in Schools

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Types of National Origin Discrimination in Schools

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Your students have rights that go far beyond ESL classes!

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Dismantling Barriers to Enrollment and Registration

"[E]ducation has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society. We cannot ignore the significant social costs borne by our Nation when select groups are denied the means to absorb the values and skills upon which our social order rests." Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 221 (1982).

Public schools must be open to all students. Unfortunately, students are sometimes discouraged or prevented from enrolling in their local schools because of their national origin (including the country or part of the world they or their family members were born in or are from, their ethnicity or perceived ethnic background, or the language they speak) or their immigration status (whether they are undocumented). The Department of Justice and the Department of Education have published a fact sheet on national origin discrimination for parents and students that helps explain what barriers to enrollment look like, and what steps families can take in response.

Examples of barriers that can deny students equal access to school include:

Refusing to enroll students based on their immigration status or national origin.

Requiring certain information in the registration process that prevents undocumented or other immigrant students from enrolling, such as social security numbers, proof of citizenship, or original birth certificates, and refusing to consider alternative documentation.

Steering or diverting recent immigrants away from their public schools and into segregated alternative programs that provide fewer resources and services.

Failing to remove language barriers in the registration process for parents who have limited English proficiency, and who need translation or interpretation services.

Under federal law, students have the right to attend their local public school regardless of their national origin, or their or their parents' immigration status. The Department of Justice and the Department of Education have also issued guidance to school districts describing how school enrollment and registration practices can comply with federal law.

If you would like to share information about a district's potentially discriminatory enrollment or registration practices, please visit the Civil Rights Division Portal.

Protecting Access and Opportunity for Students Learning English

"[T]here is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education. Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563, 566 (1974).

Under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, public schools must overcome language barriers when serving their students. For students who are learning English ("English Learners"), districts must provide instruction and services to help those students fully participate in their school's educational program. This means appropriate support in learning English, as well as in learning the material in their general education classes, such as math, science, and social studies. The Department of Justice and the Department of Education have issued extensive guidance describing how programs and services can comply with federal law.

In our enforcement work, we have required districts to improve how they serve students learning English in a number of different ways. For example, we have worked to make sure districts:

Provide English Learners with appropriate instruction on the English language.

Provide services that permit English Learners to participate in core content classes, such as math, science, or social studies.

Properly identify students who need programs or services for learning the English language.

Ensure teachers working with English Learners are properly qualified and trained.

Provide students who are both English Learners and students with disabilities with all the services and supports they are entitled to.

Ensure that English Learners have access to gifted and talented programs and advanced courses.

Communicate about programming and services with parents who have limited English proficiency.

If you would like to share concerns about a district's language assistance program or services, please visit the Civil Rights Division Portal.

Confronting Harassment and Bullying Based on National Origin

Harassment or bullying of a student stemming from prejudice or unfounded fears about their national origin (including the country or part of the world they or their family members were born in or are from, their ethnicity or perceived ethnic background, or the language they speak), or their religion can have devastating effects on the student and their family. Federal law protects students who are targeted on these bases. School officials must take prompt and appropriate action to respond to complaints of harassment or bullying based on national origin or religion. When school districts fail to take appropriate action, the Department of Justice may be able to help by enforcing federal law.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Education have created resources to support students and families facing these forms of harassment , including a fact sheet focused on combating harassment against Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander and Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian students, and a fact sheet focused on COVID-19 related harassment of Asian American and Pacific Islander students. If you would like to share information about a district's response to harassment and bullying, please visit the Civil Rights Division Portal.

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Types of National Origin Discrimination in Schools

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"[E]ducation has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society. We cannot ignore the significant social costs borne by our Nation when select groups are denied the means to absorb the values and skills upon which our social order rests." Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 221 (1982).

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Translates concepts and examples in Math into Arabic, Armenian, Cantonese, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Urdu, and Vietnamese.

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Big Ideas Math - Multilanguage Glossary - Middle School Math Terms

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Big Ideas Math - Multilanguage Glossary - Middle School Math Terms

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This is a list of languages in which there are modules or videos available to support MLs in math and science.

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Twinkl has PK-8 resources in many languages, including Ukrainian, Arabic, and many more.

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In this extensive category, you will find tonnes of dual language resources aimed at children that are suitable for both school and the home. We have created dual language resources in loads of different languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic and more!

The topics in our dual language resources range from anywhere between potty training to fronted adverbials and number flashcards. The resources in this category vary in difficulty, with some functioning as great bilingual activities for preschool kids, and others that are suitable for KS2 students.

We know how important it is to have engaging bilingual activities for preschool kids to help them get to grips with English as their second language. The language barrier that EAL students face can be really isolating, so we have created a wide range of lovely activities and resources to help them overcome this.

In this category, you will find a range of informative PowerPoints that you can use to supplement your lessons. These PowerPoints cover a wide range of topics and languages. They are also beautifully designed with bright colours and fun graphics to keep kids engaged. Some of these PowerPoints include this Learn Basic Chinese PowerPoint English/Mandarin Chinese/Pinyin, Pets PowerPoint English/French, and Parts of the body PowerPoint English/Mandarin-Chinese.

Some of the bilingual activities for preschool kids in this category include handy words mats and flashcards that are ideal for learning vocabulary. For instance, these Greetings Flashcards English/Italian are perfect for English children learning Italian and vice versa. What's more, each of the phrases on the flashcards is accompanied by a colourful image to demonstrate the greeting. This makes this resource ideal for visual learners. Moreover, word mats, like this Food Word Mat English/French, are excellent visual aids for children who are learning a new language. They are colourful, portable, informative, and perfect for kids to refer back to throughout their learning.

How do I use these dual language resources?

Whether it's activities for Maths, Science or just for making a fabulous display, all of our dual language resources are easy to use. Simply click on the resource you'd like from the category and then select the download button. Some software may be required to open some of the files, such as slideshow software for PowerPoints and a PDF reader.

Once you have downloaded your copy of a resource, that is yours to keep and reuse as often as you need it. All of our resources are teacher-made and many have been created with the environment in mind and save on ink usage.

Examples of bilingual activities for preschool and up

There are so many - it was difficult to choose. Here are a few hand-picked selections from this category:

Who, What, Where, When Sentence Building Worksheet English/Romanian: This worksheet is one of our many amazing bilingual activities for preschool kids. This resource is designed to teach kids the basics of sentence building and how to use who, what, where, and when in their writing. The worksheet contains a selection of images, all of which depict a different scene. Under these images are the sections who, what, where, and when, which kids must fill in based on each of the scenes depicted.

All About Healthy Teeth PowerPoint - English/Mandarin Chinese: This PowerPoint is a super informative resource all about oral health. It functions as a fantastic introductory activity for kids who are learning about health in English/Mandarin. The PowerPoint details the ways in which kids can keep their teeth healthy, i.e., brushing their teeth, visiting the dentist, and eating certain foods. Each of the slides in this PowerPoint is designed with vibrant colours and fun images to illustrate the points being made.

New Starter Welcome Activity Booklet English/Hindi: This activity booklet is full of really helpful bilingual activities for preschool and older children. It contains a range of questions and exercises which will help kids introduce themselves, whilst learning English. This booklet is also a great tool for children to refer back to if they have forgotten any necessary vocabulary. There are sections for survival vocabulary, feelings, instructions, school times, school objects, and much more!

The above video is from a third-party source. We accept no responsibility for any videos from third-party sources. Please let us know if the video is no longer working.

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Dual Language - Bilingual Activities for Preschool and Up

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These bilingual activities for preschool kids and up have been translated into over 22 languages by our expert translation team, so you know they're accurate!

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An entertaining video (with a song that will stick in your head) about the importance of home language maintenance to identity and culture.

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I CAN'T SPEAK MY MOTHER TONGUE (Music Video) - Fung Bros ft. Dough-Boy

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Video tutorials in French on various mathematical topics.

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mathématiques maths "cours de maths" bac

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Nous sommes deux frères, Navid et Iman, tous les deux profs de maths et on a créé Hedacademy avec un seul objectif : que tu comprennes les maths ! Tu y trouveras différents types de vidéos: ☞ Des conseils pour progresser en maths. ☞ Des énigmes ou casse tête pour réfléchir de manière plus ludique.

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Like Cliff's Notes for various languages and cultures of the world!

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The Languages of RI Project was completed by the graduate students of the M.Ed. in TESL Program at Rhode Island College. Over the past 3-4 years, our graduate students have been developing informational PowerPoints to aid RI teachers in understanding the distance students are traveling from their na…

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A Hidden Language: Supporting Students who Speak Mixtec

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A Hidden Language: Supporting Students who Speak Mixtec

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This is a great article about how a school supported students who they originally thought had Spanish as a home language, but actually spoke an indigenous language. Although the indigenous languages are not related to Spanish, many speakers refer to it as a dialect. Many are not cognizant that they are already bilingual!

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Seven years ago, we walked into Wolfe Street Academy, a school with an 83% Latino population in Baltimore. We were impressed by the overwhelming levels of support for what seemed like a very homogeneous student body of Spanish-speaking families. As an ESOL teacher (Anna Kirkness) and as a Special Education teacher (Katrina Kickbush), it was welcoming to see the morning assembly each day in English and Spanish, a bilingual secretary, Spanish correspondence, and Spanish interpreters for special education testing and parent conferences. We both thought, "This is a school that understands the importance of knowing its families, addressing their needs and celebrating their strengths."

A Language Puzzle

Several months into our tenure at Wolfe, we began to suspect that our Latino population, which we originally thought was simply Spanish-speaking, was linguistically more complex. A Kindergarten teacher who was fluent in Spanish said to us one day, "One of my students must be using a dialect of Spanish. I don't know the words they're using, nor do they understand me in Spanish." Then, a few ESOL teachers working in the early childhood grades raised concerns that several of their students seemed to have speech pronunciation patterns that didn't match those of their Spanish-speaking ESOL counterparts. Even in the upper grades, several teachers had approached our Community School Site Coordinator, Connie Phelps Bozek, to ask for her guidance with some students who had similar speech and articulation patterns.

See more from Wolfe Street!

To learn more about how Wolfe Street serves its ELLs through the community school model, take a look at this related video!

These conversations regarding puzzling performance and unexpected student responses to intervention sparked our interest in the possibility of a common underlying reason uniting these concerns.The final tipping point was when the Special Education team created a document to analyze specific caseload numbers. The team noticed that a significant number of these same students had been identified as having a speech and language disability. It seemed nearly impossible, or at least highly improbable, that this could happen by coincidence. This was one more clue, and it was time to bring our full team together.

We brought together the teachers and staff who had some experience with these students and could potentially provide guidance with this complex issue.This was the first time all the different parties (ESOL, Special Education, Community School Coordinator and Principal) sat together in real-time to share and consider all the information we had regarding this group of students.

It was at this meeting that Mrs. Bozek, our Community School Site Coordinator, mentioned she knew that a family at Wolfe spoke Mixteco, an indigenous language that families referred to as a "dialect." She went on to explain that historically in Mexico this language population had been marginalized and the effects last to this day. Several families had expressed shame or a feeling of inferiority when approached about using this language at home or in front of the Spanish-speaking community. This revealed why it had taken so much time to uncover this language in our community and indicated that we needed to move forward with a high level of sensitivity, acceptance and awareness.

Learning About Mixtec

After this initial meeting with our colleagues, we immediately began researching the Mixtec language and discovered many interesting facts:

Mixtec is an ancient language, unrelated to Spanish, dating back to pre-Columbian times.

There are anywhere from 30-50 variations of the language, some differing greatly from each other.

Mixtec is mainly spoken in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, a very mountainous and isolated area.

It is one of eight branches in the Otomanguean language family.

It has a Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) structure, which is a structure that accounts for only 9% of world's languages.

Mixtec is a tonal language partially relying, like Chinese, on how a word is pronounced to convey meaning.

It uses repetition of words to take on different meanings (for emphasis, repeating 'slow slow' to mean 'very slow').

It does not have a past or perfect tense.

It is an analytic language that conveys meaning through free instead of bound morphemes.

Building Upon What We Learned

After discovering more about Mixtec, we took several steps to address the specific needs of this population. The school administration fully supported our search for the best ways we could use this new information to plan interventions and specific strategies in support of these students. We provided Wolfe Street Academy staff with basic professional development regarding the Mixtec language (features, culture, history, and geographic location), as well as ESOL strategies for addressing our Mixtec speakers' specific needs in the classroom as trilingual (English, Spanish, Mixtec) learners.

We also adjusted our procedures and routines in other areas of the school based on our new learning. If a student was referred to the Student Support Team for struggling to meet academic requirements, we began asking parents if another language (or 'dialecto') was spoken at home. We had realized this was an essential piece of information that we had been missing.

Parents began responding that indeed one parent spoke exclusively in Mixtec to their child, even if the other spoke Spanish. In other cases, a caregiver such as a grandparent spoke Mixtec to the child, while the parents spoke Spanish. We found this information invaluable as it helped explain more about the child's language background and development over time, key factors linked to the child's academic performance. With all of this information we were able to provide more time and strategic planned interventions with the support of special education and ESOL teachers in the primary classroom.

A few months later, we hosted a parent gathering for families that speak an indigenous dialect. We had gathered information from our own staff and from the research, we sought to find out more firsthand information about the personal journeys and experiences of our families and their first language, their "L1." We also used this time to share information with our families on the importance of building a strong L1 in establishing strong skills in second (L2) and third languages (L3). Included in these gatherings were strategies our families could use at home to build oral vocabulary strength in Mixtec.

As a result of this family gathering and continued conversations with our Mixtec speakers, we noticed a positive impact on the school's climate and culture. A few parents came forward in talking about using Mixtec in the home and were much more open and comfortable sharing their rich language heritage and encouraging others to do so as well. We even had one parent offer to translate from Spanish to Mixtec at a school sponsored literacy night. That was a huge turning point in our development. Students also became more linguistically aware, and started becoming language leaders in their classrooms, sharing words and phrases in Mixtec with their peers and teachers.

Making Mixtec Part of Our School Culture

In the five years since we began delving into this topic of an indigenous language hidden within our Latino community, we have learned several important lessons. First and foremost, the ever-changing and dynamic nature of language lends itself to the fact that we can never assume that we completely understand the language landscape of a school community. Before we had shed light on this topic, we held to a set of assumptions about who we were and what our students were coming to school knowing. This experience showed us the potentially narrow understanding those types of assumptions can carry. The lasting effect of this is that we now better understand and continue to challenge ourselves to look beyond the general label of 'ESOL student' to obtain a greater understanding of the students' family background, culture and language.

We have also learned about the strength and resilience of our staff, our students and our families. Faced with a puzzle, staff dug deep into their own lack of understanding together to discover answers; our families, seeing our commitment to understanding, gave us their trust and helped us understand their personal stories; and our students worked hard every day to do their very best. Many of them, as they have grown older and have the gift of time to establish strong language skills, find themselves exiting our ESOL program all together.

