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Chapter 1_Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners

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Suggested Scaffolds By Proficiency Level

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Suggested Scaffolds By Proficiency Level

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Staehr Fenner & Snyder, 2017

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In my last post, I shared briefly about a strategy that I use to build vocabulary for my beginning English Language Learners (ELLs) called the K.I.M. Strategy. Today I want to share with you in more detail about what this strategy is, why I use it, and how I differentiate it to meet the needs of ALL students.

The K.I.M. Strategy is a low prep, high yield strategy that supports ALL levels of learners across ALL content areas. Now, you can't get much better than that!

What is it? It's a direct vocabulary instruction strategy. The acronym stands for Key word, Important information, Memory clue and S entence. I have my students do this right inside their notebooks (no-prep), but you could also use a graphic organizer or vocabulary booklet (low-prep).

Why I use it! I use it because it's effective in building vocabulary, and my students enjoy it. As vocabulary grows, so does comprehension. I teach English language learners who happen to be of low socio-economic status. Those are two subgroups who come to school with significantly lower vocabulary knowledge than their English only and higher SES peers. I believe explicit vocabulary instruction is a crucial component of instruction, especially for kids in these subgroups. However, as we know, every child benefits from direct and purposeful vocabulary instruction. I say purposeful because looking up definitions in a dictionary is not purposeful, or meaningful, IMO.

How I use it! In my students' notebooks, I have designated a section to vocabulary. This includes notebooks across content areas (math, science & social studies).

The K.I.M. Strategy format is easily modified to meet the needs of students. For example, my beginning English language learners build their basic vocabulary using K.M.S. because they are new to the language, I do not have them add "Important information;" I simply want them to learn words and what they are.

My intermediate and higher students always include K.I.M., and usually add "S" for a sentence as a follow up activity.

A typical vocabulary lesson looks something like this... Before I give my students a word, I show them examples, pictures or drawings of the word. Then I'll say, this is a "_____." So, what do you think "_____" means? I let them explore the meaning first based on the visuals that I provide. I then steer them to the important information that they need to add in their notebook.

Here's a recent example with my 6th grade math group. They were starting a geometry unit and needed to learn some new vocabulary. I used the document camera to project my notebook.

The visual of my notebook provides them with a scaffold to ensure accuracy with their spelling and the "important information" of new terms. Memory clues and sentences are independent activities.

First, they drew 6 KIM boxes for their 6 new words...

... then, I drew various sized and shaped quadrilaterals on the whiteboard.

I said, "These are all quadrilaterals. What do you think a quadrilateral is?" Hands shot up and students shared their guesses. With teacher support, we narrowed down the information to the most important information. Students then filled in the Key word - quadrilateral, the Important information - 4 sided shape with 4 angles, then they drew a quick picture for a M emory clue.

Next, I drew several examples of parallel lines and told them that these lines are parallel. "What do you think the word parallel means?" Again, hands shot up. After that, a right angle, and so on...

On this day I did not have them write a sentence because of time constraints, but that could be a follow up activity at a different time or day.

When I do direct vocabulary instruction, I typically teach about 5 new words in a lesson, but that can vary. I also typically add a fun, kinesthetic activity as an exit ticket. Recently I needed to teach my students just 2 words, "ascending" and "descending." We did the K.I.M. Strategy for those 2 terms, then towards the end of class we did a quick human number line activity! I passed out index cards with a percent written on each, then told them to get into "ascending" order. Once that was complete, I mixed them up and told them to get into "descending" order.

For the follow up activity of the geometry terms, I wrote each term on an index card, and corresponding pictures on another. I randomly passed out all the cards and told them to find the classmate who has the matching term or picture for their card, then stand next to each other. That was their exit ticket for that day.

We are a good ways into the school year now, so my students know the process and expectations of using the K.I.M. strategy, however, when the strategy was first introduced, I did provide an anchor chart for students to use as a reference.

If you are looking for a new way to incorporate direct vocabulary instruction into your lessons, I think you'll find this strategy to be effective, engaging and super easy to implement. I also think that your students will find it to be a fun way to learn new vocabulary. It's my go-to strategy this year for teaching new vocabulary.

If you have a great strategy for direct vocabulary instruction, I'd love to hear about it!

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K.I.M. - A Highly Effective Strategy to Build Vocabulary Across Any Content Area

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An educational blog for sharing ideas, strategies and resources that support English Language Learners.

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Cue Signals and Questions to Support Language Use

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Cue Signals and Questions to Support Language Use

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Unspoken rules with high emotional impact

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Discussion Protocols

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Critical Friends Group work and CFG coaches' training

Critical Friends Group work originated with the NSRF in 1994. The key differences between CFG communities and other professional learning communities (PLCs) are (1) an intentional cultivation of safety and trust between the members, and (2) a focus on solving problems and accomplishing goals brought by its participants. These distinctions are key to the member educators helping each other improve their practices with honesty and integrity, resulting in a more positive school culture.

Groups are led by a certified CFG coach who is trained to use NSRF collaboration tools called "protocols" mindfully. These tools allow all CFG members' voices to be heard and honored as they give non-judgmental, but open and honest, feedback to one another, resulting in accomplishing great things in short periods of time.

Worldwide, educators are experiencing how CFG work epitomizes the mindset of continuous growth and improvement, as their CFG communities create and solidify their belonging mindset, all of which translates into a productive system to improve student learning.

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Improving student outcomes through collaboration in Critical Friends Group® work

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GP 1: Deficit Perspective to an Assets-Based Perspective 

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GP 1: Deficit Perspective to an Assets-Based Perspective 

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Cultural Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills Self-Assessment

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Cultural Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills Self-Assessment

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Cultural Awareness Knowledge and Skills Self-Assessment

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GP 5: Community Walk Student Planning Template

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GP 5: Community Walk Student Planning Template

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GP 4: Assessing Multicultural Resources 

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GP 4: Assessing Multicultural Resources 

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GP 3: Goal Setting Tool: Language Development 

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GP 3: Goal Setting Tool: Language Development 

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SEL Framework:  Essential Actions to Achieve Equity for MLs

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SEL Framework:  Essential Actions to Achieve Equity for MLs

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SupportEd

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Video: Activating and Building Background Knowledge

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Video: Activating and Building Background Knowledge

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Snyder & Staehr Fenner, 2021

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Suggested Scaffolds By Proficiency Level

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Suggested Scaffolds By Proficiency Level

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Staehr Fenner & Snyder, 2017

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Suggested Scaffolds at Each Proficiency ML

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Companion Resources (Videos and Tools) from Culturally Responsive Teaching for MLs

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Companion Resources (Videos and Tools) from Culturally Responsive Teaching for MLs

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Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity

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Welcome to the Companion WebsiteChapter 1Video 1.1: Why Culturally Responsive Teaching MattersChapter 2Video 2.1: What It Means to Value Diversity

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Barriers and Solutions for ML Family Engagement

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Barriers and Solutions for ML Family Engagement

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Multiple resources from Colorín Colorado

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The National Education Association's ELL advocacy guide, All In! How Educators Can Advocate for English Language Learners, offers strategies, resources, and step-by-step instructions for navigating the real-life issues educators encounter every day.

The guide also features general educators and ELL educators who tell stories about the students who inspired them to act. Do you have a story to tell? Add your voice to the voices of educators from around the country.

This article written by ELL educator and blogger Larry Ferlazzo discusses philanthropic support for ELL education, as well as the role of ELL educators in that conversation and process of setting priorities. Larry is a veteran teacher Sacramento, CA and has authored numerous articles and two books.

How do I use this information?

You can use the information from this section in a variety of ways, whether it's for your own research or to share with colleagues and community members. Some settings in which these resources may prove useful include:

Conversations with students, parents, colleagues, and administrators

Professional development settings

District planning sessions

University courses (undergraduate and graduate)

School board meetings

Meetings with lawmakers

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The National Education Association's ELL advocacy guide, All In! How Educators Can Advocate for English Language Learners , offers strategies, resources, and step-by-step instructions for navigating the real-life issues educators encounter every day. The guide also features general educators and ELL educators who tell stories about the students who inspired them to act.

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From math, literacy, equity, multilingual learners, and SEL, to assessment, school counseling, and education leadership, our books are research-based and authored by experts on topics most relevant to what educators are facing today.

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From math, literacy, equity, multilingual learners, and SEL, to assessment, school counseling, and education leadership, our books are research-based and authored by experts on topics most relevant to what educators are facing today.