More Work to Do on Behalf of Students

But we still have plenty of questions that remain unanswered. We know there is always more work to be done. Most recently, it has come to our attention that several of the preschools in our community need professional development on the topic of identifying indigenous languages in their population. We have heard them question why "Spanish-speaking students are not speaking like their Spanish-speaking peers or are even nonverbal."

When our staff looked further into the issue, we discovered it was simply that the family's dominant language is Mixtec and the preschool staff was exactly where we were a few years ago - unaware of the language and this population. We also still seek to identify the best programs and interventions in reading, language and mathematics that will support our students' unique language needs. And we still work to figure out how to best train our teachers to view this topic with the urgency that will allow them to make effective pedagogical changes to their instruction of these students.

We have only scratched the surface of producing a comprehensive toolkit for helping our struggling trilingual students. But our goal remains constant. It is our mission to close the achievement gap between our trilingual, bilingual and monolingual students. As we approach any issue here at Wolfe Street Academy, together we will observe, assess and assist in a continuous cycle that will allow us to discover the "next best plan" for helping our students and their families succeed. Persistence is the key.

Hear more about the discovery of Mixtec at Wolfe Street Academcy from Principal Mark Gaither and special education teacher Katrina Kickbush.

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A Hidden Language: Supporting Students Who Speak Mixtec

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Seven years ago, we walked into Wolfe Street Academy, a school with an 83% Latino population in Baltimore. We were impressed by the overwhelming levels of support for what seemed like a very homogeneous student body of Spanish-speaking families.

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These Talking Dictionaries were created by the Enduring Voices Project funded by the National Geographic Society and Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Additional support and hosting by Swarthmore College.

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Many of our students speak Zapotec, an indigenous language spoken in southern Mexico and Central America. The Indigenous languages of Mexico, Central and South America are NOT dialects of Spanish any more than Navajo is a dialect of English! These languages existed long before English or Spanish was spoken on this part of the planet. Here, you can learn some basic words, as well as a little about the grammar and sound system of the language.

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Zapotec is the name not of a single language, but of a group of 58 languages that, together with related Chatino group, belongs to the Otomanguean linguistic stock. Zapotec is one of the largest families in the Oto-Manguean stock in terms of the number of speakers since the Zapotecs are the third largest indigenous ethnic group in Mexico, after the Nahua and the Mayan peoples. Zapotec has more varieties than any other member of the Otomanguean linguistic stock ( Ethnologue) with almost as many varieties as there are pueblos in which it is spoken.

Status

There are approximately 450,000 speakers of Zapotec most of whom live in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. While most are proficient in Spanish, there are also many who speak only one or more varieties of their native Zapotec. In some areas, Zapotec is used in local administration, commerce, literature, and religious services. In other areas, the language is on the brink of extinction, e.g., Zapotec Asunción Mixtepec.

Of the 58 varieties of Zapotech listed by Ethnologue, 49 have fewer than 10,000 speakers. Most have only from several hundred to several thousand speakers. Several are on the brink of extinction. The most populous varieties of Zapotec are listed below.

Dialects

The classification of Zapotec varieties is made difficult by the fact that most of them have several names and many have not been well studied. The 58 varieties of Zapotec fall into several broad groups:

Northern Zapotec (Zapoteco de la Sierra Norte) spoken in the northern mountainous region of Oaxaca

Valley Zapotec spoken in the Valley of Oaxaca

Southern Zapotec (Zapoteco de la Sierra Sur) spoken in the Southern Sierra Madres mountain ranges of Oaxaca,

Isthmus Zapotec spoken in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Although all varieties of Zapotec share some basic phonological and structural similarities, there are so many differences between/among them, that 40 of them are considered to be mutually unintelligible.

Structure

Sound system

For the most part, the sound systems of Zapotec languages are fairly complicated, with some variation from one variety to another.

Vowels

Many Zapotec varieties have five vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that can differentiate word meaning. They also have a variety of diphthongs, e.g., /ai/, /au/, /ei/, /eu/, /ia/, /ie/, /iu/, /ua/, /ue/, /ei/.

Depending on the variety, vowels can appear in four different shapes: plain, creaky, breathy, or checked. Not all varieties of Zapotec have all four types.

Creaky
In creaky voice, the vocal folds are so tight, that they vibrate irregularly with individual irregular flaps that are further apart than in normal voicing.

Breathy
When a whisper is combined with voicing, it is called breathy voice or murmur. It is achieved by bringing the vocal folds together along part of their length (producing voicing) and spreading them for the rest (producing the whisper).

Checked vowels are followed by a glottal stop (indicated in writing by an apostrophe, e.g., a')
Theglottal stop is the sound made when the vocal cords are pressed together to stop the flow of air and then released; e.g., the break between the syllables in uh-oh.

Zapotec languages tend to have a large inventory of consonants.

Most consonants exhibit a contrast between fortis (tense) and lenis (lax) articulations. In general, fortis consonants are longer than their lenis counterparts, and they tend not to be voiced. Fortis stops are usually slightly aspirated, and may be heavily aspirated in final position. Fortis consonants are represented by double letters in writing, e.g., nn represents a fortis /n/.

Some consonants, such as /f/ and /j/ occur mostly in loanwords.

All Zapotec varieties have retroflex consonants, such as /ʂ/ and /ʐ/. Retroflex consonants are produced with the tip of the tongue curled so that its underside touches the area behind the alveolar ridge.

Tone

Zapotec languages are tonal, which is typical of all Oto Manguean languages. The number of contrasting tones differs from one variety to another. One example is Texmelucan Zapotec which has one level tone and three contour tones (one rising and two falling). Tones are not marked in writing.

Grammar

Zapotecan languages are agglutinative, i.e., they add prefixes and suffixes to roots to mark grammatical functions.

Nouns and pronouns

Nouns and pronouns vary in accordance with the relationship of speaker to interlocutor or object. For instance, they can indicate whether one is speaking about or with a human, animal, inanimate object, or a supernatural being.

One can also indicate an intimate or formal, and inclusive or exclusive relationship with the object by choice of nouns and pronouns.

In some cases, gender-specific forms of speech exist as well.

Zapotec languages distinguish between inalienable (cannot be removed or gotten rid of) and alienable (can be removed or gotten rid of) possession.

Verbs

Prefixes and suffixes are added to verbs to indicate person, voice, tense and mood. Some varieties of Zapotec use tones to mark aspect.

Prepositions

Zapotec languages do not have true prepositions. Instead, they use nouns denoting body parts to express spatial relations. Below are a few examples from Zapotec Mitla.

Word order

As in many other Otomanguean languages, the normal word order in Zapotec varieties is Verb-Subject-Object. Numerals precede nouns, but adjectives follow them. Possessors follow possessed nouns, e.g., làb 'sandal,' làb lè 'your sandal.'

Vocabulary

There are significant differences in vocabulary among different varieties of Zapotec, making most of them mutually unintelligible. All of them have borrowed a substantial number of words from Spanish, e.g., syudaa 'city' from Spanish ciudad.

The first of its kind dictionary of Zapotec Zapotec Dictionary of San Lucas Quiavini (Di'csyonaary X:tee'n Dii'zh Sah Sann Luu'c) by Pamela Munro and Felipe Lopez was published in 1999. It includes 9,000 words translated into English and Spanish. It was designed for the 50,000 Oaxaca Indians living in California. The dictionary bears the name of the hometown of the dictionary's main author, Felipe Lopez, a Oaxaca Indian who arrived in California as an undocumented immigrant 25 years ago. He worked in agriculture and then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a dishwasher until he became a legal resident. Lopez was inspired to compile the two-volume dictionary because his language had never been written and because it was becoming endangered.

Below are a few common words from Zapotec Teotitlan

Below are the numerals 1-10 in Zapotec Mitla.

Writing

The Zapotec script is one of the earliest writing systems in Central America. Zapotec inscriptions were found on stone monuments dating back to between 400 and 200 BC. Most of them were found in Monte Albán, a large archaeological site in the state of Oaxaca. The script used a separate symbol to represent each syllable of the language. The script is not well understood because it is not known what language it was based on and because there are only very few brief samples of it. The script fell into disuse and was replaced by another form of writing by the 10th century AD. Nevertheless, it was influential inasmuch as it served as a basis for the scripts developed by the Mayas, Mixtecs, and Aztecs.

Today, Zapotecan languages are written in the Latin alphabet adapted to represent the sounds of the languages. It must be kept in mind that the orthographies were originally designed by Spanish friars who imposed Spanish orthographic traditions on the Zapotec languages that have many sounds which do not exist in Spanish. The Mexican branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) has attempted to design an orthography for the Zapotec languages, following general linguistic and orthographic principles. However, linguists encountered difficulties in trying to represent the wide range of sounds found in these languages with one single orthography. Thus, the issue remains unresolved, and there are several competing orthographies that are currently in use.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Zapotec Güilá.

Te'ihby (1)
Ra'ta ra bu:unny ra:aaly liebr cëhnn te'bloh deree'ch cëhnn dignidaa. Ra:alyne:erih gahll ri:e:eny cëhnn saalyb, chiru' na:a pahr ga:annza'crih loh sa'rih.

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Did You Know?

Do you know some English words that were borrowed from Zapotec? Let us know and we'll add them here!

Difficulty

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Zapotec Language - Structure, Writing & Alphabet - MustGo

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Zapotec is the name not of a single language, but of a group of 58 languages that, together with related Chatino group, belongs to the Otomanguean linguistic stock. Zapotec is one of the largest families in the Oto-Manguean stock in terms of the number of speakers since the Zapotecs are the third largest indigenous ethnic group in Mexico, after the Nahua and the Mayan peoples.

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The Best Sites to Teach and Learn about Ramadan - Larry Ferlazzo

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The Best Sites to Teach and Learn about Ramadan - Larry Ferlazzo

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In 2023, Ramadan begins on March 22. Here are some resources to help teachers and students understand the holiday, and the do's and don'ts of supporting students who are celebrating Ramadan.

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Photo Credit: Bashar Al-Ba'noon via Compfight
See Guest Post - "As the New Moon Grows, We Can Too: How Educators Can Learn More About Muslim Students During The Month of Ramadan"
Ramadan is a month-long observance by Muslims. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, so it changes in relation to the Gregorian calendar. In 2017, Ramadan begins on May 26th and ends on June 25th.. You can find the dates for future years here.

I thought a "The Best..." list would be useful to share resources on this observance that would be accessible to English Language Learners.

You might also be interested in The Best Websites To Learn About Various Religions & English

Here are my choices for The Best Sites To Teach and Learn About Ramadan (and are accessible to English Language Learners):

The CBBC Newsround has a very accessible explanation of the month.

The History Channel has an extensive site on Ramadan, including multimedia.

Learn English, Feel Good has a cloze (fill-in-the-gap) exercise on the month..

Observing Ramadan is the title of the Boston Globe's series of photos from its "Big Picture" feature.

How Ramadan Works comes from How Stuff Works.

The BBC has a slideshow on Ramadan: Worldwide.

The New York Times has a slideshow on Ramadan Begins In Jerusalem.

The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog has published a series of photos title Ramadan 2009.

"KiddyHouse" has a simple guide to Ramadan

Ramadan around the world is a slideshow from the Guardian.

Here is a great collection of photos from The Boston Globe's Big Picture about Ramadan 2010.

"Ramadan At The World's Largest Restaurant" is a video from The Wall Street Journal. This is how they describe it:
Ramadan is a brisk period for restaurants all over the Islamic world, especially at the world's largest restaurant in Damascus.
Ramadan 2010 - Your Images comes from The Big Picture.

Ramadan Starts For Quarter Of The World is a lesson for English Language Learners.

Ramadan 2011 comes from The Boston Globe.

Ramadan - Online Exercises, Games, and Printable Worksheets comes from ESOL Courses.

Ramadan 2012 begins is a photo gallery from The Boston Globe.

Ramadan 2012 is a photo gallery from The Atlantic.

Photos Of Ramadan 2013 is from The Atlantic.

Ramadan 2013 begins is a photo gallery from The Boston Globe.

The Muslim World Commemorates Eid al-Fitr is a slideshow from TIME.

Ramadan: A centuries-old American tradition is from Al Jazeera.

9 Questions You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask About Ramadan is from BuzzFeed.

Ramadan Chant is from The British Council.

The BBC has a good interactive on Ramadan.

Why Ramadan Starts on a Different Day Every Year is from TIME.

Ramadan 2016: 9 questions about the Muslim holy month you were too embarrassed to ask is from Vox.

Images of Ramadan 2016 is from The Atlantic.

In search of the Ramadan moon is an interactive from Al Jazeera.

Ramadan Is Here. What Islam's Holiest Month Is About. is from The New York Times.

In Consideration of Ramadan is from Teaching Tolerance.

Mecca Goes Mega is from The New York Times.

The Right Way to Observe Ramadan appeared in The New York Times.

Three lesson ideas for teaching your class about Eid al-Fitr is from The Guardian.

More Scenes from Ramadan 2016 is from The Atlantic.

How teachers can support students during Ramadan is by Rusul Alrubail.

Why Ramadan is called Ramadan is from Quartz.

What does #Ramadan mean to you? Record and archive your family's stories this month using the @StoryCorps app: https://t.co/myUxmrJ5p2 pic.twitter.com/t8lr91d2ji

- TED Prize (@TEDPrize) May 26, 2017

Ramadan begins next week for
1.8 billion Muslims worldwide.
This@lithub post by author @henakhanbooks is important https://t.co/714QRIfURX pic.twitter.com/laIUvRHkH9

- Sara K. Ahmed (@SaraKAhmed) May 18, 2017

PHOTOS: Here's How Muslims Worldwide Are Celebrating Ramadan's End is from NPR.

Ramadan 2017 in the USA is a photo gallery from The Atlantic.

#Ramadan begins tomorrow. Discuss this Muslim holy month with students-and take a step toward countering Islamophobia. https://t.co/3D9PJYXuta pic.twitter.com/85rxfXVgAK

- Teaching Tolerance (@Tolerance_org) May 14, 2018

My non-Muslim friend asked me to explain Ramadan to her. Thought others could prob benefit too.💚🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/F9G1VLWmV2

- eemi (@eemanabbasi) June 23, 2016

Your Complete Guide to Ramadan, Including the Proper Greeting and When It Starts is from TIME.

Ramadan is the most sacred month of the year for Muslims. Here are the most basic answers to the most basic questions. https://t.co/MlSrTNk9NR

- Vox (@voxdotcom) May 21, 2018

Images From Ramadan 2018 is from The Atlantic.

Ramadan Begins is a lesson from the British Council.

Ramadan Considerations for Teachers During Distance Learning is from Teaching While Muslim.

Assuring Muslim Students COVID-19 Won't Dim the Ramadan Lights is by Sarah Said.

Ramadan 2020 is from The Atlantic.

Ramadan Before the Pandemic is from The Atlantic.

It's almost that time of year! Educators can download this free poster about how to help their Muslim students this #Ramadan!

Written by @ayawrites Illustrated by me! https://t.co/x6DBvy17OX pic.twitter.com/aaZ3B2sdqU

- Huda Fahmy (@yesimhotinthis) March 14, 2022

Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, is less than ten days away. Here is a letter I have written for educators highlighting ways to responsive, empathetic, and create mirrors / windows for your Muslim students. Please share. https://t.co/n4x9FtasQn

- Sawsan Jaber, Ph.D, NBCT (@SJEducate) March 21, 2022

Handy tips for #RamadanMubarak And I love that one of my students happily, willingly shared that he's fasting and was open to my questions. We cannot teach about cultural diffusion in ancient civilizations and not share of our own cultures. #SharingIsCaring pic.twitter.com/3M4Ylq6F00

- Vanessa Heller (@Hell2Teach) April 3, 2022

#HipHopEd great graphic by @AyaKhalil higlighting how teachers/ schools can support Muslim youth during Ramadan pic.twitter.com/ymiNv9c633

- Amil Cook (@amilcook) April 27, 2022

Sharing the Meaning of Ramadan With Students is from Edutopia.

I'd certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous "The Best..." lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

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The Best Sites To Teach & Learn About Ramadan

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Photo Credit: Bashar Al-Ba'noon via Compfight See Guest Post - "As the New Moon Grows, We Can Too: How Educators Can Learn More About Muslim Students During The Month of Ramadan" Ramadan is a month-long observance by Muslims. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, so it changes in relation to the Gregorian calendar.

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March 10, 2023 In Service Presentation- Using WIDA ACCESS/Screener Scores to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs Grades K-5

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March 10, 2023 In Service Presentation- Using WIDA ACCESS/Screener Scores to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs Grades K-5

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March 10, 2023 In Service Presentation - Using WIDA ACCESS/Screener Scores to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs Grades 6-12

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March 10, 2023 In Service Presentation - Using WIDA ACCESS/Screener Scores to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs Grades 6-12

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Using WIDA/ACCESS to Differentiate Instruction 6-12 3/10/23

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The relationship between general education teachers and the success of ELLs

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The relationship between general education teachers and the success of ELLs

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Executive Summary: Their success depends on you!

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The relationship between general education teachers and the success of English learners

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English learners (ELs) are students whose native language is other than English and who score below proficient on an English proficiency test. There were more than 5 million ELs in U.S. schools in 2019, and millions of dollars in federal, state, and local funds are spent each year in an effort to he…

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Writing a language objective isn't hard once you learn what language objectives do. This article will get you started.

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

This article written for Colorín Colorado provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and includes:

what a language objective is

steps that teachers can take to create language objectives

how to implement language objectives in a general education classroom

how to align objectives to content and language standards

ideas and resources on how to support teachers as they become familiar with this practice

how to use language objectives in distance learning environments.

Language Objectives: An Overview
Mrs. Shell has been teaching eighth grade math for twelve years. She has deep content area knowledge and wants to provide all of her students with authentic activities and tasks to relate the significance of the mathematical concepts that she teaches to their lives. Mrs. Shell has always felt successful at teaching her classes but this year has been different. Her sections include students with more diverse backgrounds than previous years, particularly more English learners. As Mrs. Shell was beginning to feel frustrated with her inability to reach all her students because of their needs, she learned about one way to make her content more comprehensible to all her students - creating and posting objectives that tell the students not just what content concepts they will learn in each lesson, but also the academic language they will need to learn and use to meet the state's math standards. With this knowledge, Mrs. Shell is now confident that she not only knows what to teach, but also how to teach it so that all her students can be successful.

Generally speaking, academic English is the language of schooling and the language that helps students acquire and use the content area knowledge taught in schools (Anstrom, DiCerbo, Butler, Katz, Millet, & Rivera, 2010).

Teaching content to ELs: The challenge

In my work supporting general education and ESL/bilingual teachers who provide sheltered instruction for English learners (ELs), I have met many teachers like Mrs. Shell. While these teachers want to provide effective instruction for their ELs, often they don't see themselves as language teachers and so they aren't sure where to begin with their students.

These teachers aren't alone, however, and they are facing a challenge shared by teachers across the country. We know that for school-age students, academic language is crucial for school success (Francis, Rivera, Lesaux, Kieffer, & Rivera, 2006). In addition, research allows us to state with a fair degree of confidence that English learners best acquire English when language forms are explicitly taught and when they have many opportunities to use the language in meaningful contexts (Goldenberg, 2008).

Yet while the explicit instructional support that ESL and bilingual teachers provide is essential to English learners' academic language development, English learners receive a majority of their instruction from general education and content area teachers who may not have experience teaching academic language development.

The question becomes then: What do general education classroom teachers need to do in order to support the academic English development of language learners in both face-to-face and virtual environments, especially when English learners are one of many types of students they serve?

Teaching content to ELs: The solution

One principle that teachers of English learners can begin to apply immediately is creating and posting language objectives for their lessons (whether in the classroom or online in a virtual space. Many teachers are familiar with using content objectives to identify what students will learn and be able to do in the lesson. However, they are less likely to include language objectives that support the linguistic development of their students.

Implementing language objectives can be a powerful first step in ensuring that English learners have equal access to the curriculum even though they may not be fully proficient in the language. This is because the second language acquisition process requires opportunities for the language learner to be exposed to, practice with, and then be assessed on their language skills (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

To this end, language objectives:

articulate for learners the academic language functions and skills that they need to master to fully participate in the lesson and meet the grade-level content standards (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

are beneficial not only for language learners but for all students in a class, as everyone can benefit from the clarity that comes with a teacher outlining the requisite academic language to be learned and mastered in each lesson.

Now let's take a closer look at some examples and how to write language objectives.

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Writing Language Objectives

Interview with Dr. Jennifer Himmel

Learn more about language objectives in this podcast interview with Dr. Himmel from Teaching Multilingual Learners, produced by Tan Huynh.

What is a language objective?

Language objectives are lesson objectives that specifically outline the type of language that students will need to learn and use in order to accomplish the goals of the lesson. Quality language objectives complement the content knowledge and skills identified in content area standards and address the aspects of academic language that will be developed or reinforced during the teaching of grade-level content concepts (Echevarria & Short, 2010).

These objectives involve the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), but they can also include:

Below are examples of language objectives for different content areas and grade levels. They come from the Common Core State Standards for Math and English Language Arts (2012) and state standards in New York and California.
Sources:
How do I create effective language objectives?

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the process of writing language objectives in this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview.

Language objectives are directly correlated to content objectives. Once a teacher determines the lesson topic from the appropriate content standards, the teacher will want to begin thinking about the academic language necessary for English learners to complete the tasks that support the content objectives. This identification of the academic language embedded in the lesson's content will become the basis for the lesson's language objectives.

You can use the following guidelines to start thinking about appropriate language objectives for the lesson:

Decide what key vocabulary, concept words, and other academic words students will need to know in order to talk, read, and write about the topic of the lesson. Those words might be taught as a language objective. They should include technical terms, such as ecosystem, and terms like distribution that have different meanings across content areas. Other terms to highlight are those that language learners may know in one context, such as family (as in parents, siblings, etc.), but that have a different use in science (e.g., family of elements in the periodic table).

Consider the language functions related to the topic of the lesson (e.g, will the students describe, explain, compare, or chart information). See your state English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards for examples of these functions for English language arts, math, science, and social studies for all English proficiency levels and grade-level clusters.

Think about the language skills necessary for students to accomplish the lesson's activities. Will the students be reading a textbook passage to identify the stages of mitosis? Are they able to read a text passage to find specific information? Will they be reporting what they observe during a scientific demonstration to a peer? Do they know how to report observations orally? Acquiring the skills needed to carry out these tasks might be the focus of a language objective.

Identify grammar or language structures common to the content area. For example, many science textbooks use the passive voice to describe processes. Additionally, students may have to use comparative language to analyze two related concepts. Writing with the passive voice or using comparative phrases might be a language objective.

Consider the tasks that the students will complete and the language that will be embedded in those assignments. If students are working on a scientific investigation together, will they need to explain the steps of the procedure to one another? The language objective might focus on how to explain procedures aloud.

Explore language learning strategies that lend themselves to the topic of the lesson. For example, if students are starting a new chapter in the textbook, the strategy of previewing the text might be an appropriate language objective.

(Adapted from Short, Himmel, Gutierrez, & Hudec, 2012. Used with permission.)

Aligning Language Objectives and Standards

English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards

Developing appropriate language objectives for lessons involves becoming familiar with a state's content area and ELP standards. Whereas the content standards will provide the topic of the lesson and what exactly the students should be doing with that topic (e.g., solving problems, creating models, ranking ideas), the English language proficiency or development standards help to identify language skills and functions that students should be working on to achieve academic language fluency. These ELP standards can help to identify:

English Language Arts (ELA) standards

Other resources in addition to the ELP standards are a state's English Language Arts standards or the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS). The English Language Arts and Literacy CCSS might be especially useful to teachers of English learners due to its attention to literacy across the content areas.

Additional resources to consult, especially if a state is a member of the WIDA consortium, are the Model Proficiency Indicators (MPIs) outlined in their ELP standards. The MPIs outline what an English learner at a specific level of English language proficiency can do in a language domain (e.g., listening) by addressing the language functions embedded in an example topic for that content area with appropriate scaffolds or support (Gottlieb, Cranley, & Cammileri, 2007). Classroom texts and other materials (e.g., science investigations, primary source documents) are other good sources to consult when preparing a lesson.

Getting Started

How can I get started?

Careful lesson planning

In creating measureable and student-friendly language objectives that support the content objectives, it is important that learner tasks in the lesson are aligned with the objectives. It is not enough to have well-written objectives that promote language acquisition if the lesson is lacking in tasks that support the objectives. If the language objective for a middle school social studies lesson is for the students to orally retell the key characteristics in a historical event using sequential language, it is important that the teacher previews sequential language with the students, such as providing sentence stems or frames, and builds into the lesson some structured pair work so the students have an opportunity to retell the event to a peer. Therefore, careful lesson planning is another essential step in preparing effective language objectives.

Collaboration

It is also useful for content area and ESL/bilingual teachers to plan lessons together, as we saw with the 7th grade science lesson scenario involving Mr. Zhang and Mr. Lewis. In this co-planning scenario, each teacher used his expertise to better integrate content and language instruction for the language learners. This type of collaboration can help a teacher like Mr. Zhang learn more about the second language acquisition process of his students and can help a teacher like Mr. Lewis become more familiar with the grade-level content expectations that his English learners encounter in content area classes.

How do I know which language objectives are best for my students?

The language objective that the teacher selects will depend on what the English learners in the class need most at that point in the year and what language is most important to understanding the content concepts. If the students have already spent a good deal of time working with new vocabulary, then the teacher might consider having students use that vocabulary to develop their writing skill by writing a summary of the process they followed.

Conversely, the teacher might want to help students become more proficient with a particular type of graphic organizer in order to develop more strategic language learning. As all teachers know, teaching is a dynamic and complex process that requires a multitude of decisions to be made. However, the advance planning required in creating language objectives allows teachers to better anticipate the academic English needs of all students thus increasing the comprehensibility of the lessons.

It is important for teachers to realize that even though their lesson may include all four language skills (it is good if they do, since the language skills reinforce one another), they do not need to post a language objective for every language-related item addressed in the lesson. Teachers address many instructional needs in a 50- or 60-minute class period. Rather than highlighting all language uses in a particular lesson, it is important for the teacher to think about what is non-negotiable in that lesson.

In other words, the teacher should keep the perspective of the English learner in mind and ask, "Of all of the skills and functions addressed in my lesson, which is most important for helping students meet the grade-level standard and develop their language proficiency?" These objectives then must be measureable (i.e., can you see or assess the student's mastery of that objective?) and written in language that accounts for the linguistic and cognitive development of the students.

How can I make language objectives "student-friendly"?

Both of the above objectives are measurable, but both also take into account appropriate developmental stages of the students. Teachers of young students (e.g., PK or K) may even want to consider further adapting the objectives. For example, we have seen kindergarten teachers use symbols such as a pencil to symbolize "write" and a mouth to symbolize "talk" when they post their objectives for the children to see. We have also seen teachers of young learners rely on pictures to show the key terms they want the students to use or to convey the topic of the lesson (e.g., a picture of a ruler and of hands to discuss standard and non-standard measurement).

One way that teachers can ensure that their language objectives are measureable and student-friendly is by using appropriate verbs. Because language objectives should provide students with practice in the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, verbs related to those skills might include, but are not limited to, the following:

List

Retell

Summarize in writing

Record

Read

It is also important to not equate low language proficiency with limited cognitive ability. Therefore, teachers will want to make sure that the language objectives they create also reflect tasks that fall on the higher end of Bloom's Taxonomy and use verbs (e.g., orally justify) accordingly.

As noted above in the guidelines to creating language objectives, language functions are also a potential source for language objectives. Verbs related to language functions might include:

When should I share language objectives with students?

To help students take ownership of their learning and provide explicit direction to students, especially the English learners who are processing content in a new language, it is important that objectives be stated at the beginning of the lesson and reviewed with the students at the end of the lesson to allow them to assess if they have met the objectives (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 2008).

How this happens may differ according to the grade level and content area of the class. Some teachers like to have the students choral read the objectives, while teachers of older students sometimes have them record the language objectives in their journal in addition to asking an individual student to read them aloud. Some teachers, such as those who teach science, like to reveal the objectives later in the lesson, perhaps after the warm up or exploratory activity, so that they can maintain an inquiry-based approach (Echevarria & Colburn, 2006).

Should I differentiate language objectives based on my students' language proficiency?

Although all teachers have students of varying language proficiency and skill levels in their classes, it is not necessary to differentiate language objectives by creating and posting multiple language objectives that reflect these proficiency levels. Rather, teachers should have one language objective that is appropriate for all students to meet. To provide the appropriate differentiation, the teacher would provide different scaffolds (e.g., adapted text, visuals, sentence frames) for students to use in order to reach the objectives.

For example, an appropriate language objective for an upper elementary language arts class might be for the students to be able to orally list text features found in a non-fiction book. For lower proficiency language learners, the teacher may give them a word bank from which to choose the text features; therefore, the students are meeting the same objective but with the appropriate amount of linguistic support from the teacher.

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Using language objectives in a distance learning environment

While teachers like Ms. Shell understand that the characteristics of good teaching for English learners does not change in a virtual environment, they do understand that instruction will necessarily need to look different in order to account for the challenges that distance learning presents for many learners.