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You Are Already a Leader: Identifying Your Leadership Skills on Behalf of ELLs

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You Are Already a Leader: Identifying Your Leadership Skills on Behalf of ELLs

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You Are Already a Leader: Identifying Your Leadership Skills on Behalf of ELLs

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At this point in the school year, it’s a good time to hit the pause button and reflect upon how the academic year has been going. It’s also a point at which you can decide which goals you can set for the remainder of your work in the classroom this year to support your ELLs.In previous blog posts, I…

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Ideas for Multicultural Resources and Some Questions for Consideration

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Ideas for Multicultural Resources and Some Questions for Consideration

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@JoelRGarza & @LyricalSwordz

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E. Crisfield, 2017

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Embedding Diversity in Our Curriculum Padlet

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Embedding Diversity in Our Curriculum Padlet

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This is a great resource to read when thinking about setting up the classroom for the school year.

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Join our webinars and learn from experts on how to better support Multilingual Learners (MLs) and English Learners (ELs)

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Practical Strategies for Teaching ELs Online Padlet

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Practical Strategies for Teaching ELs Online Padlet

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Padlet from March 2020 SupportEd Webinar

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Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School

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Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School

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Baker, et. al, 2014

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Rethinking the English Learner Achievement Gap

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If publicly available data are any indication, English learners (ELs) are perpetually lagging behind their native English-speaking peers academically. Indeed, report after report show that ELs consistently under-perform when it comes to statewide tests, graduation rates, course grades, and more. Not…

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Three Strategies for Promoting  ELs' Assets

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Three Strategies for Promoting  ELs' Assets

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Staehr Fenner, 2020

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Note: This post first appeared on k-12talk.com September 24, 2019. That piece is titled Back to School: Promoting ELs' Assets. For more culturally responsive teaching strategies for creating an asset-based environment, visit our ML Resource Library.
The proportion of English learners (ELs) in the United States public school system has reached Gaps such as these have helped lead far too many educators to see ELs as one-dimensional, defined primarily as lacking in areas such as English proficiency, achievement in content areas, and/or ability to graduate. nearly ten percent of all students and is on a nationwide growth trajectory¹. Along with this growth in numbers, ELs tend to experience an opportunity gap, which generally refers to the impact that factors such as students' English proficiency, socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity have on their achievement. For example, 79% of English fluent eighth graders scored at the basic or above reading level in 2017, while only 32% of ELs scored at those levels during that same year². In addition, ELs have one of the lowest graduation rates among all students on a national level, approximately 63% as compared to 82% of all students³. Recent research⁴ on teachers' perceptions of ELs in kindergarten through second grade suggests that classifying students as ELs has a "direct and negative effect on teachers' perceptions of students' academic skills."

That's a lot of bad news, right? It doesn't need to be that way, however.

In this blog post, I hope to raise your awareness about the importance of recognizing the multiple assets that our ELs bring.

An assets-based perspective values students' home languages and cultures and sees these gifts as foundations for future learning, rather than as hindrances to overcome. An assets-based perspective also recognizes that parents of ELs are involved in their children's education and support their children in varied and perhaps unrecognized ways⁵, rather than blaming them for their children's perceived lack of academic skills. It also provides multiple opportunities to honor students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds and incorporate what students already know into their learning. Thus, it stands in direct contrast to a deficit perspective, in which the focus is on ELs' challenges.

The good news? Despite systems which may impede ELs' assets to be recognized, individual teachers possess the agency to chip away at the deficit perspective.

Three Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies for Promoting English Learners' Assets

Engaging in an assets-based approach with ELs requires a shift in our thinking from what we believe is lacking in our students to the many strengths and assets ELs and their families already possess. To do this, we must take time to learn about our ELs' and their families' invaluable personal, cultural, social, and world experiences and draw from these strengths-based understandings to create instructional opportunities that are meaningful, purposeful and appealing to students. Not only will our ELs benefit, but English-fluent students will learn from their EL peers and see them in a new light. Here are three replicable ways to promote ELs' assets.-

1. Encourage Storytelling.

We all love to hear a good story, and ELs sharing their own stories is one way we can build bridges and help foster connections with EL students. Teachers of younger ELs can first model the task of students drawing a personal narrative storyboard or series of images⁶, then have students write a response to the sentence prompt-"What I wish my teacher knew about me." Teachers can ask older newcomer students to write a personal narrative and then share it with colleagues and school administrators.

To begin this project, interview students and ask them to write about themselves in their home languages, offering scaffolding for these tasks. Each of these activities supports the process of learning more about students' lives and experiences so that we, as educators, develop a better understanding of the linguistic and cultural assets that our students bring to our classrooms. One piece of advice: be sure to give EL students the choice to tell as much of their stories as they feel comfortable with or to have the option to not share them at all, as students may have experienced traumatic events that they wish not to share.

ELs and their families who are open to the idea could also publish their stories in school newspapers to reach a wider audience. Artwork can provide an alternative way for students to contribute their stories. (For more on this topic, please see Zacarian & Staehr Fenner's chapter "From Deficit-Based to Assets-Based" in Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners' Success.)
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➤ Self-paced. Available year-round. Earn a certificate for 20 PD hours by joining ourCulturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners (MLs) on-demand book study at any time.
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2. Spread the Word About ELs' Success.

To disrupt deficit thinking, I also encourage you to share news of ELs' successes - both great and small - with your school or district. There are many examples, if we are more aware of where to find them, of ways to demonstrate ELs' growth academically or personally. For instance, I love reading each spring about current or former ELs who have become high school valedictorians. These success stories highlight the metalinguistic superpowers ELs develop (not to mention hard work and persistence) as they learn content in a new language.

You can also invite successful former ELs - including those in college, receiving technical training, or in careers - back to your school in person or by video to highlight what helped them achieve. I encourage you to investigate multiple ways to disseminate your message, such as in assemblies, local newspapers, and/or on your school or district's social media channels (with students' and families' permission).
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3. Thoughtfully Confront the EL Deficit Mindset.

Once your awareness of the importance of promoting an assets-based perspective of ELs is raised, you may begin to notice when others make deficit-based statements about ELs. This gives you the opportunity to support a colleague's shift from a deficit to an assets-based disposition⁷.

We need to be thoughtful about challenging others' thinking in order to do so without disrupting our crucial relationships with our colleagues, especially those relationships that are formed in a new school year. All educators - no matter what their title or how many years of experience they have - are positioned to serve as agents of change when it comes to helping others shift ever so slightly to an assets-based view of ELs and their families.

But how can we best challenge others' deficit thinking when we find ourselves in the uncomfortable space in which we hear someone apply a deficit perspective in describing an EL or an EL's family?
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When you encounter such a situation, I suggest following these steps ⁸:

1. Recognize and acknowledge your colleague's expertise.

2. First listen and try to understand your colleague's perspective, even if you may not agree with them.

3. Consider what might be happening on a systematic level to promote EL deficit thinking around this issue.

4. Suggest some potential strategies to them to better support their ELs.

5. Lighten their load by offering to help implement a new strategy or approach to support them in their work with ELs.

6. Follow up on your support for ELs by checking back in with them.

We all have the ability to spread a culture of EL assets in our sphere of influence. If you begin the school year with ELs' assets in mind, you and your colleagues will be better positioned to create a more welcoming environment for our ELs who have so much to contribute and offer. (For more on this topic, please see Zacarian & Staehr Fenner's chapter "From Deficit-Based to Assets-Based" in Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners' Success .)
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➤ Earn a certificate for 1-3 PD hours in ourSupporting ELs' Pathways
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Three Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies for Promoting ELs' Assets Sketch Note

We encourage you to share this blog post and sketch note with colleagues to continue fostering a shared sense of accountability in the shift from a deficit to an assets-based disposition. You can click here to share our blog post and sketch note on Twitter, or click here to download this sketch note immediately.
Click here to download the Three Strategies for Promoting English Learners' Assets Sketch Note
Sources:
¹ National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). English language learners in public schools. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgf.asp

² National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). The Nation's Report Card. (2017). NAEP reading report card. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2017/#/nation/achievement?grade=8

³ National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. (2018). National- and State-Level High School Graduation Rates for English Learners. Retrieved from https://ncela.ed.gov/files/fast_facts/OELA_FF_HS_GradRates.pdf

⁴ Umansky, I, & Dumont, H. (2019). English Learner Labeling: How English Learner Status Shapes Teacher Perceptions of Student Skills & the Moderating Role of Bilingual Instructional Settings. (EdWorkingPaper: 19-94). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai19-94

⁵ Staehr Fenner, D. (2014). Advocating for English learners: A guide for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

⁶ Zacarian, D., & Staehr Fenner, D., "From Deficit-Based to Assets-Based" (2020). In Calderón, M. et al., Breaking down the wall: Essential shifts for English learners' success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

⁷ Zacarian, D., & Staehr Fenner, D., "From Deficit-Based to Assets-Based" (2020). In Calderón, M. et al., Breaking down the wall: Essential shifts for English learners' success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

⁸ Adapted from a 2017 blog post by Diane Staehr Fenner on SupportEd: https://supported.com/supporteds-top-10-ways-support-english-learners-2017

Continue the conversation with us on Twitter:@ SupportEduc

Additional resources: 2021 Online PD Offerings | Free Checklists & Tools | Webinar Replays

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Three Strategies for Promoting English Learners' Assets

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Unlock the potential of your students with these 3 culturally responsive teaching strategies for promoting English learners' assets.