Accordingly, teachers will need to think through how to:

Presenting language objectives

Many different ways exist for teachers to present language objectives in remote learning. For example, teachers might:

begin every virtual class by orally reading and presenting the content and language objectives in their Google slides and then asking students to briefly summarize in the chat box the activities they will be doing in that lesson to meet those objectives.

post the objectives at the top of a shared digital document that serves as a capture sheet for the lesson. A teacher might then ask learners to self-assess their progress towards meeting those objectives at the end of the document.

use live or recorded videos, especially when working with English learners with lower English proficiency. These videos can include props, for example ears to signify a listening objective.

use realia, such as rocks, if one of the lesson's language aims is for students to orally describe different types of sedimentary rocks.

Monitoring student understanding and engagement

Teachers in distance learning environments must also carefully consider how they will assess learner understanding and engagement throughout the lesson. Given the challenges virtual learning platforms present towards capturing data on learner comprehension (e.g., paralinguistic cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture) teachers working in virtual environments know that it is more important than ever to ensure that students clearly understand the content and linguistic aims for each lesson.

Using comprehension checks and assessing progress

It is also essential that students understand how teachers will measure their progress towards meeting each objective. Towards this aim, teachers must build in multiple comprehension checks throughout the lesson that align to the lesson's objectives. Teachers can:

At the conclusion of a lesson, teachers can assess student progress towards meeting objectives via:

tickets out that are submitted digitally

the recording of a Flipgrid or use of another video platform where learners respond to a prompt that requires learners to use the academic language highlighted in the lesson's objectives.

Teachers can respond to the submitted tickets out or video with feedback that explicitly targets the students use of the language. When appropriate, teacher can provide learners with additional resources and/or support towards mastering that particular language skill or function. Teachers might also use that linguistic data to inform mini-lessons conducted to small groups of English learners during office hours or intervention time.

Next Steps

How can I learn more?

For more information on the SIOP Model, see Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

Although language objectives can be implemented in any lesson design approach, they are especially congruent with sheltered instruction and the SIOP Model. Since language objectives ensure that teachers meet the unique linguistic needs of English learners, they are sometimes easier to implement in the context of instructional practices espoused by the SIOP Model.

Practices that focus on explicit academic language teaching include:

Below are other resources that can help you learn more about creating language objectives and about integrating academic language into content area classes.

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Final Thoughts

We realize that it takes teachers some time to become very comfortable with creating language objectives, but our experience has shown that the implementation of language objectives can bring immediate benefits to instruction. Some immediate benefits include teachers understanding more concretely that they are both a content area and language teacher - as one teacher said in a CAL SIOP Model workshop, "I now see myself as a math teacher AND a language teacher".

We have also observed that when teachers consciously plan to meet the academic English needs of their learners, they end up with better planned learner tasks, and students begin to have more ownership of their content area and language learning. When it comes to building proficiency in academic English, as many teachers in our workshops remind us, "If you want to see it, you have to teach it." Therefore, if teachers want to see language development, language objectives are a great first step in helping teachers explicitly teach it.

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Recommended Resources

Further reading

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M.E., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching mathematics to English learners. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2011). The SIOP Model: A professional development framework for a comprehensive school-wide intervention. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/professional-development-framework.html

Himmel, J., Short, D., Richards, C., & Echevarria, J. (2009). Using the SIOP Model to improve middle school science instruction. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/siopscience.html

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010a). The SIOP Model for teaching history-social studies to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010b). The SIOP Model for teaching science to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Vogt, M.E., Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching English language arts to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Jennifer Himmel is the Project Director for the National Center for English Language Acquisition at the Manhattan Strategy Group. She previously served as the SIOP Manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics, a non-profit organization for language education research, policy, and practice in Washington, DC. She has served as a curriculum developer and research associate for the U.S. Department of Education funded project, Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) that is investigating academic achievement of ELLs in grades 4th-8th, and as a language testing specialist for the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs® language proficiency test. She currently manages the SIOP Model professional development service line and provides technical assistance and professional development in sheltered instruction to districts and schools.

Video Clips: Language Objectives

How to Write Language Objectives: Tips for ELL Educators

In this video from Syracuse, NY, Jesus Ortiz, a bilingual teacher, learns how to write a language objective from Areli Schermerhorn, a peer evaluator with expertise in ELL and bilingual education.

Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains language objectives

In this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview, Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains the value of writing language objectives when teaching English learners.

Anstrom, K., DiCerbo, P., Butler, F., Katz, A., Millet, J., & Rivera, C. (2010). A review of the literature on academic English: Implications for K-12 English language learners. Arlington, VA: The George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence. Education.www.ceee.gwu.edu.

Echevarria, J., & Colburn, A. (2006). Designing lessons: Inquiry approach to science using the SIOP Model. In A. Lathman & D. Crowther (Eds.), Science for English language learners (pp.95-108). Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Association Press.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. ( 2010). Programs and practices for effective sheltered content instruction. In California Department of Education (Ed), Improving education for English learners: Research-based approaches. Sacramento, CA: CDE Press.

Francis, D., Rivera, M., Lesaux, N., Kieffer, M., & Rivera, H. (2006). Practical guidelines for the education of English language learners: Research-based recommendations for instruction and academic interventions. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. www.centeroninstruction.org/files/ELL1-Interventions.pdf

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does-and does not-say. American Educator, Summer 2008, pp. 13-44.

Gottlieb, M., Cranley, E., & Cammilleri, A. (2007). Understanding the WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards: A resource guide. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium.

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (2007). WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium http://www.wida.us/standards/elp.asp

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected] .

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Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

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Can-Do Descriptors: Original, Key Uses, Preschool, and Descriptores Podemos (Spanish version)

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Can-Do Descriptors: Original, Key Uses, Preschool, and Descriptores Podemos (Spanish version)

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The Can-Do descriptors are exactly as promised: They will tell you what the student can do in each domain (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and at each level of development (beginning through proficiency - the 1-6 scale). They are essential for instructing and assessing ELLs.

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A tool to help you meet students where they are in their language development

The Can Do Descriptors highlight what language learners can do at various stages of language development as they engage in the following contexts:

Bilingual and English-immersion early care and education programs

Bilingual, Spanish-immersion and English-immersion K-12 language programs

Bilingual, Spanish-immersion and English-immersion K-12 content-area classrooms

Similar to the WIDA English Language Development Standards Statements, the Can Do Descriptors describe what learners can do with language across different content areas. Although the Can Do Descriptors relate to the ELD Standards Statements, they don't replace them but are used to supplement the standards statements during instruction.

Educators and early childhood practitioners can use the Can Do Descriptors to

Better understand what students at different levels of language proficiency can do with language

Expand their understanding of what the process of language development can look like

Collaborate around scaffolding that students need to engage in content-area learning and develop language at the same time

Differentiate instruction and classroom assessment for language

Interpret ACCESS for ELLs test scores

The Can Do Descriptors have not yet been updated to reflect the 2020 Edition; however, they remain available as a valuable tool for communicating with stakeholders about what students can do at each language proficiency level. WIDA is monitoring educator use to help inform the timing for updating the materials.

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A tool to help you meet students where they are in their language developmentThe Can Do Descriptors highlight what language learners can do at various stages of language development as they engage in the following contexts:

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Every teacher should know about the WIDA Key Language Uses - they are extremely helpful when writing language objectives.

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An oldie but still very relevant - and it's easier to follow his recommendations than ever!

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.

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Converts text to speech across multiple platforms and file formats.

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Dyslexia and other reading-based learning disabilities are most common among students. NaturalReader text-to-speech makes learning more accessible by assisting with any reading, taking tests and promoting independence.

Students can have any text they need to read, read aloud to them so they can read along. Having the text provided both visually and auditory, allows the student to focus less on the act of reading, and more on the comprehension of the content. Other features like dyslexia font, flexible reading speeds, and highlighted text also ease the task of finishing readings.

For most students, learning does not stop when school ends. NaturalReader EDU enables students to be more independent and assists with learning at home. Whether they're doing homework, reading at home, or just surfing the web, our Chrome Extension and Mobile Application are always available.

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NaturalReader: Free Text to Speech for Online, Mobile App, Commercial license and Education with AI voices.

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This Chrome extension will read aloud from a page of text.

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Chromebooks have a built-in screen reader called ChromeVox, which enables people with visual impairments to use the Chrome operating system.

Turn screen reader on or off

You can turn ChromeVox on or off from any page by pressing Ctrl + Alt + z.

On tablets: Press and hold the Volume down + Volume up buttons for 5 seconds. While holding the buttons, you'll hear a sound to indicate it's working. Keep holding the buttons, then ChromeVox will start speaking.

Read a page

Tip: To hear a description of your cursor's current position on a page, press Search + k. Or press Launcher + k.

Choose text with your cursor

You can have ChromeVox read the text under your cursor.

To open your ChromeVox options, press Search + o + o. Or press Launcher + o + o.

Turn on Speak text under the mouse.

Move your cursor around the screen and hear text spoken aloud.

Move to different tabs and windows

Move through a page with keyboard shortcuts

Move through a page with your touchscreen

Move to different cells in a table

You can move around tables using keyboard shortcuts. To start, make sure your cursor is in the table.

To move your cursor from its current location in a table, press Search + Ctrl + Alt or press Launcher + Ctrl + Alt and use the arrow keys to move one cell up, down, left, or right.

Change the voice or language

When you first turn on ChromeVox, it automatically chooses a voice based on the language you've chosen for your Chromebook. Learn how to change your language and voice settings.

Use ChromeVox keyboard shortcuts

Type shortcuts faster

To turn on Sticky Mode and avoid pressing the Search key or Launcher key for each shortcut, quickly press the Search or Launcher key twice. You'll know it's on when you hear "Sticky Mode enabled." It will stay on until you press it twice again.

To stop holding down the Search or Launcher key, press the Search or Launcher key again twice. ChromeVox will say "Sticky Mode disabled."

Use the ChromeVox menu

To open the ChromeVox menu, press Search

+ . (period). Or, press Launcher

+ . (period). If you are on a touchscreen, you can tap the screen with 4 fingers.

You can press the left or right arrow to switch between the menus. If you are on a touchscreen, you swipe left or right.

To open a specific item from a list, press the up or down arrow and then press Enter.

Search: Type into the bar to find a list of results from any of the ChromeVox menus.

Jump: List of all of the ChromeVox shortcuts.

Speech: List of speech shortcuts that includes how to increase or decrease the speech rate and pitch.

Tabs: List of all your open tabs.

ChromeVox: List of several ChromeVox shortcuts that includes the ChromeVox Tutorial and Learn Mode.

Actions: List of touch-specific options

You can use the ChromeVox menu lists to navigate a web page.

Heading: List of headings on the web page.

Landmark: List of landmarks on the web page.

Link: List of links on the web page.

Form controls: List of buttons or forms on a web page.

Table: List of tables on a web page.

Navigate the ChromeVox menu

Important: Depending on your keyboard, you can press the Search key or the Launcher key for some shortcuts. Both keys work the same.

Change spoken feedback settings

Important: Depending on your keyboard, you can press the Search key or the Launcher key for some shortcuts. Both keys work the same.

Learn more about ChromeVox

Important: Depending on your keyboard, you can press the Search key or the Launcher key for some shortcuts. Both keys work the same.

Open Search tutorial

Turn on Learn Mode (Hear the names of the keys on your keyboard)

Note: You can also use this with connected braille displays and touch gestures on a touchscreen to hear the names of the functions.

Send feedback or get help using ChromeVox

Chat with other people: Join the ChromeVox-Discuss group

Send us feedback about ChromeVox: Turn on ChromeVox, press and hold Search , then press a + i. Or press and hold Launcher , then press a + i.

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Chromebooks have a built-in screen reader called ChromeVox, which enables people with visual impairments to use the Chrome operating system. You can turn ChromeVox on or off from any page by pressing Ctrl + Alt + z. On tablets: Press and hold the Volume down + Volume up buttons for 5 seconds.

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Sample Digital Notebook - 7th Grade Math

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Sample Digital Notebook - 7th Grade Math

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This resource was created by Betsy Markman, an extraordinary ESL teacher and professional development provider.

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Need a virtual notebook for a virtual interactive notebook? Download a free one here.

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Free Digital Notebooks for PowerPoint or Google Slides - Landscape or Portrait -

Even though you can use the landscape digital notebook for a presentation, I though of this template for a paperless assignment.

You can choose between landscape or portrait mode. It comes with 3 predesign covers, but you can create your custom cover by editing the master.

These digital composition notebooks include white digital paper with no lines, grid and ruled. I also added some editable highlight shapes.

Remember that you can add your instructions on the master to avoid moving or deleting them by accident:

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Digital Composition Notebooks. Free PowerPoint template & Google Slides theme - SlidesMania

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Even though you can use the landscape digital notebook for a presentation, I though of this template for a paperless assignment. You can choose between landscape or portrait mode. It comes with 3 predesign covers, but you can create your custom cover by editing the master.

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Are you someone who loves interactive notebooks? Or who has wanted to try them but thought they were too much work? This site has some great resources for social studies.

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Social Studies Resources for Busy Teachers

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Download these to your Drive with the click of a button.

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As more schools continue to adopt 1:1 in their buildings, the desire to reduce paper and enable ease of sharing within a students' and teachers' workflow has greatly increased. Awhile ago, we published a post that had several Google Apps templates for things like instagram posts, facebook pages, tweets, and more. That has been a very popular post and many of you have requested additional templates for use with things like graphic organizers and popular educational models (Frayer, for instance).

While I am a huge advocate of not confining ourselves to using one handout or constraining thinking into one format, providing students with an assortment of tools that will allow them to organize their thinking in a way that makes sense allows for student choice, differentiation, and individualization.

Consider providing the tools below as options for kids to help organize their thinking. And, since they live within the Google Apps ecosystem, they are extremely easy to share with groups of students or directly back with the teacher.

Have a template that you'd like to see created? Leave me a note in the comments.

As always, the "Preview" link will show you the template, the "Copy" link will force copy the doc into your Drive, automatically.

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8 Editable Graphic Organizer Templates for Google Apps

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As more schools continue to adopt 1:1 in their buildings, the desire to reduce paper and enable ease of sharing within a students' and teachers' workflow has greatly increased. Awhile ago, we publi...

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25 Free Google Drawing Graphic Organizers - and How to Make Your Own

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25 Free Google Drawing Graphic Organizers - and How to Make Your Own

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These Google Drawing Graphic organizer templates will work for any grade level or subject area.

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Ed Tech

Sometimes, we just need some help organizing our thoughts - students AND educators.

Paper versions of graphic organizers can do a nice job of that. But by making them digital in Google Apps, they instantly become customizable. Multiple people can collaborate on them in real time. They can be shared with a link, embedded in a website or downloaded as an image file.

In short, digital graphic organizers are more versatile.

In Google Apps, there's a highly powerful yet highly overlooked app called Drawings. It gives users a blank canvas where they can add text, shapes, lines, etc. When done, they can save their work as image files or PDF files and can add those images to documents, slides and spreadsheets.
Drawings can be the virtual page where students can gather and process their ideas.

I used to shy away from doing a lot of graphic organizers because it's hard to design them in Google Docs; the moment I learned that you could change the page set-up to 8.5 x 11 inches, my world CHANGED. Now I rarely use Google Docs to make *anything*; I use Google Slides by default because I can add more graphics and have better control of the overall configuration. - Amy Nolan, high school English teacher, Commerce, Texas

Creating graphic organizer templates with Google Drawings

As Amy mentioned above, Google Slides can be used to create these as well as Google Drawings. The difference - Drawings focuses on one single page; Slides has multiple slides, which allows for multiple pages.

I've created 15 of them (see links below) that can be copied, saved, changed, tweaked or completely redone to fit your needs and your students' needs. We have added 10 more that were created by the Ditch That Textbook community and shared with us for this post.

It took me about 90 minutes to make 15 of them so that averages out to six minutes each. (Some were more time-consuming than others, and I got faster at making them as I progressed.)

Sharing your Google Drawings graphic organizers
Once you've created a graphic organizer (or have saved one of mine), there are a few easy ways to get them to your students:

If you use Google Classroom, create a new assignment and choose the option to deliver a copy of your graphic organizer to each student.

You can copy the URL (link) to the graphic organizer and deliver it to students via a class website, SeeSaw etc. You can also make a shorter, easier URL to type with URL shorteners like Bitly and TinyURL. (Check your Internet filter to make sure your shortened URLs come through. I've found that TinyURL works in most schools' filters.)

Using the blue "Share" button, click the "Get shareable link" button and set the document as "Anyone with the link" at the top and "Can view" at the bottom. That way, students won't be able to change your original copy and will have to make a copy of their own.

PRO TIP: When you copy a URL (link) to any G Suite file, it probably says "view" or "edit" at the end of it. If you change that word to "copy", it will force whoever opens that link to make a copy of the file instead of opening your file. That's another trick to keeping your original version from being altered. (If you assign it through Google Classroom, you won't need to do this.)

Here are 25 graphic organizer templates that can be used for many different subject areas and grade levels.

Feel free to make a copy of any of these google drawings templates and adapt them for your own use:

Question: What other graphic organizers would be useful to create in Google Drawings? Can you share a link to a graphic organizer you've created so others can use it, too? Leave a comment below!

Looking for even MORE G Suite resources?

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101 Ways to Ditch That Textbook with G Suite, tons of practical, creative ways to use Google tools in the classroom.

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©2023 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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25 FREE Google Drawings graphic organizers - and how to make your own

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Using Google Drawings to create graphic organizers can help students gather their thoughts and customize to their needs. Here are 25 templates to get you started.

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If you're someone who likes to have a song for everything, this website is for you. Songs to help students remember key learning in every content area imaginable. Designed for K-8.

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Children's Songs and Educational Music for preschool, elementary, middle and high school. Lyrics, mp3 downloads, DVDs and CDs.

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"Coffee Talk" for Teachers of English Learners

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"Coffee Talk" for Teachers of English Learners

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This resource covers some of the basic hows and whys of language acquisition, along with helpful, practical tips and resources for integrating ELLs into your classroom.

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Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges and Solutions

In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges.

1. What do I do if they don't know ANY English?

Understanding the characteristics of language learners at different proficiency levels helps to think about how we can best support students in their oral language and reading development. Below is a chart that gives a description of the first two levels of language proficiency as well as implications for using oral reading. This is a nice place to start when thinking about how to interact with and support our Starting and Emerging English speakers.

2. How do I provide instruction and support for the ELLs without holding back the students who are fluent in English?

Differentiation is the key to effective instruction for all students. Students of varying proficiency levels can learn the same content when the teacher provides a wide range of learning opportunities for students with different academic and linguistic needs. Three key strategies for this approach include differentiating or modifying the texts, creating grouping structures, and targeting the amount and nature of support based on students' needs (Opitz & Ford, 2008).

Modifying the text: Teachers can differentiate the text by selecting various levels of text difficulty on similar content, or they can also divide the text up into smaller portions appropriate for certain groups/individuals for a jigsaw activity. Another idea is to summarize text that might be too difficult and provide ways to make the text more accessible (such as vocabulary support, visual support, connecting to background knowledge, etc.).

Creating grouping structures that set students up for success: While some grouping structures can be established according to language or literacy skill levels and needs, it is also important to think about providing students exposure to interact with peers who demonstrate a wide range of different language and literacy skills. Additionally, teachers can improve engagement and motivation by creating choice/interest groups where students gather, read, discuss and work together on topics of common interest.

Targeting the amount and nature of student support: It is important to think about scaffolding the experience and using comprehensible input to make it accessible for all students. Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the gist of what is being said or presented. There are many ways to do this, such as selecting key vocabulary, using context or visual cues, building background knowledge, building on experiences the students have had, using consistent language, and providing images or visual representations to support vocabulary and content. Teachers can support their students by embedding comprehensible input into their whole-group instruction, but this also becomes particularly effective when used in the different grouping structures. Teachers can also modify the amount of support and interaction between teachers and students depending on their individual and group needs.

3. This student knows English - I hear him talking to his friends and on the playground. He just doesn't want to try in class.

The same children who appear to be functioning at a high level of English proficiency in social settings may actually be functioning at a beginning stage in other settings, depending on how they are called on to use language. The students need to feel safe and in a low-anxiety environment in order to begin to feel comfortable taking risks with their oral language. When they have less exposure and instruction related to academic language, this can often cause students to feel intimidated and less likely to be willing to share in class.

One idea for reducing anxiety and encouraging students to experiment with language might include allowing students to read, practice, and discuss their responses in partners and small groups before sharing out to the entire group. This allows students an opportunity to hear language modeled by peers, practice what they want to say, and possibly revise their original thought and/or language before sharing it in a public way. As students find more success with their language production and classroom participation, they will be more likely to share and take risks, and in turn continue building their confidence.

4. How is the child ever going to learn English if they don't speak it at home?

It is important to celebrate being bilingual and biliterate. Research has shown that development of a students' first language can facilitate development in the second language (Genessee, Geva, Dressler, and Kamil, 2007). Understanding this helps parents, teachers, and children to encourage the use and development of the students' home language while they are at home. All of the home literacy activities that we recommend for English speakers, such as reading aloud, making lists, discussing books, reading environmental print, etc., should also be encouraged for the English language learners in their home language. Students can begin to use more English as they feel comfortable in different settings, but it is important to note that speaking two languages will not hinder their English development.

Another important idea to remember is that we want to invite parents to feel confident in their interactions with their children regardless of their English proficiency level. As they begin to read or retell stories and discuss them at home, they are developing vital oral language and comprehension skills, and these skills will transfer over into their school language.

5. What kinds of activities should I be doing to help the student develop their oral language and oral reading?

McCauley and McCauley (1992) report four factors as necessary for acquiring a second language: a low-anxiety environment, repeated practice, comprehensible input, and drama. These are all important components of setting children up for success and language development.

A low-anxiety environment includes a setting where students feel nurtured and supported by their teacher and peers, and in turn, they feel safe to take risks without the fear of being laughed at or made fun of.

Repeated practice is just like what it sounds! Students need repeated practice hearing and using a new language. They need multiple opportunities to comprehend and express their ideas in a new language. Like with anything new that we learn, practice helps us get better.

Comprehensible input, as explained above, means finding different ways to make what is being said comprehensible and easier to understand. Things to consider with comprehensible input might include using speech that is appropriate for students' language proficiency, providing a clear, step-by-step explanation of tasks, and using a variety of techniques to support their understanding.

Drama, or a sense of excitement and engagement, can be found in activities like Reader's Theatre, dramatic play, puppetry, narrating wordless picture books, etc. All of these activities also have the other three factors embedded within them. These activities assist in the development of oral language in addition to introducing students to oral reading and rich literacy experiences and responses in a classroom setting.

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges. 1. What do I do if they don't know ANY English?

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Videos on various subjects available in five languages.

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TED-Ed Animated Videos Are Now In Five Languages

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Over the years on this blog, I've shared a fair number of both English and Spanish-language TED-Ed animated videos. They've just announced an expansion to three other languages, ...

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Home | NASA Space Place - NASA Science for Kids

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NASA's award-winning Space Place website engages upper-elementary-aged children in space and Earth science through interactive games, hands-on activities, fun articles and short videos. With material in both English and Spanish and numerous resources for kids, parents and teachers, Space Place has something for everyone.

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A series of videos on Biology concepts in Spanish.

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¡Bienvenidos a nuestro canal Amoeba Sisters en español! Estos videos de Amoeba Sisters han sido doblados al español. Nuestro contenido se centra en la biología de la escuela secundaria (Pinky es una ex maestra de biología de la escuela secundaria), aunque recibimos comentarios de que parte de nuestr…

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A site from the University of Colorado Boulder that offers video simulations of science concepts. The videos are offered in many languages.

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By converting our sims to HTML5, we make them seamlessly available across platforms and devices. Whether you have laptops, iPads, chromebooks, or BYOD, your favorite PhET sims are always right at your fingertips.Become part of our mission today, and transform the learning experiences of students everywhere!

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Lessons in Spanish on various Science topics.

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¡Bienvenido a las Lecciones de física!

La física es el estudio de la materia, el movimiento, la energía y la fuerza. Aquí puedes explorar videos, artículos y ejercicios por tema. Mantenemos estas lecciones actualizadas, por lo tanto podrás encontrar aquí contenido nuevo o mejorado aquí con el tiempo.

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Lecciones de física | Ciencia | Khan Academy

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¡Bienvenido a las Lecciones de física! La física es el estudio de la materia, el movimiento, la energía y la fuerza. Aquí puedes explorar videos, artículos y ejercicios por tema. Mantenemos estas lecciones actualizadas, por lo tanto podrás encontrar aquí contenido nuevo o mejorado aquí con el tiempo.

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Home Language Literacy is Key to English Language Acquisition

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Home Language Literacy is Key to English Language Acquisition

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The Home Language: An English Language Learner’s Most Valuable Resource

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Fred Genesee discusses the research supporting the importance of a child’s home language. In addition, Dr. Genesee explores the question of why an approach that is well-supported by research has been largely ignored in the era of “research-based” policy.OverviewWebcast: ELLs and ReadingLearn more about using the home language to support ELLs’ reading instruction in our Teaching ELLs to Read webcast featuring Dr. Genesee!The education of English language learners (ELLs) is one of the most important issues facing U.S. educators. ELLs are a large and growing proportion of the school-age population — according to National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2007, about 10.8 million (or 20%) school-aged children in the U.S. spoke a language other than English at home (Planty, Hussar, Snyder, Kena, Kewal Ramani, Kemp, Bianco, & Dinkes, 2009). This situation is not likely to change because ELLs are currently the fastest growing population in U.S. schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004), with the number of ELLs expected to increase another 50% by 2025 (Passel & Cohn, 2008).The importance of the issues goes beyond the sheer number of ELLs, however. It has been shown in numerous national studies and surveys that, on average, ELLs under achieve in comparison to their English-speaking peers in academic domains and that the achievement gap tends to increase the higher the grade level (e.g., Fry, 2007; Rumberger, 2007; McNeil et al., 2008). As we consider ways to help ELLs increase their academic achievement, then, it is clear that educators need all the resources at their disposal to meet these challenges.Policy and Home LanguageUntil recently, significant efforts were made to enhance the educational outcomes of ELLs by offering alternative forms of education that incorporate use of ELLs’ home language (Genesee, 1999, for a review). These programs were justified on the grounds that educating ELLs in English only posed a triple threat to their educational success since it would require that they simultaneously:learn academic English to high levels,master challenging academic skills and content taught through English,adopt new social skills that would permit them to integrate with their English-speaking classmates and teachers.However, in recent years, recent political and legislative initiatives that disfavor bilingual education have made these educational options difficult to access, despite evidence of their success (Goldenberg, 2009). Along with these politically-motivated changes, it would appear that educators and policy-makers no longer recognize the native language skills of ELLs as an important educational resource and, indeed, it would even appear that they discredit it having any role in the education of ELLs.What does the research say?At the same time that the role of the home language is diminishing in public education policy, there have been growing political and legislative expectations that educational policies and classroom practices be backed up by scientific, empirical evidence. With respect to ELLs, there is undeniable and growing evidence that the home language of ELLs is of considerable benefit to their overall academic success. There are multiple sources of such evidence. First, recent meta-analyses have shown that educational programs that systematically incorporate use of ELLs’ home language result in levels of academic success, including achievement in literacy and other academic subjects, that are as high as and often better than that of ELLs in English-only programs (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, in press). In a review of these meta-analyses, Goldenberg (2008) notes “Readers should understand how unusual it is to have five meta-analyses on the same issue conducted by five independent researchers or groups of researchers with diverse perspectives. The fact that they all reached essentially the same conclusion is worth noting. No other area in educational research with which I am familiar can claim five independent meta-analyses based on experimental studies — much less five that converge on the same basic finding.” (p. 15).Second, in a study of ELLs in two-way immersion programs, Lindholm and Aclan (1991) found a significant positive relationship between individual student’s level of bilingual proficiency and their achievement in math and reading in English. Furthermore, the students who were classified as “high bilinguals” were able to attain grade level results by fourth grade in English reading and by third grade in English math.Third, a growing body of evidence from researchers around the world has shown that bilingual children exhibit significant cognitive advantages in comparison to monolingual children (e.g., Bialystok 2006; Chin & Wigglesworth, 2007; Kovaacs & Mehler, 2009). These advantages have been demonstrated in executive control processes related to selective attention and inhibition and monitoring of attention when, for example, children are engaged in problem solving.Fourth, and finally, extensive research, again from around the world, has found that children who are learning to read in a second language are able to transfer many skills and knowledge from their first language to facilitate their acquisition of reading skills in the second language. The best evidence of this comes from studies showing that students with strong reading skills in the home language also have strong reading skills in their second language. Much of this work has been done on ELLs in the U.S. (August & Shanahan, 2006; Riches & Genesee, 2006).What we see in the U.S., then, is a push for research-based policy but the creation of policies that contradict the research. Debate concerning the value of using ELLs’ home language in specially-designed programs, such as two-way immersion, will undoubtedly continue, and so it should since it makes little educational sense to diminish U.S. students’ opportunities to become bilingual in an increasingly globalized community.Back to topHome Language in the ClassroomIn the meantime, teachers and students can’t wait for these policy debates to be settled before deciding how or whether to draw upon ELLs’ home language. The question arises how can schools and teachers, even those who are monolingual, act on evidence that clearly shows the personal, cognitive, linguistic and educational value of using the linguistic resources that ELLs bring to school. There is no simple or single answer to this question, but a number of options are worth exploring that, at the moment, are often overlooked and discounted. Cloud, Genesee, and Hamayan (2009, Chapter 3) offer a number of suggestions:To encourage students to see connections between their languages and, thus, to better understand how languages are structured and organized, talk to ELLs about their home language — ask them:How is the home language the same and how it is different from English?Are there words in the home language that sound the same and mean the same thing in both languages?Are there words in the home language and English that sound the same but mean different things?As part of phonological and metalinguistic awareness exercises to facilitate reading acquisition, ask students:to say words that start with the same sound(s) in English or the L1.how words are changed and formed in the home language — singular and plural forms, present tense and past tense forms of verbs — to enhance their word knowledgewho are new to your class, to read books in their home language to show you what they know about reading.By using the collective skills and knowledge of all students (both ELL and English-L1 students) in the classroom, even a monolingual teacher can tap into these valuable language resources that ELLs have and do so with the confidence that these methods will promote their language development — in English as well as the home language.Back to topEducation for AllA hallmark of public education in the U.S. is respect for and appreciation of the individual skills and backgrounds of students as a foundation for furthering their education. Taking advantage of ELLs’ home language resources is asking no more than the same respect and appreciation for this group of learners. At the same time, parents, teachers, educational leaders in local school districts, and politicians should discuss how best to provide all students in the U.S. with high quality educational programs that promote competence in additional languages. At stake is not only the competitiveness of individual students once they enter the work force but, indeed, the ability of the U.S. itself to compete in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural world.Back to topVideo: Using the Home Language as a ResourceDearborn Public Schools ELD Director Rose Aldubaily discusses the value of using students’ home language as a resource. About the AuthorFred Genesee is Professor in the Psychology Department at McGill University, Montreal. He has conducted extensive research on alternative forms of bilingual and immersion education for language minority and language majority students. His current research interests also include language acquisition in pre-school bilingual children, internationally-adopted children, second language reading acquisition, and the language and academic development of students at-risk in bilingual programs. He is the recipient of the Canadian Psychological Associate Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community or Public Service and the 2-Way CABE Award of Promoting Bilingualism. Publications include:Genesee, F., Paradis, J., & Crago (Eds.) (2010). Dual Language Development and Disorders: A Handbook on Bilingualism and Second Language Learning, 2nd Edition. Baltimore, Maryland: Brookes Publishing.Cloud, N., Genesee, F., and Hamayan, E. (2009). Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners: A Teacher’s Guide to Research-Based Practices. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Back to topAcknowledgementsOur policy section is made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The statements and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