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Espinoza-Navarrete & Ackley

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Mexican American Legal Defense Fund & NEA, 2010

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Tips for Connecting with Non-English Speaking Parents

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Tips for Connecting with Non-English Speaking Parents

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Gonzalez, 2015

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American schools are becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse. While many students quickly attain proficiency in English, there's often a language barrier when communicating with parents. As an ESL teacher, overcoming language and cultural barriers have become part of my job description. Although I'm fortunate to be fluent and literate in Spanish, many of my students and their families are not Spanish speaking, so I find myself in the same predicament as many regular education teachers when having to communicate with non-English-speaking parents.

While Spanish may be the most common home language of many multilingual students, there are pockets of the country where other languages, such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hmong, Haitian Creole, and Arabic are widely spoken. Perhaps you have a Spanish-speaking staff member on your campus to assist with parent meetings, but if a family speaks another foreign language, you may be in a bind. Conversely, some families are indeed English speaking, and while their accents may be heavy, English is their language of choice, so communication may be challenging. Despite any language barriers, it behooves us to reach out to those of different languages and cultures so they feel welcome and comfortable in our schools.

Here are some tips to help teachers connect with these families:

1. Listen and learn. Ask questions, read, and take the time to learn about their language and heritage. Avoid stereotypes at all cost. Whether you have a predominantly Hispanic, Asian, Arab, or European student population, ethnic groups come in all colors, shapes, and sizes-not to mention dialects and religious backgrounds. Don't assume anything. People within the same ethnic group, and often from the same country, will eat different foods, speak different languages, and celebrate different holidays.

Here are some examples of common assumptions that can land you in a tight spot:

When offering a Hispanic heritage night, don't just serve tacos, unless you're expecting a predominantly Mexican audience (and even then you might want to offer a more nuanced menu). Many non-Mexican Hispanics are highly offended when folks assume they are Mexican. I know a Colombian parent who walked out on a Spanish night presentation because, according to her, "everything was Mexican." While the majority of Hispanics in the United States are indeed Mexican, Hispanics represent numerous different countries. In my case, I'm Cuban and grew up in Miami. I didn't meet a Mexican until I went to Cancun on vacation with my parents.

If you have a large Indian student population, remember there are 15 official languages and countless other unofficial languages in India. Indians from different regions will not be able to communicate with each other unless they both speak English. Furthermore, although English is actually India's common official language, it is very different from American English. While it's likely you can communicate in English, it's safe to expect some communication breakdown.

If many of your parents are Asian, be sure to know more specific information about their countries and regions. And please don't assume that Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese can understand each other. Their languages and physical characteristics may seem very similar, but these groups are vastly different, both culturally and linguistically.

2. Use technology. Professional translators aren't always available at schools, but Google Translate is. It isn't perfect, but it works fairly well. If you use Remind, you can copy/paste the translation into your messages so parents receive them in their native language. I set up a Remind group in Spanish, not only to send messages about my class, but also to translate school calls on important topics such as report cards or snow days. Remind also recently released its Translate feature in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and German. For users who set up the app in one of those languages, a translation button will appear when they receive messages in English. By simply tapping a button, messages will be instantly translated into the requested language. If you need translation into any other language, Remind's private chat feature allows you to send translated messages to someone, by simply copying and pasting from Google Translate. Class Dojo also recently released a Translate feature enabling translation into 30 different languages. While I'm not currently a Class Dojo user, some of my children's teachers have used it in the past, and I found it to be an excellent tool.

3. Use standard English. Some parents' English is broken, but they will be able to understand the gist of the message if you speak slowly and avoid slang, idioms, and analogies. Ask for their "two-cents" and they may hand you some change instead of giving you their input. Likewise, an analogy may help a native English speaker more clearly understand a teaching strategy or approach, but to a non-English speaker, it may be completely confusing.

4. Smiles are understood by all. Care and compassion have no language. A warm and friendly demeanor will express much more than words. When parents sense you are genuinely concerned about their son or daughter, they will connect with you and it will improve their child's school experience.

5. Stay connected. Reaching out to parents is not a once-a-year thing. We need to stay in touch all year long. Connecting with parents helps develop a valuable partnership that will undoubtedly benefit the student in the classroom. All parents want their children to learn. My parents never quite mastered the English language, so they couldn't help me with my homework, but they held me accountable and pushed me to achieve more than they ever could. They understood the value of education and highly respected my teachers. I find that most families are not very different from my parents. They all want their children to thrive. Staying connected can help parents feel like part of this valued process.

Use some of the technology tools mentioned above. Weekly Remind or Class Dojo messages keep parents abreast of what's happening in the classroom and can also give you a chance to brag a little.

6. Push politics aside. Our students' birthplace or immigration status is irrelevant. They are entitled to an education, and it is our job to serve them well. Reaching out to parents will not only generate their support, but will likely increase academic achievement. After all, we want well-behaved, high-achieving students, not dropouts roaming the streets.

As a former English-language learner who entered kindergarten without speaking a word of English, I understood the language acquisition process well before taking my first language-education course. My personal experiences have made me keenly aware of how to best reach out to parents. One thing is for certain. Parents want to know that their child is cared for and valued while at school and that you are not only their teacher, but also their ally. Cultural and linguistic barriers are undoubtedly challenging, but they are not impossible to overcome.

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Tips for Connecting With Non-English-Speaking Parents (Opinion)

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Teachers can play a big role in helping families of diverse languages and cultures feel welcome and comfortable in schools, writes Anabel Gonzalez.

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Breiseth, 2016

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Breiseth, Robertson, Lafond, 2011

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Engaged ELL parents bring invaluable dedication and wisdom regarding their children to the school community and can be crucial partners in supporting their children's success. This guide offers twenty big ideas to help school leaders get started on the path towards a strong home-school partnership. An overview of the guide and related video clips are included below. You can also see this guide in an article format.

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A Guide for Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders

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Engaged ELL parents bring invaluable dedication and wisdom regarding their children to the school community and can be crucial partners in supporting their children's success. This guide offers twenty big ideas to help school leaders get started on the path towards a strong home-school partnership.

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Communicating Important Information with ELL Families: Strategies for Success

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Communicating Important Information with ELL Families: Strategies for Success

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Breiseth, Robertson, & Lafond, 2015

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It is critical for schools to understand the rights that English language learners (ELLs), immigrant students, and their families have regarding access to schooling and information in their home languages. Learn more about those rights below, as well as some best practices for not only meeting those obligations but building positive partnerships with ELL families in support of their children.

Supporting immigrant families

For related ideas, see the following:

6. Find ways to communicate with ELL parents

Note: ELL families are legally entitled to information about their child's schooling (including enrollment, parent-conference meetings, and any services the school provides, such as ESL or special education) in a language they understand. See more about those rights in the following:

A. What you need to know

One of the greatest challenges for schools and ELL parents is communicating with each other. While educators may feel frustrated that they can't get their message across to parents, parents may be just as frustrated that they can't communicate easily with the school and their child's teacher. Like your other parents, however, ELL parents want to know what's happening with their child. Two important pieces of this puzzle include:

A reliable translation process: In Supporting English Language Learners: A Guide for Teachers and Administrators, Farin A. Houk underscores the importance of establishing two-way communication on both sides, as well as the necessity for a translation process that is "formal, steady, and reliable" (64). What does not work, she says, is sending notes home in English, talking slower or louder, using students to translate, or asking a friend or relative to translate confidential or detailed information. She also underscores the importance of having options for families with limited literacy skills (65-66).

Phone calls: Offer staff training on communicating in simplified English on the phone. Monolingual staff may be reluctant to call the homes of bilingual students because "they won't be able to understand anyway." As a result, the bilingual staff members are frequently called upon to stop what they are doing to translate. With some guidance, however, teachers can learn how to communicate basic information through a simplified conversation or message.

B. Reflection

How would you describe the communication at your school with ELL parents? Have you had some success stories? Have you explored all of your available options? Are you familiar with applicable local, state, and federal regulations regarding translations and parent access to information?

C. Strategies

In order to improve school-home communication, Houk suggests:

Hiring, when possible, staff that matches the linguistic needs of your population

Developing an ongoing relationship with community organizations

Scheduling home-school communication time into the school day for e-mails or phone calls

Using parent phone trees (65-66).

In addition:

Find out what the applicable regulations are that relate to parent communication.

Find out what translation and interpreting resources are available in your district.

Use school staff to help interpret on a rotating or scheduled basis so that the same individuals aren't frequently pulled away from other duties.

Ask parents how they prefer to receive communication (phone, e-mail, text message, etc.).

Ask parents which language they prefer - it may be English.

Inform parents that they can bring an interpreter to the school or that one can be provided.

Avoid using translation websites, which are imprecise and often inaccurate.

Notes: You may have parents with strong bilingual skills that can assist in translating school forms or interpreting. If you do plan on using these parents, however, offer training, provide a list of translated terms, give them enough time to complete the translation, and have other native speakers review written translations (Rodriguez, 48). This is critical because school terms can be complicated and easily misrepresented, especially when translated into varying dialects of the same language.

D. Examples

One educator shares the creative way she used an automated voice message: "Over the entire Christmas holidays, parents heard my recorded voice remind them of the financial aid workshops. That proved very helpful...They just need those reminders. They want our students to go to college, but sometimes that fear about the ability to pay is overwhelming" (Alford and Niño, 88).

The Bilingual PreK-3 Teacher Education Program, a federally-funded grant administered through Pacific Oaks College Northwest, was created to increase the number of certified educators from ELL/minority communities teaching in the public schools. One way they accomplish this mission is by helping talented early bilingual childhood educators in the local preschool programs fulfill the necessary requirements to become certified (Houk, 33-34).

Related resources

7. Make the enrollment process manageable for ELL parents

Note: All students have the right to a free, public K-12 education, regardless of their immigration status or that of their parents. This includes access to services and programs such as free- and reduced-priced meals, English-language development classes, special education, and school activities.

Schools are not permitted to (a) ask about immigration status for purposes of enrollment or (b) ask any questions that would dissuade immigrant students or families from enrolling or have any kind of chilling effect.

See our related guide on supporting immigrant students for more information on:

A. What you need to know

School enrollment is a complicated process for any family. There are forms to be filled out, decisions to be made, policies to be read, programs to learn about, and questions to be answered. For ELL families, a number of other obstacles can arise:

There is no interpreter available.

Parents are unaware of services (such as free- and reduced-lunch) for which they qualify.

They don't understand how bussing works.

They are confused about their rights and their children's rights.

They are reluctant to show any form of identification.

In addition, your ELL families may be coming from:

A school system very different from the U.S. system

A situation with a lot of mobility (as in the case of migrant students)

A situation without any schooling at all (such as a refugee camp).

Yet regardless of how it's done, ELL parents must have access to the same information as non-ELL parents. Sending information home in English will not ensure that it is read and understood. Getting this information doesn't just help the school operate more smoothly - it can make a critical difference in keeping children healthy and safe.

Whether through translated forms or an interpreter, ELL parents need to know about the basics, such as:

Enrollment procedures

The school schedule

Their child's schedule

Attendance policies and procedures for absences

Bussing and transportation

How breakfast and lunch work (such as lunch accounts, codes, or policies)

Free- and reduced-lunch options

Holidays and school closures

Weather delays

Procedures for alerting the school to their child's medical conditions, medication, and allergies.

ELL also parents need information about their child's academic program, such as:

Their child's classes and who their child's teachers are

The school grading system and report cards

Assessments (classroom and standardized)

Parent conferences

Information about the English-language program and placement procedures (121)

Special services, such as gifted programs or special education as needed

Homework help and resources

The school library

Clubs, sports, and extra-curricular activities.

Finally, Debbie Zacarian underscores the importance of sharing information about the following in her book, Transforming Schools for English Language Learners: A Comprehensive Framework for School Leaders:

Student and parent rights

Emergency contact cards and procedures

The student handbook and code of conduct (121).

Additional topics are included in the article Helping ELL Newcomers: Things Your Students Need to Know, an excerpt from The More-Than-Just-Surviving Handbook: ESL for Every Classroom Teacher (3rd edition) by Barbara Law and Mary Eckes.

B. Reflection

Think through your enrollment process step by step. How does it work for ELL families? Do parents get all of the information they need? What might be some possible obstacles to that process? Which steps do you think need improvement?

C. Strategies

There are a number of ways to approach the enrollment process for ELL families, including:

Bilingual staff: When possible, hire bilingual staff to work in the main office.

Translated forms: Many of the more general forms are available in other languages from the state education sites, and there may already be some translations available through your district.

Enrollment night: Schedule an "enrollment night" in which families can learn about the enrollment process and school policies with interpreters on hand.

School liaisons: Assign each family a school contact who speaks their language and guides them through the enrollment process (Houk, 66).

Welcome centers: Having a centralized ELL welcome/intake center managed by bilingual staff may help streamline enrollment and placement procedures.

Welcome kits: Put together a "welcome kit" that includes key information, basic school supplies, and educational activities for your ELL families.

Technology: Consider offering translations of your forms online, such as these from Los Angeles Unified School District, or an automated enrollment form in multiple languages.

D. Example

In the article Lessons Learned from Immigrant Families, Young-Chan Han of the Maryland Department of Education shares the story of a young boy from El Salvador who waited outside the locked school on a cold January morning for an hour until the janitor let him in. It was his first day, and it happened to be the morning of a snow delay.

Video: A warm welcome for immigrant families in the front office

8. Make the enrollment process accessible all year long

A. What you need to know

Keep in mind that your school must be ready to enroll ELLs throughout the school year. Many schools are prepared for enrollment only at the beginning of the year, and anyone who registers after that gets a short-cut "fill and drill," especially if no interpreters are available. Staff may be pulled from their regular duties to translate and help families fill out forms; this is not an acceptable solution.

B. Reflection

How does the experience of a new student enrolling at the beginning of the year compare with a student enrolling in November? January? March? How does it compare for ELLs?

C. Strategies

Ask the staff involved in ELL student enrollment (including the main office staff and the ELL/bilingual departments) for ideas on how the school can make the enrollment process welcoming and accessible all year long.

Make sure all of the information available for parents and staff at the beginning of the year is accessible throughout the year.

Ask parents who enrolled their children after the beginning of previous school years what their experience was like and what could have been improved through a survey or questionnaire.

D. Example

Kristina Roberston shares a creative approach that her school employed in order to limit the impact of new student enrollment on lost classroom time. This involved training paraprofessionals who could be pulled more easily from support work to help enrolling families. The paraprofessionals received training on the packet of information that parents received, and this allowed the school to have more than one person available to assist new families. The school also set up regular testing times after school when teachers would be available, even if a student had already begun classes.

9. Provide opportunities for parents to learn more about important topics and skills

A. What you need to know

For parents who are not familiar with the U.S. educational system, there is a lot to learn - and it's pretty complicated! If your ELL families aren't "involved" in activities and events, one reason may be that they need more background information about our school system in a language they understand.

B. Reflection

Let's return to the hypothetical new country where you are preparing to enroll your child. Imagine that you are handed a thick booklet with information about standardized testing, grading systems, and college applications written a language you don't understand. Where would you begin in order to help your child?

C. Strategies

Whenever possible, offer parents the opportunity to attend workshops in their native language about complex topics such as:

The U.S. school system (The AFTs' bilingual Pathways to Success brochure, also available in Spanish, is a helpful guide.)

Information on how to check school websites to track their child's progress

Parent-teacher conferences

Standardized testing

Gifted programs

Special education services for speech, hearing, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, etc.

The college application process

Information on the benefits of reading at home (Start with Colorín Colorado's reading tips in 11 languages and family literacy outreach toolkit).

Note: Consider enlisting other staff members, parents, volunteers, or community partners to help organize and run these workshops.

D. Examples

At Greenfield Elementary School, ELL parents participate in an ESL class which teaches computer skills in addition to basic English skills. Parents write a bilingual cookbook of recipes as a final project, and each week they attend a potluck dinner together. Children work on their homework with high school volunteers while their parents are in class (Fugate, 50).

A local educator decided to hold a Spanish-language information session about college enrollment at a local church. The meeting was listed in the newspaper, announced at the church, and publicized through personal outreach. The organizer had planned for about twenty parents; instead, more than eighty attended (Alford & Niño, 83).

Another educator at a different school helped organize a "Math Power Path Night," in which class projects were arranged along a guided path so that parents could see the sequence of recommended math classes that their children should take. The principal had expected fifty parents; more than two hundred came (83)!

Related resources

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Communicating Important Information with ELL Families: Strategies for Success

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It is critical for schools to understand the rights that English language learners (ELLs), immigrant students, and their families have regarding access to schooling and information in their home languages. Learn more about those rights below, as well as some best practices for not only meeting those obligations but building positive partnerships with ELL families in support of their children.

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Office of the Education Ombudsman

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Engaging the families of English learners in classrooms, schools, and communities

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Engaging the families of English learners in classrooms, schools, and communities

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TESOL Press

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Making Your First ELL Home Visit: A Guide for Classroom Teachers

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Making Your First ELL Home Visit: A Guide for Classroom Teachers

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Colorín Colorado

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Making Your First ELL Home Visit: A Guide for Classroom Teachers

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Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it.- Paulo Freire (p.