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Dr. Carol Salva's Padlet to accompany her workshop on Boosting Achievement: Success for Students With Limited and Interrupted Formal Education.

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This is Carol Salva's QSSSA Padlet from her 7 Steps to a Language Rich, Interactive Classroom workshops.

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This is a method for structuring conversations that can be used in any grade level or content area. NOTE: There is an entire section of this Padlet dedicated to QSSSA resources!

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by Valentina Gonzalez Do you feel like there is just so much curriculum to teach that you don’t have time to ask students to stop and talk? Let’s think about that. Why don’t we allow students to di…

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Resources for supporting beginning learners compiled by Karolina Mills.

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Using WIDA/ACCESS Scores to Differentiate Instruction

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Using WIDA/ACCESS Scores to Differentiate Instruction

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By J. Negrin and K. Mills - presented at the VPS In Service, November 2022.

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Using WIDA/ACCESS to Differentiate Instruction 11/8/22

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Effective Instruction for ELLs in Social Studies (video)

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Effective Instruction for ELLs in Social Studies (video)

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Effective Questioning in Social Studies for the VirtuEL18 Conference

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Check out this great resource on QSSSA from the Charleston, SC School District!

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Curious about QSSSA? Learned a little about it but not quite sure how to implement? Check out this video! (If you want to see the Padlet, it's linked in the Resources section here!)

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Dr. Carol Salva - How to use News in Levels

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Dr. Carol Salva - How to use News in Levels

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News In Levels is a great resource. Here, Dr. Salva shows you how to optimize it!

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The Best 10 Videos for Non-ELL Teachers With ELLs in Their Classes

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The Best 10 Videos for Non-ELL Teachers With ELLs in Their Classes

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From Larry Ferlazzo's very popular Websites of the Day blog.

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Our Three Video Series On Differentiation, Including Two NEW Ones!
Many mainstream content teachers have English Language Learner students in their classrooms. And they often are not sure of the best ways to support them.

I thought it could be useful to bring together a collection of short videos that they might find useful. I hope readers will suggest others.

You might also be interested in The Best Sites For Learning Strategies To Teach ELL's In Content Classes.

Here are my video picks:

I've got to start with this great one from Valentina Gonzalez:

Next up is this one from Carol Salva. It's designed for volunteers in an ESL classroom, but they're good ideas for all teachers with ELLs to keep in mind:

There are so many good things to say about it and how it provides a glimpse into the challenges facing our English Language Learners. It's a little longer than most other videos on this list, but it's well worth the extra few minutes:

Here are some words of wisdom from Dr. Jim Cummins on scaffolding for ELLs:

Lastly, here's a short excerpt from a longer interview the the Time of Remembrance Project did with me:

Here's a video suggested by Carol Salva where a science teacher is offering her thoughts and examples:

Here's another one from Carol where one of her students shares what has helped him in the classroom:
VIDEO OF OUR ELL STUDENT PANEL & DOWNLOADABLE HAND-OUT THEY USED FOR PREPARATION More Of What Our Teachers Have Learned About Teaching ELLs - PLUS New Video Of Students Sharing Their Experience
This is a fun video, and I also think it might illustrate - a little bit - the difference between language "learning" (being able to complete grammar exercises) and language "acquisition" (using language to actually communicate). It seems to me that we want our students to be able to "sing":

Again, I hope readers will suggest more short videos, especially ones that show scaffolding in action...

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The Best Videos For Content Teachers With ELLs In Their Classes - Please Suggest More

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Our Three Video Series On Differentiation, Including Two NEW Ones! Many mainstream content teachers have English Language Learner students in their classrooms. And they often are not sure of the best ways to support them. I thought it could be useful to bring together a collection of short videos that they might find useful.

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Video: Teaching Point of View to Middle School ELLs (WIDA Award Winner)

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Video: Teaching Point of View to Middle School ELLs (WIDA Award Winner)

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This video will show you what a content and language objective and a successful collaboration look like in a middle school Language Arts classroom.

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Andy Mizell plans engaging instruction that scaffolds learning for the wide range of English proficiency levels in his middle school ELL class. He begins by assessing his students and collaborating with other teachers to extend his academic language instruction across subject areas.

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ESL Teacher Shiomara Larriú's Padlet for Educators

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ESL Teacher Shiomara Larriú's Padlet for Educators

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This is a great resource with lots of information and useful sites for teachers. It is especially geared to elementary, but many of the resources are useful for all levels.

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The original TED talk. Not specifically focused on ELLs, but the principles are the same. The Three-Act Math Tasks are based on the philosophy described here.

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A series of engaging, interactive, standards-based math tasks to get your students talking about math.

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Dan Meyer's Three-Act Math Tasks - Google Drive

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ELL Elementary Grading Report Card FAQs 

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ELL Elementary Grading Report Card FAQs 

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Who is responsible for what when ELLs receive ESL and ELA in elementary.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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The website that accompanies Teaching for Biliteracy by Karen Beeman and Cheryl Urow. VPS Bilingual has used this text for professional development. A great place for anyone interested in bilingualism.

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Join Center for Teaching for Biliteracy and gain access to videos, helpful links, newsletter and blogs. ¡Inscríbase!!

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The C6 Biliteracy Framework: Lesson Planning Through a Critical Consciousness Lens

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The C6 Biliteracy Framework: Lesson Planning Through a Critical Consciousness Lens

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Ellevation: ML Program Management Tools for K-12

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Lesson planning is a political act. Schools in the United States, at the core, were designed to promote a monocultural and monolingual perspective of teaching and learning. Thus, the lessons we design either support or dismantle educational systems that have marginalized certain student communities. In particular, Black, Indigenous, Students of Color, language learners, children with specific academic and/or emotional needs, and students belonging to the LGBTQ+ community have not been served well in a schooling system that is centered on Whiteness, heteronormative ideologies, and aligned with privilege resulting from English monolingualism.

What is the C6 Biliteracy Framework?

The C6 Biliteracy Framework (C6BF) offers educators a way to strategically lesson plan so that the students we serve are better prepared to connect, empathize, and be of service to one another. In a time in which schools and districts are attempting to engage in anti-bias and anti-racism (ABAR) work, the C6BF creates a clear pathway to engage in this important practice, but beyond the performative. The framework was conceptualized to align with the three goals of dual language education, as well as a means to disrupt educational systems of oppression. Although originally created to facilitate biliteracy instruction in the dual language classroom, the C6BF is now used in all educational settings.

C6BF: Create

As educators, we must CREATE and design learning experiences that bring together content, language, and culture. This is accomplished by establishing strong content, language, and culture learning targets that are fully owned by the students. Often, content learning targets are the driving force behind the lessons we plan because the focus is on standards. As practitioners, we feel comfortable with unpacking grade level content information.

We tend to be less agile in writing language learning targets that create access to the content standards for every student, regardless of language proficiency in the target language. In reality, many of us fail to understand that the language learning target is the equity and social justice component of the lesson planning process. A content learning target without a language learning target is like asking students to find that target in the dark. In essence, when we plan content learning targets without considering the language students must mobilize in order to access the standard, we become the oppressors.

Culture learning targets, rarely used in educational settings, provide an opportunity for teachers to begin chipping away at educational systems of oppression by contextualizing content and language integration. The four ways to engage in ABAR work via culture learning targets include:

Amplifying the voices of marginalized communities

Connecting to the students and/or to real world events

Creating cross-linguistic and translanguaging spaces

Focusing on academic and social language as equals

C6BF: Connect

An integral part of the lesson planning process must include CONNECTing learning experiences to students' lives and linguistic repertoires. Part of this work includes designing lessons that value all that our students bring into the classroom. We must no longer view children as having gaps in their learning. Instead, we must decolonize our thinking and acknowledge that all students bring gifts into the school building, including their language, culture, and full identity, which we must help them to leverage.

For too long, we have placed a high value on English monolingualism. This is specifically true for Students of Color. Whereas a child who is White is often praised for adding languages to their linguistic repertoire, marginalized student communities are coded at-risk by educational entities when English is not readily mobilized. They are quickly provided remediation to ensure a quick transition to English, rather than valuing the language or languages of the home and the community.

This component of the framework also posits that although students might not yet be able to "language" content understanding in English, it does not mean that the content knowledge is non-existent. Students who "own" languages other English possess a unique ability to make cross-linguistic connections, which should be supported by every educator, in order to mobilize content ownership in multiple languages. However, this culturally sustaining ideology is still not fully present in most U.S. classrooms.

C6BF: Collaborate

The lesson planning process must embrace the idea that we COLLABORATE with students as facilitators of instruction, rather than depositors of information. Whether in remote, hybrid or in-person facilitation of instruction, students must be active participants in the creation of their own learning. Culturally sustaining ideologies must become the norm in all U.S. schools. Much like we need to decolonize instructional practices, so too, we must consider the different ways that students may engage in the learning process, including some that have not traditionally been amplified in school settings.

Differentiation of instruction, process, and product are a focus of the C6BF, but now, with an eye on engaging students in lessons that move away from a monocultural, monolingual, heteronormative, and patriarchal way of living and breathing in the classroom. Students' life experiences, the way in which their community problem solves, co-exists and serves one another, and how they view life in general, now has a space within an educational system that has often excluded those things that didn't fit within educational practices seeking to be White adjacent.

C6BF: Communicate

Teachers must COMMUNICATE and model both oral and written language, while structuring authentic student-to-student interaction that reflects each of the two program languages in a dual language setting. In monolingual settings, teachers must embrace all languages as students learn to "language" content understanding in English. English and/or partner languages are added to a student's linguistic repertoire without destroying language features already a part of the student's world.

The 4+1 language domains and icons are an essential part of the students' ownership of the content, language, and culture integration. Although we often focus on listening, speaking, reading, and writing, we must not forget that for multilingual children, metalinguistic awareness is equally key. It is the language domain that allows students to make the natural connections between the nation languages that are a part of their linguistic repertoire.

Part of the authentic communication processes in lesson planning includes embracing literacy practices that are appropriate for the target language. In dual language programs, this means that we must not inculcate English-centered pedagogical practices into the teaching of other program languages when they are not appropriate. For monolingual settings, teachers of language learners specifically, must be willing to embrace other languages in the classroom, even if we ourselves are not multilingual.

C6BF: Consider

As teachers, we often lesson plan in the way in which we like to learn. Instead, we must CONSIDER a student's varied instructional needs as an opportunity to promote reflection and self-assessment. This requires critical self-analysis on our part, as we engage in lesson design. Sharing learning modalities with students allow them to understand the way or ways in which they best learn. Moreover, it further strengthens the co-facilitation process as students are able to advocate when our lessons do not reflect their type of learning style(s).

Diverse and authentic biliteracy assessments are also a part of this component in the framework. In dual language settings, teachers should consider multiple and varied formative and summative assessments in both program languages as a means to leverage students' continued work focused on bilingualism and biliteracy through content learning. Assessments that are not aligned with culturally sustaining language learning research and that view students' abilities through an English-only focus, often fail to garner data that is viable in serving emergent bilingual students. Furthermore, for both dual and non-dual settings, it is also important to identify what it is that we are assessing: content, language, or both.

C6BF: Commit

The last component in the C6 Biliteracy Framework is present in all six Cs. It is the foundation of the critical consciousness lens that drives the lesson planning process. The decolonization of many U.S. pedagogical practices, charges us as educators, to COMMIT, in collaboration with our students, to creating a learning environment that is focused on continuous improvement and service to others.

When we acknowledge that U.S. schools have, and continue to serve some students better than others, we can truly begin the work of equity and social justice. Lesson planning via the C6BF offers us a way to engage in this important work while acknowledging that we have been complicit in the oppression of certain student communities. This must be shared openly with the students we serve.

Educators must model critical self-reflection, own and speak of their biases, and overtly use their privilege to create access to that privilege for others. Only in this way, will PK-12 students fully understand that content, language, and culture learning is an unending journey where the goal is to be of service to others. The C6 Biliteracy Framework embraces the idea that lesson planning is a political act. Rather than standing idly by while some student communities are marginalized, we begin to chip away at the educational systems that seek to maintain the status quo.
Further information regarding the C6 Biliteracy Framework can be found at www.drjosemedina.com. Dr. Medina is also very active on social media. The following are his handles:

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The C6 Biliteracy Framework: Lesson Planning Through a Critical Consciousness Lens

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This blog post was written by Ellevation Advisor Dr. José Medina. For more information about Dr. Medina's work, visit www.drjosemedina.com​. Lesson planning is a political act. Schools in the United States, at the core, were designed to promote a monocultural and monolingual perspective of teaching and learning.