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Colorín Colorado

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English language learners (ELLs) benefit just as much from their parents' involvement in their education as other students. Some Hispanic parents may feel apprehensive about getting involved because of their limited English skills, lack of familiarity with mainstream culture and the public school system in the United States, and other reasons. Below are some ways to reach out to parents of ELLs and increase the likelihood of their participation.

Use their preferred language

This is an essential place to start. Without a common language, very little communication can take place. Here are some ways to build an ongoing relationship with parents by reaching out through their native language.

Find a fully bilingual interpreter.

Whether a school employee, parent liaison, family member, friend, or community member, this person can translate for parent-teacher conferences, back-to-school nights, PTA meetings, and regular communication. It is best to find an adult and not rely on the student as the translator, as this practice can disempower the parent.

Translate the written communications that you send home.

Find a way to send home personal notes and materials in Spanish. This will keep parents in the loop on issues such as report cards, school events, and homework. Try to offer complete translations in a straightforward Spanish that parents can understand.

Learn some Spanish yourself.

Even if it is just some common words and greetings, using Spanish with parents will make them feel welcome. For starters, here are a few common classroom words and phrases in Spanish.

Put parents in touch with bilingual staff.

Give parents a list of names and phone numbers of bilingual staff in the school and district who they can contact to deal with educational concerns. Also encourage them to reach out to other parents who are bilingual or monolingual so they can share experiences and help one another.

Educate parents on the U.S. school system

To support their children's education, the parents of your ELL students need to understand how the U.S. school system and culture work. Listen to parents' concerns, answer their questions, and provide them with written materials in Spanish. Make sure that they understand things like:

How your school works

If necessary, review school hours, school holidays, school rules, school trajectory from pre-kindergarten through high school, and the school's administrative hierarchy.

Your school curriculum, standards, benchmarks, and materials

Consider that in many Latin American countries, the curriculum is very centralized. There is often one set of books. Uniforms are usually required. And rules tend to be the same for all schools across an entire country.

Teacher/school expectations

Explain that teachers hope and expect that parents will help with homework, find tutors, read books, tell stories, take their children to the library, visit the classroom, and become involved in the school.

Parent rights

Make certain that your ELL parents know about their rights regarding access to interpreters and translated materials from your school, free lunch programs, your school's ELL curriculum, supplementary school services that may be available to their children, and anything else that parents at your school have a right to know. If your school receives federal funds, provide information on the No Child Left Behind requirements of schools and the rights of parents. Learn about parents' rights.

Language programs

Work in collaboration with your school social service worker or guidance counselor, and explain the different language program options that your school has, why they work the way they do, and why the chosen program may be most suitable for their children. If parents have doubts, discuss their options and invite them to visit and observe the class.

Arrange home and community visits

Visiting homes and communities is a way to establish a relationship with parents who are working during school and after-school hours or who may feel intimidated by the school setting. Before doing this, however, make sure that parents are receptive to the idea and that your school district and union allow home visits by teachers.

It is often easier to resolve difficult issues face to face as opposed to over the telephone or through written communication. This way, you and the parents can anticipate problems and agree on how to solve them. When organizing home and community visits, try to:

Arrange for an interpreter to be present.

Respect the family's time constraints and choice of location - whether in the home, church, or community center.

Point out ways they can help with their child's language development, reading skills, and homework.

Welcome parents into your school

Here are some ways to involve Hispanic parents at school:

Host a Spanish-language back-to-school night

Host an evening event at the beginning of the school year for Spanish-speaking parents. Make sure ahead of time that a good interpreter will be in attendance. For this important first meeting, try to accommodate parents' requests for scheduling, transportation, and child care. Take this time to get to know them, communicate your expectations, and answer questions. Also find out the best way to maintain regular communication with each of these parents.

Arrange for a "tour" of the school

Within the first semester, organize a general school orientation session for parents of English language learners. With a bilingual facilitator, explain and answer any questions about things such as state standards, assessments, school expectations, language program options, etc. It would be helpful to actually walk parents around the school and introduce them to key people on staff. Some states, districts, and schools already do this.

Benefits of reaching out

Watch children's author and literacy advocate Pat Mora discuss the benefits to reaching out to Spanish-speaking parents.

This video is also available on YouTube.

Recruit volunteers

If parents are willing to volunteer their time, find out what their interests and skills are. ELL parents may be able to help with a variety of activities, such as cooking food for school-wide holidays, telling stories, teaching a dance, teaching a craft, or making a presentation.

Adult learning opportunities

Immigrant families may be unaware of the opportunities available to them. Another way to reach out to parents is to make them aware of learning opportunities for themselves. Somewhere in your community there are likely to be English and/or native language literacy classes for adults, family literacy projects, and parenting classes.

If your school has not compiled a list of these resources, ask your school administrators to do so. They should call your school district, city, county, library, park and recreation center, community college, and community-based organizations. Be sure to verify that families are eligible to receive the services offered regardless of immigration status. To be most effective, this list should be made available in Spanish and English and updated regularly.

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English language learners (ELLs) benefit just as much from their parents' involvement in their education as other students. Some Hispanic parents may feel apprehensive about getting involved because of their limited English skills, lack of familiarity with mainstream culture and the public school system in the United States, and other reasons.

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The Role of School Parent Liaisons and School Administrators Connecting With Immigrant Latino Families in North Central Indiana

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The Role of School Parent Liaisons and School Administrators Connecting With Immigrant Latino Families in North Central Indiana

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Anayeli López, Rubén P. Viramontez Anguiano, René Galindo, Thomas Chibucos, and Angela Atencio

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Immigrant and Refugee Parent Perspectives 

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Immigrant and Refugee Parent Perspectives 

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Amanda Marie Shufflebarger Snell

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Educating English Language Learners: A Review of the Latest Research

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Educating English Language Learners: A Review of the Latest Research

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D. August, 2018

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It's October in the Rio Grande Valley; the summer heat has receded and the school year is in full swing. Rolando Diaz teaches sixth-grade science at Del Valle Middle School. His class is a mix of English language learners (ELLs) with varying levels of English proficiency. He also has a few newcomer students, mostly from Mexico and Central America. Although all the students are Latino, they have varying degrees of Spanish proficiency.

Today, Mr. Diaz is teaching a lesson on ecology. To prepare for it, he has added several scaffolds to the district-mandated science curriculum. He presents slides to guide the lesson, providing students with visual support for what they hear him say.

Students also have a workbook that corresponds to the slides. For each slide, students engage in an activity that helps them process information. In this case, it is "partner talk" requiring them to describe a variety of habitats in terms of food, shelter, and temperature. They also use a bilingual glossary with pictures and English and Spanish definitions for the lesson's target vocabulary words. The glossary asks students to answer a question about each word and draw a picture or provide an example. For instance, for "ecosystem," they describe one near their house.

Mr. Diaz begins the lesson by introducing the content and language objectives for the day. Next, he explains several general and domain-specific words using the slides.

He quickly gives each definition in English, asks a student to read the definition in Spanish, presents an example for each definition, and asks students to discuss each word's meaning. A few weeks ago, he taught a mini-lesson on recognizing English-Spanish cognates, so they discuss whether "habitat" and "ecosystem" are also cognates.

Students then form groups to explore the schoolyard habitat. In each group, students are assigned various roles-mapmaker, bug collector, vegetation inspector, soil sampler, or data collector-and they complete a corresponding chart. For example, the vegetation inspector measures and records the height of the tallest vegetation and works with the mapmaker to record the location.

At the end of the lesson, students listen and follow along as Mr. Diaz reads the section of the grade-level text that discusses features of the ecosystem in Yellowstone National Park. After each section of text, students answer questions orally about the text, illustrations, and other visual displays. Mr. Diaz provides sentence starters and sentence frames to scaffold responses for his students with lower levels of English proficiency.* He intentionally pairs newcomers with bilingual peers so they can converse in Spanish before writing in English.

A longtime teacher, Mr. Diaz has effectively planned and carried out instruction on a specific science topic. He has ensured that students with varying degrees of English proficiency can access the academic content, strengthen their literacy skills, and engage with and learn from their peers.

I've worked with Mr. Diaz and many others like him to incorporate these best practices into their teaching. His teaching reflects the latest research on educating ELLs. In this article, I discuss this research, which includes seven principles from a recent consensus report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 1 The report, Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures, examines what the research tells us about learning English from early childhood through high school, identifies effective practices for educators, and recommends steps policymakers can take to support high-quality educational outcomes for children and youth who are learning English.

These principles and practices build on findings from previous reviews on the same topic, 2 as well as U.S. Department of Education best-evidence syntheses. 3 While dual language programming for ELLs is effective for developing English proficiency and content-area knowledge in English-with the extra benefit of maintaining and developing students' first language, validating their culture, and providing opportunities to enhance cross-cultural understanding4-this article focuses on instruction delivered in English, an important component of dual language programs. (For more on dual language programs and early childhood education, see " Encouraging the Development and Achievement of Dual Language Learners in Early Childhood.")