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Comprehensive Literacy Instruction for English Learners

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Comprehensive Literacy Instruction for English Learners

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21025 NCEL Literacy Model FINAL.pdf | Powered by Box

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Differences Impacting Literacy Development Between Monolingual English Learners and Bilingual Learners (chart)

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Differences Impacting Literacy Development Between Monolingual English Learners and Bilingual Learners (chart)

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Effective Literacy Instruction for Multilingual Learners: What it is and What it Looks Like

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Effective Literacy Instruction for Multilingual Learners: What it is and What it Looks Like

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A selection of online K-2 books, available in English and Spanish.

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Unite for Literacy provides free digital access to picture books, narrated in many languages. Literacy is at the core of a healthy community, so we unite with partners to enable all families to read with their young children.

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Sheltered Math Instruction for ELLs (Greenfield and Greenwood, 2020)

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Sheltered Math Instruction for ELLs (Greenfield and Greenwood, 2020)

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A Newcomer in my Classroom: A Guide for Non-ESL/Bilingual Teachers (by K. Mills)

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A Newcomer in my Classroom: A Guide for Non-ESL/Bilingual Teachers (by K. Mills)

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2022 A Newcomer in My Classroom:   “What Do I Do If They Don’t Speak English?”

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Registering and Enrolling Newcomer and Refugee Students in Secondary Schools - NCELA Webinar

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Registering and Enrolling Newcomer and Refugee Students in Secondary Schools - NCELA Webinar

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Registering and Enrolling Refugee and Immigrant Students in Secondary Schools 8_12_22

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Sheltered Instruction Training Online via Stockton University

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Sheltered Instruction Training Online via Stockton University

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SEI Online

The New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) has collaborated with educational professionals, school leaders and other stakeholders to create this dynamic suite of online learning resources to support the professional development of New Jersey educators.

About the SEI Online Course

This paradigm allows teachers and administrators to provide diverse groups of ELLs with access to classroom content while they acclimate to an English learning environment. The six learning threads of the FABRIC paradigm provide a structure that teachers can use to address the needs of ELLs. Each section contains research-based recommendations, a classroom example, and application questions. FABRIC can be utilized during sheltered instruction training, professional learning community meetings, pre-service teacher education, etc.

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Elizabeth "BJ" Franks was a district supervisor of Bilingual/ESL/World Languages for 13 years and prior to that was a Spanish bilingual/ESL teacher, grades K-12 in the Roselle Schools in Union County. As a supervisor, BJ worked collaboratively with Barbara and the staff at Harrison Elementary School to develop a model bilingual program from the NJ Department of Education. BJ also holds certification as a Learning Consultant. She has been an adjunct professor at NJ City University, Kean University and Rutgers University. She received her doctorate from Rutgers University.

Barbara Tedesco was principal of the Harrison Elementary School in Roselle which housed a model bilingual program, recognized by the NJ Department of Education. She was recognized as "Principal of the Year" by NJPSA/NJDOE in 2004. Prior to being a principal, Mrs. Tedesco served as district supervisor for bilingual/ESL/World Languages and Director of Curriculum and Instruction. She started her teaching career in Roselle as a Spanish FLES teacher (Foreign Language in the Elementary School) and went on to teach Spanish in the high school. She then taught ESL K-12. In addition, she taught ESL at Union County College-the Institute for Intensive English. Upon her initial retirement she was an instructor with the NJEXCEL program, working with aspiring administrators and coordinated this program in Northern Jersey.

In retirement they opened a consulting company LLAMAME, LLC (Language & Literacy Associates for Multilingual and Multicultural Education) which specializes in all areas related to English Language Learners. They also became WIDA certified trainers; however, most recently, Barbara chose not to renew her certification.

In addition, both consultants are past-presidents of the state bilingual and ESL organization (NJTESOL-NJBE); currently BJ serves as Advocacy Chair and Barbara is the Archivist. They serve on the Bilingual Advisory Committee and have presented at state and national conferences on a wide range of topics that impact the academic performance of English Language Learners.

Course Developers

SRI&ETTC at Stockton University

The Southern Regional Institute (SRI) and Educational Technology Training Center (ETTC) provide professional development opportunities for preK-12 educators, technology coordinators, school administrators, and other professionals who offer support services to schools. The overall goal of the SRI are to improve student academic achievement, organization effectiveness, employee performance, and user satisfaction. The ETTC's goal is to offer technology training and technology services to school districts to enhance the education available to students through the creative use of educational technologies in the classroom.

The Southern Regional Institute and ETTC Consortium includes school districts and other regional organizations in Atlantic, Camden, Cumberland, Cape May, Ocean and Burlington counties. The consortium represents approximately 90,000 PreK-12 students and more than 24,000 educators.

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The New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) has collaborated with educational professionals, school leaders and other stakeholders to create this dynamic suite of online learning resources to support the professional development of New Jersey educators. This paradigm allows teachers and administrators to provide diverse groups of ELLs with access to classroom content while they acclimate to an English learning environment.

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4) How can I support my Multilingual Learners' oral language development?
Oral language development-in both English and the home language-should be a central focus in teaching Multilingual Learners (MLs). Although not all programs provide intentional dual language instruction, research suggests that dual language education is optimal for young ML children's learning and development26 -this is the ideal goal for programs to reach. Oral language strategies should be used intentionally to promote both languages. Key oral language skills include expressive and receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension, and grammatical knowledge, all of which are critical for future reading comprehension.27 Teachers should incorporate rich and high-quality language experiences with back-and-forth exchanges in both languages, as consistent with the program's language model. Such interactions foster language development and achievement.28

ML children's developing language skills may also include code switching, or using words and phrases from both languages in a single sentence or exchange (check out the Toolkit on Code Switching from the Office of Head Start for more information). Such switching is a normal part of bilingual development and demonstrates children's flexibility in drawing on the resources they have in both languages (read this Fact Sheet on Translanguaging for more information on how multilingual children use their full language repertoire to make sense of and communicate information). While MLs may have a smaller vocabulary in each language initially and lack some "translation equivalents,"29 educators should account for and encourage vocabulary use in both English and the home language. It is important for teachers to serve as strong language models in the languages that they speak. Further, they need to be clear about which language will be used at different times (language allocation).30 Teachers should also highlight the similarities and differences between the languages children speak and English in order to support children in making connections. By providing high-quality, culturally appropriate language interactions in both languages relevant to children's experiences, educators help ML children develop a solid foundation in both of their languages, which will support future literacy and content learning.31

The following evidence-based strategies should be used with a specific purpose in mind, as consistent with the program's language model, and differentiated and tailored to each individual child's level and needs (which should be determined through continuous assessment).Oral language practices should be integrated with the other strategies presented in this Toolkit. For K-3 teachers, refer also to the California K-3 ELD Standards that highlight oral language interactions for MLs.

Strategies in action

Overarching Strategy: Provide language-rich environments to support each language.

Evidence-Based Strategies

4A) Provide high-quality, responsive, and extended talk in each language, including longer utterances with varied vocabulary, a mix of open-ended and scaffolding questions, providing child-friendly definitions for new or unfamiliar words, recasting or repeating an erroneous utterance in a corrected form, and engaging in back-and-forth exchanges.

4B) Ask questions in each language, including a mix of open- and closed-ended questions, to elicit talk from children.

4C) Repeat and elaborate/expand on children's talk in each language, for example, with adjectives, adverbs, or clauses that are related to the topic the child is discussing.

4D) Incorporate songs, rhymes, and chants in each language, and connect them to content learning.

Overarching Strategy: Provide explicit vocabulary instruction in each language.

Evidence-Based Strategies

4E) Select commonly used academic words (e.g., observe, demonstrate, cycle, evaluate, conflict) and content-specific words or phrases (e.g., energy, habitat, food chain, law, freedom) from the focus of study and incorporate them in instruction.

4F) Explicitly teach words through multiple modalities of writing, speaking, and listening (e.g., vocabulary picture cards, word maps, visual aids, props, word walls, gestures, drawings).

4G) Reinforce target words by using them throughout the day and across contexts (e.g., present word during morning meeting, post on word wall, engage with associated objects and words during small group or free choice learning time).

4H) Provide hands-on, inquiry-based experiences (such as designing and carrying out experiments) to help give language meaning and purpose.

Strategies are interrelated

Individual strategies across the different instructional topics are interconnected and should be implemented together, in a purposeful and connected manner throughout instruction, and not in isolation. Make sure to also consider your classroom or school's language model when implementing the strategies and adapt accordingly.

Visit how to use this site >

Alignment with Existing California Educator Guidance Documents & Resources

The Multilingual Learning strategies are closely aligned with existing guidance documents and resources for educators in California. Learn how Oral Language Development strategies align with these existing resources, or to see how the standards align across all strategies, visit the alignment reference guide page.

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Oral Language Development * Multilingual Learning Toolkit

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4) How can I support my Multilingual Learners' oral language development? Oral language development-in both English and the home language-should be a central focus in teaching Multilingual Learners (MLs). Although not all programs provide intentional dual language instruction, research suggests that dual language education is optimal for young ML children's learning and development26 -this is the ideal goal for programs to reach.

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges.

Dr. Moses Guccione is the co-author of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies That Cross Proficiency Levels ( Heinemann, 2009).

Getting Started

As a former elementary teacher in a bilingual school, I developed a love and passion for finding effective ways to support oral language and oral reading development of emerging English language learners (ELLs). I discovered this passion when I began my first year of teaching in a second-grade classroom, where I encountered a handful of challenges related to my students' oral language development.

Many students were transitioning from a classroom with Spanish instruction into my classroom with instruction provided in English. I had students ranging from monolingual English speakers to students who had just recently moved to the U.S. from a Spanish-speaking country. The range of language proficiency levels crossed the entire spectrum. Having minimal experience with this range of diverse students and needs, I began reading, researching, and implementing new instructional ideas into my classroom. With each challenge I encountered, I gained new information about my students and their parents. I also began learning more about my own methods of instruction, and I learned a great deal each year about new challenges and successes.

Currently, I am fortunate to work with many teachers who have the opportunity to impact the lives of children and families who speak more than one language. As I work with these teachers and families, I have found five common and reoccurring challenges that they seem to face in the area of oral language development that parallel my own experiences. I detail these challenges and questions below, as well as suggestions for addressing each challenges based on strategies I used in my classroom.

Questions and Classroom Scenarios

1. What do I do if they don't know ANY English?

Understanding the characteristics of language learners at different proficiency levels helps to think about how we can best support students in their oral language and reading development. Below is a chart that gives a description of the first two levels of language proficiency as well as implications for using oral reading. This is a nice place to start when thinking about how to interact with and support our Starting and Emerging English speakers.

Levels of Language Proficiency

Description

Implications For Using Oral Reading

Level 1: Starting
Students are in a silent period in which they listen, but do not speak in English. They may respond using nonverbal cues in attempt to communicate basic needs.

The teacher and other more advanced students should model oral reading. Students in the silent period should not be forced to speak, but should be given the opportunity to participate in a group activity where they won't be singled out.

Level 2: Emerging
Students are beginning to understand more oral language. They respond using one- or two-word phrases and start to produce simple sentences for basic social interactions and to meet basic needs.

Teacher and students should continue to model oral reading. Students should be encouraged to begin taking risks with simple, rehearsed oral reading in non-threatening situations.

Opitz & Guccione (2009). Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies that Cross Proficiency Levels.

2. How do I provide instruction and support for the ELLs without holding back the students who are fluent in English?

Differentiation is the key to effective instruction for all students. Students of varying proficiency levels can learn the same content when the teacher provides a wide range of learning opportunities for students with different academic and linguistic needs. Three key strategies for this approach include differentiating or modifying the texts, creating grouping structures, and targeting the amount and nature of support based on students' needs (Opitz & Ford, 2008).

Modifying the text: Teachers can differentiate the text by selecting various levels of text difficulty on similar content, or they can also divide the text up into smaller portions appropriate for certain groups/individuals for a jigsaw activity. Another idea is to summarize text that might be too difficult and provide ways to make the text more accessible (such as vocabulary support, visual support, connecting to background knowledge, etc.).

Creating grouping structures that set students up for success: While some grouping structures can be established according to language or literacy skill levels and needs, it is also important to think about providing students exposure to interact with peers who demonstrate a wide range of different language and literacy skills. Additionally, teachers can improve engagement and motivation by creating choice/interest groups where students gather, read, discuss and work together on topics of common interest.

Targeting the amount and nature of student support: It is important to think about scaffolding the experience and using comprehensible input to make it accessible for all students. Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the gist of what is being said or presented. There are many ways to do this, such as selecting key vocabulary, using context or visual cues, building background knowledge, building on experiences the students have had, using consistent language, and providing images or visual representations to support vocabulary and content. Teachers can support their students by embedding comprehensible input into their whole-group instruction, but this also becomes particularly effective when used in the different grouping structures. Teachers can also modify the amount of support and interaction between teachers and students depending on their individual and group needs.

3. This student knows English - I hear him talking to his friends and on the playground. He just doesn't want to try in class.

I have heard many teachers discussing variations of this same idea. However, I would caution teachers and parents about jumping to this conclusion. Academic language (or the language specifically related to school and/or academic content) can be complicated to acquire. Students often first develop social language and demonstrate near proficiency or proficiency in English in social settings. A student may be demonstrating sophisticated use of social language, but they may have difficulty using language in more formal settings such as school.

Much of the academic language required to be successful in school - everything from instructions to expectations to content-specific vocabulary - requires assistance in acquiring. Students hear and use their social language in various settings from home, community, and school, but academic language is often only used in the school setting. These students need specific instruction and support surrounding their language development in this area.

The same children who appear to be functioning at a high level of English proficiency in social settings may actually be functioning at a beginning stage in other settings, depending on how they are called on to use language. The students need to feel safe and in a low-anxiety environment in order to begin to feel comfortable taking risks with their oral language. When they have less exposure and instruction related to academic language, this can often cause students to feel intimidated and less likely to be willing to share in class.

One idea for reducing anxiety and encouraging students to experiment with language might include allowing students to read, practice, and discuss their responses in partners and small groups before sharing out to the entire group. This allows students an opportunity to hear language modeled by peers, practice what they want to say, and possibly revise their original thought and/or language before sharing it in a public way. As students find more success with their language production and classroom participation, they will be more likely to share and take risks, and in turn continue building their confidence.