1. Provide Access to Grade-Level Course Content

For ELLs, exposure to grade-level course content provides crucial access to the language required for academic achievement and for becoming fully proficient in English. 5 This exposure helps students develop the concepts and skills needed to master grade-level coursework as they move up through the grades. Grade-level coursework, in turn, helps ensure students perceive the materials as worth working on, engaging, and meaningful. 6

In the reviewed studies that focus on the elementary grade levels, a variety of authentic materials were used to support learning. For example, in an English language arts intervention, newspaper articles, diaries, and historical and fictional accounts were used to teach students about immigration across different time periods. 7 In an intervention for young children, the read-aloud books and videos focused on habitats. 8 A middle-grades science intervention used the same texts and experiments used with gifted and talented students. 9

It is important to keep in mind that many skills and types of knowledge transfer from students' first language to their second, and that ELLs may have already acquired core content in their first language. 10 For example, students who have learned math concepts and skills in their first language do not need to relearn the concepts and skills, but do need to learn the English academic language associated with them. ELLs whose first language shares cognates with English do not need to learn meanings for cognates whose meanings they know in their first language-only English labels for these cognates.

Because grade-level materials in English are challenging for ELLs, instruction using these materials must be coupled with methods that support ELLs. The following principles elaborate on this theme.

2. Build on Effective Practices Used with English-Proficient Students

Many of the practices that have proved effective for ELLs are adapted from practices that have proved effective for English-proficient students. For example, in the area of literacy interventions, it is helpful to teach ELLs the same skills as their English-proficient peers-the skills of hearing the individual English sounds or phonemes within words (i.e., phonemic awareness); using the letters and spelling patterns within words to decode the pronunciation (i.e., phonics); reading text aloud with appropriate speed, accuracy, and expression (i.e., oral reading fluency); using strategies to learn new words; thinking about what they are reading (i.e., reading comprehension); and writing with the organization, development, substance, and style appropriate to the task and audience. 11

Effective practices for middle-grades students similarly build on practices that have been effective with English-proficient students. For example, in science, the 5-E approach-Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate-has been used to guide successful interventions for ELLs. 12 Approaches deemed effective for building vocabulary in English-proficient students have also been used in successful interventions for ELLs. 13 Examples include teaching vocabulary in the context of rich and varied language experiences, teaching individual words, teaching word-learning strategies, promoting word consciousness, and using words in writing. 14 In social studies, approaches include reading and writing about informational passages that provide multiple perspectives on historical events. 15

That said, not all practices deemed effective for English-proficient learners are effective for ELLs. For example, one study16 found that the use of literacy practices that included only higher-level questioning and discussion about the meaning of text had a strong relationship to improved reading comprehension for English-proficient students, but had little discernible benefit for ELLs. The study also found differences with respect to teacher-student interactions. "Telling"-defined as the teacher providing students with information, rather than engaging them in the creation of information through coaching, recitation, or other forms of interaction-had a statistically significant positive effect on ELLs' reading comprehension, but a negative effect on the comprehension of English-proficient students. The researcher posits that in the first case, the literacy practices (e.g., higher-level questioning and discussion) may have been at too high a level for ELLs to benefit without the appropriate supports. In the case of "telling," the researcher suggests that ELLs benefited because they were provided with more support for engaging with core content in English-a level of support that was not necessary for English-proficient students.

3. Provide Supports to Help ELLs Master Core Content and Skills

ELLs also benefit from visual and verbal supports. 17 For students in the elementary grades, visual supports include the strategic use of pictures, short videos, and graphic organizers to represent complex vocabulary and concepts. 18 Verbal supports include student glossaries; words glossed in context by the teacher; and whole-class, small-group, and partner discussions that focus in part on clarifying key ideas. 19 In the middle grades, visual supports include graphic organizers such as diagrams, tables, and concept maps for science, and illustrations and multimedia for language arts. Verbal supports include bilingual glossaries, as well as sentence and paragraph frames. In several studies, students were taught strategies to support learning; 20 in one such study, students learned strategies to help them write. 21

For ELLs who are newcomers, especially those in the upper grades, core content provided in their home language will support them in developing their knowledge and skills while they are acquiring proficiency in English.

4. Develop ELLs' Academic Language

Academic language is defined as language used in school, in written communications, in public presentations, and in formal settings. 22 Academic proficiency is "knowing and being able to use general and academic vocabulary, specialized or complex grammatical structures, and multifarious language functions and discourse structures-all for the purpose of acquiring new knowledge and skills, interacting about a topic, and imparting information to others." 23

It is important to note that academic language differs across content areas. In science, for example, the challenges of mastering academic language apply to vocabulary (e.g., learning everyday words with science meanings, general academic vocabulary, and discipline-specific vocabulary); syntax (e.g., passive voice, compound and complex sentences, and the nominalization of verbs, adverbs, and adjectives); and discourse (e.g., learning to attend to precise meanings in science text and talk). Students must also learn to master the nonlinguistic forms of language prevalent in content areas like science and math (e.g., diagrams, graphs, charts, maps, and equations). 24

One series of experimental studies developed academic language in the context of teaching mainly science content. 25 The studies used the types of visual and verbal supports previously described to help students make sense of content, develop general academic and domain-specific vocabulary, engage in opportunities to talk in pairs and small groups, and practice writing to extend their learning. These studies are well reviewed in two U.S. Department of Education practice guides for educators. 26

With regard to vocabulary instruction, recent research indicates embedded instruction is a promising technique for developing ELLs' vocabulary when that vocabulary is not conceptually complex. 27 In embedded instruction, students are given access to word meanings through on-the-spot child-friendly definitions of the target words (and, in some cases, examples and gestures). The research also indicates that instructional condition interacts with word type, with conceptually complex words much harder for students to acquire and thus needing more instructional support. 28 (For more on helping students with their oral language development, see " Meaningful Classroom Talk.")

5. Encourage Peer-to-Peer Learning Opportunities

One of the key principles of instruction in a second language is enabling students to interact via speaking, listening, reading, and writing with peers in their second language. 29 Speaking is important to generate feedback, encourage syntactic processing, and challenge students to engage at higher proficiency levels. As a result, it is no surprise that in many of the studies cited thus far, peer-to-peer learning was an important component of the intervention. In fact, in some studies, it was the focus.

For example, in one study implemented in the elementary grades, peer-to-peer learning was used to develop first-graders' literacy skills in a dual language program. 30 Using the Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) program, the peer-to-peer learning classrooms provided a structured routine in which the teacher modeled the language activities of the day; students practiced the activities in pairs for 15 minutes while the teacher supervised; and students then turned to story sharing, a partner reading activity that lasted for another 15 minutes. Teachers paired high-performing readers with low-performing readers and then taught the students to use the PALS procedures. During each segment of the session, the high-performing students performed the role of coach first, and the low-performing students followed. On average, PALS students demonstrated significantly greater growth than control students in phoneme segmentation, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency.

In the middle grades, many of the interventions that had positive outcomes for ELLs also provided opportunities for collaborative peer learning. 31 An important feature of these studies is that peer talk, in pairs or small groups, focused on course content.

In planning for peer-to-peer interactions for adolescents, teachers need to consider students' growing awareness of their social status in peer groups in school and their community. 32 For ELLs, this includes how they are perceived by peers proficient in English. 33

6. Capitalize on Students' Home Language, Knowledge, and Cultural Assets

Studies on cross-language transfer 34 indicate significant relationships between performance in ELLs' first and second languages in word reading, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and reading strategies. Findings from evaluation studies comparing bilingual programs with mostly English-only programs indicate that, over time, ELLs instructed bilingually either perform on par with or outperform ELLs instructed only in English, 35 providing indirect evidence of positive transfer.

Experimental studies 36 conducted with elementary school children suggest that instructional routines that draw on students' home language, knowledge, and cultural assets support literacy development in English. Examples of the instructional routines include previewing and reviewing material in children's first language, storybook reading in students' first language, 37 providing opportunities for students to engage in conversational exchanges during instruction that permits some interpretation to take place in their first language, 38 providing first-language definitions for the targeted vocabulary, 39 providing instruction in word-learning strategies that help ELLs uncover the meanings of cognates when encountered in English texts, 40 and introducing key concepts by connecting them with children's prior knowledge or experiences at home and in their community. 41

As was the case for studies conducted with children in grades K-5, middle-grades studies that showed positive effects capitalized on ELLs' assets. While none of the studies were implemented in bilingual settings, the interventions included bilingual glossaries, background materials in students' home languages, teacher explanations in students' home languages, partner work in students' home languages, and instruction to help ELLs take advantage of their home-language knowledge and skills. 42

7. Screen for Language and Literacy Challenges, Monitor Progress, and Support ELLs Who Are Struggling

Historically, ELLs have been both overidentified and underidentified as having a disability. 43 Both cases-identifying students as having a disability when they do not in fact have one (i.e., overidentification) and failing to identify students for special education services that they need (i.e., underidentification)-are problematic. Measures used to assess ELLs for reading and language challenges must distinguish language development from disability.