4. How is the child ever going to learn English if they don't speak it at home?

It is important to celebrate being bilingual and biliterate. Research has shown that development of a students' first language can facilitate development in the second language (Genessee, Geva, Dressler, and Kamil, 2007). Understanding this helps parents, teachers, and children to encourage the use and development of the students' home language while they are at home. All of the home literacy activities that we recommend for English speakers, such as reading aloud, making lists, discussing books, reading environmental print, etc., should also be encouraged for the English language learners in their home language. Students can begin to use more English as they feel comfortable in different settings, but it is important to note that speaking two languages will not hinder their English development.

Another important idea to remember is that we want to invite parents to feel confident in their interactions with their children regardless of their English proficiency level. As they begin to read or retell stories and discuss them at home, they are developing vital oral language and comprehension skills, and these skills will transfer over into their school language.

5. What kinds of activities should I be doing to help the student develop their oral language and oral reading?

McCauley and McCauley (1992) report four factors as necessary for acquiring a second language: a low-anxiety environment, repeated practice, comprehensible input, and drama. These are all important components of setting children up for success and language development.

A low-anxiety environment includes a setting where students feel nurtured and supported by their teacher and peers, and in turn, they feel safe to take risks without the fear of being laughed at or made fun of.

Repeated practice is just like what it sounds! Students need repeated practice hearing and using a new language. They need multiple opportunities to comprehend and express their ideas in a new language. Like with anything new that we learn, practice helps us get better.

Comprehensible input, as explained above, means finding different ways to make what is being said comprehensible and easier to understand. Things to consider with comprehensible input might include using speech that is appropriate for students' language proficiency, providing a clear, step-by-step explanation of tasks, and using a variety of techniques to support their understanding.

Drama, or a sense of excitement and engagement, can be found in activities like Reader's Theatre, dramatic play, puppetry, narrating wordless picture books, etc. All of these activities also have the other three factors embedded within them. These activities assist in the development of oral language in addition to introducing students to oral reading and rich literacy experiences and responses in a classroom setting.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see from these questions and examples, there are a lot of different approaches to helping ELLs build their oral language development skills, and you may have to try different activities until you find what works for your students. The most important thing, however, is to build your students' confidence while giving them new words and phrases to practice. Don't be afraid to try something new - and most of all, don't be afraid to have fun doing it!

About the Author

Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione is a coauthor of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies that Cross Proficiency Levels. She is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado and teaches courses in Early Childhood Education, Literacy, and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. She is a former elementary teacher of English language learners and is currently researching how ELLs make sense of texts.

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Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges and Solutions

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges. Dr. Moses Guccione is the co-author of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies That Cross Proficiency Levels ( Heinemann, 2009).

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This article helps educators understand the role that academic language plays in their classrooms and in ELL student success.

The article also includes information on social vs. academic language, as well as numerous examples of the different kinds of academic language needed for all students to fully participate in classroom activities and assignments. Additional articles, books, and videos can be found in our Academic Language and ELLs Resource Section.

Academic Language: An Overview

Why is academic language important?

Perhaps you or your colleagues have taught a student, who, like Carlos, gave every sign of being fully "fluent" in English, only to find that the student struggled on more academic kinds of assignments.

Many students, including English language learners (ELLs), have difficulty mastering the kinds of academic language needed to succeed in school, especially if they have never been explicitly taught how to use it. These students include long-term ELLs, students who have attended U.S. schools for much or all of their education but have not yet mastered the language of school.

At the same time, many educators have never learned how to teach academic language since language has traditionally been considered the domain of English as a Second Language (ESL) or English language arts teachers. Yet the use of academic language is more important than ever in preparing students for academic and professional success, particularly in the era of rigorous college- and career-ready standards (such as the Common Core State Standards) that require an increased use of academic language in and across all disciplines.

What is your role?

It may seem daunting at first, but you have an important role to play in supporting your students' academic language development. You do not need an in-depth background in linguistics or ESL methods to do so; rather, you need some guidance and practice in learning how to recognize the role academic language plays in your subject area and classroom, as well as support from colleagues who can guide you in your efforts. Many ESL and bilingual colleagues have extensive experience in identifying students' academic language needs and collaborating with colleagues and will be more than happy to do so if asked!

In this article

To get you started, this article shares three things you need to know about academic language:

The difference between social and academic language

The importance of looking beyond vocabulary

How academic language will be used in your classroom

The article will also share recommended resources for further review. For specific instructional strategies on increasing the use of academic language in your classroom, see these ideas from ELL expert Kristina Robertson, as well as the resources at the end of the article, and check in with your ESL/bilingual colleagues for additional suggestions!

The difference between social and academic language

As the example of Carlos above suggests, teachers may be most familiar with the level of students' social language - the language they hear students using with their friends in the hallways or on the playground. Students typically achieve proficiency in social language long before they have mastered a grade-appropriate level of academic language. As a result, a student's ability to use language in social settings is not necessarily an accurate indicator of their mastery of academic language.

What is academic language?

Academic language is the language of school and it is used in textbooks, essays, assignments, class presentations, and assessments. Academic language is used at all grade levels, although its frequency increases as students get older.

It is also the language of the workplace - for example, the language used to write a business letter as opposed to a casual e-mail to a co-worker.

Examples

One strategy that academic language expert Dr. Robin Scarcella uses to help her college students understand the difference between social and academic language is to provide them with similar sentences or passages that convey the same meaning but that are written in different styles, such as the following:

I like this book more.

This story is more exciting than the first one we read.

Because they were brave.

The soldiers received the medal because of their courage.

If you were to compare other kinds of passages or documents, some examples might include:

A business letter vs. a personal e-mail (noted above)

A newspaper's summary of a research report vs. the actual abstract of the report

A customer review of a book vs. the publisher's description of the book

As your students become more familiar with the differences between social and academic language, it will be easier to identify which is which and what is most appropriate for a certain setting. Kristina Roberston notes in her video clip on our academic language playlist that her students call this "sounding smart" - and they know it when they hear it. When they hear themselves "sounding smart," it is a source of excitement and motivation in the classroom.

Additional resources

To learn more about the distinctions between social and academic language, take a look at the following resources from Colorín Colorado:
Discussion questions:

Have you had any students who were proficient in social language but struggled with academic language?

If so, how did their social and academic language use differ?

Did anything in their language abilities surprise you?

What are some examples that could be used to compare social and academic language in your classroom?

Beyond vocabulary

Many people think of vocabulary first when it comes to academic language. While content-area vocabulary words and terms are certainly an important component, academic language also refers to the words and phrases used to connect these key words and to communicate concepts. Here are two different ways to understand a broader interpretation of academic language.

"Bricks and mortar"

Dr. Cindy Lundgren explains the idea of " bricks and mortar" in our academic language video playlist, where "bricks" are the key vocabulary words and concepts in a sentence, and "mortar" is the language (such as signal words and phrases) holding the bricks together. Here is the example she explains in the video:

Even though bats have wings, they are not birds.

In this sentence, the bricks are the key vocabulary words in bold:

Yet to fully understand the sentence, students must understand the meaning of "even though." Here is a sample definition:

"Even though" means that two items are similar, but they are not the same. In this case, bats and birds both share a similar feature (having wings), but they are not the same animal.

Understanding signal words and phrases is a key step in a student's ability to "unlock" the academic language they encounter, as well as to start using it correctly themselves.

Video: Bricks and mortar in language instruction

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the concept of "bricks and mortar" when thinking about effective vocabulary instruction for ELLs.

TWIPs

Debbie Zacarian and Judie Haynes (2010) also look beyond discrete vocabulary words in their academic language definition, including a range of structures they call TWIPs ( Terms, Words, Idioms, and P hrases). Here are some examples:

Note that, in the second example, the "Declaration" is a single word standing in for the official name of a specific document (the Declaration of Independence). Many textbooks used abbreviated terms in the interest of space, which requires students not only to track the references back to the original term but to build on existing background knowledge about the subject being discussesd. ELLs may need some extra preparation to draw upon or build background knowledge in order to fully understand the academic language being used.

Same Word, Different Meaning

Keep in mind that some key words or terms may have different meanings across disciplines and may be used as different parts of speech in different contexts (i.e., noun vs. verbs):

Lunch table (Social language)
Periodic Table of Elements (Science)
Table of Contents (ELA)
Multiplication tables (Math)
To table (delay) the discussion (Social Studies)

Plot of a story (ELA)
Plot of land (Geography)
Plot ordered pairs on a graph (Math)
To plot a government coup (History)

Branch of government (Social Studies)
Branch of a river (Geography)
To branch out (Idiom)

Your foot (Health)
One foot in length (Math)
Foot in your mouth (Idiom)
Foot of the mountain (Geography)
To foot the bill (Idiom)

As you identify the academic language you will be focusing on in a particular lesson, take a moment to think about whether any of the words or phrases may have another definition so that you can anticipate any possible confusion. You may wish to share your list with your ESL colleagues for input as well.

Cognates

Finally, there is a great tool you can use to bolster academic language for students who speak a language related to English. This is the use of cognates - words that have a similar spelling and meaning in both languages. More than a one third of words in English have a Spanish-language cognate! These often include technical or content-specific words that can help students make a connection between both languages, such as the following:

You can see many more in our list of Spanish-English cognates, and your ESL or bilingual colleagues may be able to think of other related examples as well. Once students know how that a connection exists, they will start noticing more words that are related and they will be able to apply their own existing background knowledge about those words to the vocabulary they encounter. They may need some guidance initially, and we provide some tips on how to use cognates in this Colorín Colorado article to help you get started.

Note: There is such a thing as a false cognate, the most famous one being that embarazada in Spanish is not "embarrassed" - it means "pregnant"! It is not a 100% foolproof strategy - but it is generally a very useful tool.
Discussion questions:

What are examples of key vocabulary words, terms, idioms, and phrases that are useful to know in your subject area?

Can you think of some phrases or signal words that are not content specific but are commonly used in your area (such as "In comparison...")?

Looking at the list of cognates from Colorín Colorado, find 10 words related to your subject area.

Planning for purpose and products

Now that you have some more background on what academic language is, it's time to think about how it is used in your subject area. Academic language is used for a variety of purposes across disciplines:

Students may write a lab report in science class.

Students may orally explain their reasoning in math class.

Students may listen to and compare two famous speeches in history class.

Students may compare a scene from a novel and a movie in an English language arts class.

Domains of language

As you can see in these examples, academic language is used in all four domains of language (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), and all four domains are needed to achieve the above tasks. While the uses of academic language may be more obvious for reading and writing, academic language is also necessary for listening to class discussion, lectures, and debates, as well as delivering speeches, presentations, and oral arguments. Students may need just as much help using academic language in their speaking as in their writing, and they may be at different levels across different domains. Carlos, for example, has strong academic listening and speaking skills, but weaker writing skills.

Students may also need help moving from the word level to the sentence, paragraph, or essay/project level in these sophisticated assignments. The most important thing you can do is to provide examples and model the kinds of language you expect students to use on a regular basis. By doing so, you will help familiarize students with the kinds of academic language needed to succeed in your classroom, as well as the purpose of the language they are using. Our Academic Language booklist and webcast include a number of subject-specific strategies for helping students master the kinds of language needed in different content areas.

This is also another area where ESL/bilingual colleagues can help you; they may have tried and true strategies, graphic organizers, and suggestions for modeling academic language and for helping students transition into more sophisticated assignments. One great example is the process that high school ESL teacher Michelle Lawrence uses to help her students transition from sentences and paragraphs to essays. (See Playlist: Writing Process 2.)

Note: Another helpful tool for communicating expectations about academic language is the use of language objectives , which you can learn more about from Colorín Colorado.
Discussion Questions:

As you consider how academic language is used in your discipline, what kinds of assignments are students expected to produce in your classroom and in higher grades?

What are some examples of academic language that are needed for each of these activities?

How are different language domains used at different steps of the process? (For example, a lab may require spoken language to be used in discussions between partners, and then writing to be used for the final written lab report.)

Based on what you now know about academic language, what kinds of support do you think Carlos needs in his chemistry class?

Do you have any ideas on how Mrs. Wilson can support his written academic language?

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Academic Language and ELLs: What Teachers Need to Know

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This article helps educators understand the role that academic language plays in their classrooms and in ELL student success. The article also includes information on social vs. academic language, as well as numerous examples of the different kinds of academic language needed for all students to fully participate in classroom activities and assignments.

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Knowing vocabulary words is key to reading comprehension. The more words a child knows, the better he or she will understand the text. Using a variety of effective teaching methods will increase the student’s ability to learn new words.

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Serving Multilingual Learners of All Ages

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7 Simple Strategies to Support ELs in Writing Instruction

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1. Model Each kid benefits from seeing how to write before they DO the writing. BUT for English Learners this is even more important because language structures may vary from their native language....

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Serving Multilingual Learners of All Ages

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A workshop setting is very conducive to differentiation. But how are we ensuring that our ELLs are not being forgotten? How are we making sure that the workshop setting is meeting the needs of our ELLs and pushing them forward in language AND literacy?
​

First and foremost, as teachers we have to remember that when we work with students who are learning English as a second language, we are not only teaching them to read and write, we are simultaneously teaching them the English language, language proficiency. It is important to keep a pulse of the students' levels in listening, speaking, reading and writing in English.

Being aware that some students come from countries where letters and symbols are different from ours is important too. Teaching ELLs how to decode letters will help empower them to read. Being explicit about letter sounds, capitals and lower case letter, and punctuation can be taught in small groups or during individual reading conferences with ELLs. Nevertheless, these are important lessons that our ELLs might have missed depending on when they came to the US.

Often we ask our students to "sound it out...does it sound like it makes sense or sound correct?" Well, for an English language learner that type of question is difficult to answer. Some haven't heard enough examples of the English language to know if it sounds correct. For many, the classroom is the only place where they experience the English language. With ELLs, explicit instruction and modeling goes a long way.

If we want our students be excel in academics, we have to help them excel in language at the same time. Our ELLs need multiple opportunities to listen, speak, read and write during the day and this includes the workshop time. Recently while at an assessment training, the presenter discussed accommodations. I loved how she phrased it. She said that accommodations do not give ELLs an advantage. Accommodations level the playing field. I look at it this way...if a little girl can't reach the water fountain, what would we do? Would we let the child go without water until she grows tall enough to reach it herself even though she needs the water? Would we go get the maintenance crew to LOWER the fountain? NO! Of course not! The child deserves and needs the water and we will not lower the standards for her to reach it. We will give her a scaffold and little by little pull it back. The scaffold might be a stepping stool or some other type of device to allow her equal access to the water. She will get the same water that everyone else gets. Level the playing field.

​See the document below for ideas on how to level the playing field for ELLs during workshop. Feel free to email me or reach out to me on Twitter and I will send you more information on this document.

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A workshop setting is very conducive to differentiation. But how are we ensuring that our ELLs are not being forgotten? How are we making sure that the workshop setting is meeting the needs of our ELLs and pushing them forward in language AND literacy?