Most intervention research has focused on ELLs with reading difficulties. Findings from numerous studies cited in previous reviews of promising and effective instructional practices for ELLs 44 suggest that districts should establish procedures and provide training for schools to screen ELLs for reading challenges, consider collecting progress monitoring data more than three times a year for ELLs at risk, and use data from screening and progress monitoring assessments to make decisions about necessary instructional supports.

The studies also suggest the types of reading skills that should be assessed at different grade spans to determine whether ELLs are in need of additional instructional support. For kindergarten and first grade, skills include phonological awareness, familiarity with the alphabet and alphabetic principle, the ability to read single words, and knowledge of basic phonics rules. For children at the end of first grade and in the next few grades, skills include the ability to read connected texts accurately and fluently. For students in grades 2-5, oral reading fluency should also be assessed. However, these grade spans are predicated on ELLs beginning their schooling in kindergarten and must be adjusted for students entering U.S. schools in later grades and who may have already acquired these skills in their first language.

The studies provide two other recommendations: first, districts with performance benchmarks should use the same standards for ELLs and English-proficient students in the early grades, but should make adjustments in instruction when ELL progress is not sufficient; and second, teachers should be trained to use formative data to guide instruction. 45 With regard to formative data, one study suggests that students' writing samples should be used on an ongoing basis to determine areas for improvement. 46 Students' writing samples are excellent sources for formative assessment because they shed light on language challenges common to all children, as well as challenges and opportunities related to primary language influence on English. 47

Almost all studies related to screening, monitoring, and intervening are studies of ELLs in elementary grades. 48 Recommendations based on these studies include implementing intensive small-group interventions for at least 30 minutes in small homogeneous groups, and providing training and ongoing support for teachers, interventionists, and other school personnel on how to deliver small-group instruction effectively, as well as how to implement effective teaching techniques that can be used outside small-group instruction (e.g., instructional pacing, error corrections, and modeling). 49 Another important recommendation is that additional supports should be provided to ELLs struggling in English literacy that address the other skills crucial for success in school, such as vocabulary, listening, reading comprehension, and writing. 50

Where Additional Research Would Help

While there are some studies on effective practices for ELLs in science, studies focused on math and social studies are still very limited, compared with studies of English-proficient students. More research is also needed on promising and effective teaching methods for developing ELLs' home language, knowledge, and skills, and equalizing the social status of students from different ethnic/language backgrounds with the social status of white and native English-speaking students in schools.

For bilingual programs in particular, research is needed on the features that influence the successful acquisition of language and content. These features should include student ratios of English speakers to partner-language speakers in two-way programs, the number of instructional hours allotted to each language, the proportion of school staff and leadership who are bilingual, and the use of target languages within and across content areas. 51 And since most of the intervention research focuses on ELLs in grades K-2, and on pre-reading and reading skills, additional research is needed to understand how to intervene with older ELLs struggling in reading and with ELLs at all grade levels struggling in math, science, and social studies.

Finally, the social and emotional factors that influence student dispositions toward learning and academic performance (e.g., student motivation and engagement) must also be studied. More effective instruction, positive teacher attitudes toward teaching ELLs and high expectations that they can succeed, and engaging school climates can foster ELLs' motivation to learn and commitment to their educational success in the elementary school years and beyond. 52

Experienced teachers knowledgeable about supporting ELLs, such as Mr. Diaz, already incorporate many of these principles in their instruction. But more needs to be done to make sure this research gets into the hands of all classroom teachers, and to ensure additional research is conducted that can strengthen teaching and learning.

Diane August is a managing researcher and the director of the Center for English Language Learners at the American Institutes for Research. Previously, she was a senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics and a senior program officer at the National Academy of Sciences. This article is drawn from chapters 7 and 8 of the report Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures, published in February 2017 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which is available online.

*For more on scaffolding, see " One Sentence at a Time" in the Summer 2017 issue of American Educator. ( back to the article)

†A useful resource for finding reading and math programs deemed effective for all students is this website created by the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University. ( back to the article)

‡Nominalization refers to using a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, adjective, or adverb) as a noun or as the head of a noun phrase (e.g., using the adjective "rich" as a noun, as in "the rich"). ( back to the article)

§For more on ways English language learners bring cultural assets to schools, see " The Potential and Promise of Latino Students" in the Spring 2017 issue of American Educator. ( back to the article)

Endnotes

1. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2017).

2. Diane August and Timothy Shanahan, eds., Developing Reading and Writing in Second-Language Learners: Lessons from the Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (New York: Routledge, 2008); Fred Genesee et al., eds., Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 245; and Claude Goldenberg, "Unlocking the Research on English Learners: What We Know-and Don't Yet Know-about Effective Instruction," American Educator 37, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 4-11, 38.

3. What Works Clearinghouse, which has particularly high standards for evidence of effectiveness, has two publications related to English language learners: Scott Baker et al., Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School, NCEE 2014-4012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2014); and Russell Gersten et al., Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades: A Practice Guide, NCEE 2007-4011 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2007).

4. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth.

5. Lily Wong-Fillmore and Charles J. Fillmore, "What Does Text Complexity Mean for English Learners and Language Minority Students?" (Stanford, CA: Understanding Language, Stanford University, 2014), http://ell.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/academic-papers/06-LWF%....

6. Ellen A. Skinner and Jennifer R. Pitzer, "Developmental Dynamics of Student Engagement, Coping, and Everyday Resilience," in Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, ed. Sandra L. Christenson, Amy L. Reschly, and Cathy Wylie (New York: Springer, 2012), 21-44.

7. Maria S. Carlo, Diane August, and Catherine E. Snow, "Sustained Vocabulary-Learning Strategy Instruction for English-Language Learners," in Teaching and Learning Vocabulary: Bringing Research to Practice, ed. Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Michael L. Kamil (Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2005).

8. Rebecca Silverman and Sara Hines, "The Effects of Multimedia-Enhanced Instruction on the Vocabulary of English-Language Learners and Non-English-Language Learners in Pre-Kindergarten through Second Grade," Journal of Educational Psychology 101 (2009): 305-314.

9. Diane August et al., "The Impact of an Instructional Intervention on the Science and Language Learning of Middle Grade English Language Learners," Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 2 (2009): 345-376; and Diane August et al., "Helping ELLs Meet the Common Core State Standards for Literacy in Science: The Impact of an Instructional Intervention Focused on Academic Language," Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 7 (2014): 54-82.

10. Cheryl Dressler and Michael L. Kamil, "First- and Second-Language Literacy," in Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth, ed. Diane August and Timothy Shanahan (Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2006), 197-238.

11. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth.

12. August et al., "Impact of an Instructional Intervention"; and August et al., "Helping ELLs."

13. Michael F. Graves, The Vocabulary Book: Learning and Instruction, 2nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2016).

14. Nonie K. Lesaux et al., "Effects of Academic Vocabulary Instruction for Linguistically Diverse Adolescents: Evidence from a Randomized Field Trial," American Educational Research Journal 51 (2014): 1159-1194.

15. Sharon Vaughn et al., "Enhancing Social Studies Vocabulary and Comprehension for Seventh-Grade English Language Learners: Findings from Two Experimental Studies," Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 2 (2009): 297-324.

16. Jennifer O'Day, "Good Instruction Is Good for Everyone-or Is It? English Language Learners in a Balanced Literacy Approach," Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk 14 (2009): 97-119.

17. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth.

18. Bryan A. Brown, Kihyun Ryoo, and Jamie Rodriguez, "Pathway towards Fluency: Using 'Disaggregate Instruction' to Promote Science Literacy," International Journal of Science Education 32 (2010): 1465-1493; Silverman and Hines, "Effects of Multimedia-Enhanced Instruction"; and Lorena Llosa et al., "Impact of a Large-Scale Science Intervention Focused on English Language Learners," American Educational Research Journal 53 (2016): 395-424.

19. See, for example, Maria S. Carlo et al., "Closing the Gap: Addressing the Vocabulary Needs of English Language Learners in Bilingual and Mainstream Classrooms," Reading Research Quarterly 39 (2004): 188-215; and Fuhui Tong et al., "Integrating Literacy and Science for English Language Learners: From Learning-to-Read to Reading-to-Learn," Journal of Educational Research 107 (2014): 410-426.

20. August et al., "Impact of an Instructional Intervention"; August et al., "Helping ELLs"; Vaughn et al., "Enhancing Social Studies Vocabulary and Comprehension"; and Lesaux et al., "Effects of Academic Vocabulary Instruction."

21. Jung-In Kim and Kara M. Viesca, "Three Reading-Intervention Teachers' Identity Positioning and Practices to Motivate and Engage Emergent Bilinguals in an Urban Middle School," Teaching and Teacher Education 55 (2016): 122-132.

22. Catherine E. Snow and Paola Uccelli, "The Challenge of Academic Language," in The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, ed. David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 112-133.

23. Alison L. Bailey, The Language Demands of School: Putting Academic English to the Test (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 10-11.

24. Helen Quinn, Okhee Lee, and Guadalupe Valdés, "Language Demands and Opportunities in Relation to Next Generation Science Standards for English Language Learners: What Teachers Need to Know" (Stanford, CA: Understanding Language, Stanford University, 2014), http://ell.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/academic-papers/03-Quin....

25. See, for example, Brown, Ryoo, and Rodriguez, "Pathway towards Fluency"; Carlo et al., "Closing the Gap"; Llosa et al., "Impact of a Large-Scale Science Intervention"; Kihyun Ryoo, "Learning Science, Talking Science: The Impact of a Technology-Enhanced Curriculum on Students' Science Learning in Linguistically Diverse Mainstream Classrooms" (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 2009); Silverman and Hines, "Effects of Multimedia-Enhanced Instruction"; Tong et al., "Integrating Literacy and Science"; and Vaughn et al., "Enhancing Social Studies Vocabulary and Comprehension."

26. Baker et al., Teaching Academic Content and Literacy; and Gersten et al., Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction.

27. Michael D. Coyne, D. Betsy McCoach, and Sharon Kapp, "Vocabulary Intervention for Kindergarten Students: Comparing Extended Instruction to Embedded Instruction and Incidental Exposure," Learning Disabilities Quarterly 30 (2007): 74-88.

28. Diane August et al., "The Moderating Influence of Instructional Intensity and Word Type on the Acquisition of Academic Vocabulary in Young English Language Learners," Reading and Writing 31 (2018): 965-989.

29. See Rod Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education, 2005). The purpose of this literature review is to examine theory and research that has addressed what constitutes effective pedagogy for the acquisition of a second language in a classroom context. In other words, the review seeks to answer the question: How can instruction best ensure successful language learning?

30. Mary Beth Calhoun et al., "Effects of a Peer-Mediated Program on Reading Skill Acquisition for Two-Way Bilingual First-Grade Classrooms," Learning Disability Quarterly 30 (2007): 169-184.

31. August et al., "Impact of an Instructional Intervention"; August et al., "Helping ELLs"; Nonie K. Lesaux et al., "The Effectiveness and Ease of Implementation of an Academic Vocabulary Intervention for Linguistically Diverse Students in Urban Middle Schools," Reading Research Quarterly 45 (2010): 196-228; Lesaux et al., "Effects of Academic Vocabulary Instruction"; and Vaughn et al., "Enhancing Social Studies Vocabulary and Comprehension."

32. Brooke K. Cisco and Yolanda Padrón, "Investigating Vocabulary and Reading Strategies with Middle Grades English Language Learners: A Research Synthesis," RMLE Online 36, no. 4 (2012): 1-23; and Kim and Viesca, "Three Reading-Intervention Teachers' Identity Positioning."

33. Guadalupe Valdés, Learning and Not Learning English: Latino Students in American Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001).

34. Dressler and Kamil, "First- and Second-Language Literacy."

35. Ilana M. Umansky and Sean F. Reardon, "Reclassification Patterns among Latino English Learner Students in Bilingual, Dual Immersion, and English Immersion Classrooms," American Educational Research Journal 51 (2014): 879-912; and Rachel A. Valentino and Sean F. Reardon, "Effectiveness of Four Instructional Programs Designed to Serve English Learners: Variation by Ethnicity and Initial English Proficiency," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 37 (2015): 612-637.

36. Carlo et al., "Closing the Gap"; Lauren Aimonette Liang, Cheryl A. Peterson, and Michael F. Graves, "Investigating Two Approaches to Fostering Children's Comprehension of Literature," Reading Psychology 26 (2005): 387-400; Llosa et al., "Impact of a Large-Scale Science Intervention"; and William M. Saunders and Claude Goldenberg, "Effects of Instructional Conversations and Literature Logs on Limited- and Fluent-English-Proficient Students' Story Comprehension and Thematic Understanding," Elementary School Journal 99 (1999): 277-301.

37. Liang, Peterson, and Graves, "Investigating Two Approaches."

38. Saunders and Goldenberg, "Effects of Instructional Conversations."

39. Llosa et al., "Impact of a Large-Scale Science Intervention"; Diane August, Lauren Artzi, and Christopher Barr, "Helping ELLs Meet Standards in English Language Arts and Science: An Intervention Focused on Academic Vocabulary," Reading and Writing Quarterly 32 (2016): 373-396; and Silverman and Hines, "Effects of Multimedia-Enhanced Instruction."

40. Carlo et al., "Closing the Gap"; and Darci A. Burns, "Examining the Effect of an Overt Transition Intervention on the Reading Development of At-Risk English-Language Learners in First Grade" (PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2011).

41. Llosa et al., "Impact of a Large-Scale Intervention."

42. August et al., "Impact of an Instructional Intervention"; and August et al., "Helping ELLs."

43. Ester Geva and Katherine Herbert, "Assessment and Interventions for English Language Learners with Learning Disabilities," in Learning about Learning Disabilities, ed. Bernice Wong and Deborah Butler, 4th ed. (Amsterdam: Academic Press, 2012), 271-298.

44. Baker et al., Teaching Academic Content and Literacy; and Gersten et al., Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction.

45. Gersten et al., Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction, 6-7.

46. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, "Assessment and Classroom Learning," Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice 5 (1998): 7-74.

47. Kim and Viesca, "Three Reading-Intervention Teachers' Identity Positioning."

48. Burns, "Examining the Effect of an Overt Transition Intervention"; Carolyn A. Denton et al., "Intervention Provided to Linguistically Diverse Middle School Students with Severe Reading Difficulties," Learning Disabilities Research and Practice 23 (2008): 79-89; Barbara Gunn et al., "Supplemental Instruction in Decoding Skills for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students in Early Elementary School: A Follow-Up," Journal of Special Education 39 (2002): 69-79; J. Ron Nelson, Patricia F. Vadasy, and Elizabeth A. Sanders, "Efficacy of a Tier 2 Supplemental Root Word Vocabulary and Decoding Intervention with Kindergarten Spanish-Speaking English Learners," Journal of Literacy Research 43 (2011): 184-211; Carolyn R. Ransford-Kaldon et al., Implementation of Effective Intervention: An Empirical Study to Evaluate the Efficacy of Fountas & Pinnell's Leveled Literacy Intervention System (LLI); 2009-2010 (Memphis, TN: Center for Research in Educational Policy, 2010); Emily J. Solari and Michael M. Gerber, "Early Comprehension Instruction for Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners: Teaching Text-Level Reading Skills while Maintaining Effects on Word-Level Skills," Learning Disabilities Research and Practice 23 (2008): 155-168; Sharon Vaughn et al., "Effectiveness of an English Intervention for First-Grade English Language Learners at Risk for Reading Problems," Elementary School Journal 107 (2006): 153-180; and Sharon Vaughn et al., "Effectiveness of a Spanish Intervention and an English Intervention for English-Language Learners at Risk for Reading Problems," American Educational Research Journal 43 (2006): 449-487.

49. Gersten et al., Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction, 10-11.

50. Baker et al., Teaching Academic Content and Literacy.

51. Andrea Boyle et al., Dual Language Education Programs: Current State Policies and Practices (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2015).

52. For a general review, see Allan Wigfield, Jessica R. Gladstone, and Lara Turci, "Beyond Cognition: Reading Motivation and Reading Comprehension," Child Development Perspectives 10 (2016): 190-195; and Tahir Jahan Khan, Azlina Murad Sani, and Sarimah Shaik-Abdullah, "Motivation to Read in a Second Language: A Review of Literature," International Journal of Research in English Education 2, no. 4 (2017): 41-50.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's October in the Rio Grande Valley; the summer heat has receded and the school year is in full swing. Rolando Diaz teaches sixth-grade science at Del Valle Middle School. His class is a mix of English language learners (ELLs) with varying levels of English proficiency.

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How to Create a Welcoming Classroom Environment

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How to Create a Welcoming Classroom Environment

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Colorín Colorado

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An important first step in helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed is making them feel welcome in the classroom.

This will:

increase their confidence

make them feel more comfortable in the class

build a foundation for positive relationships with you and their peers.

Here's how you can get started!

The ELL student population includes students who were born in the U.S. and students who have immigrated from another country. For ELLs who have recently arrived in the U.S., they will face the challenge of learning a new language in addition to adjusting to an unfamiliar cultural setting and school system.

On a daily basis, ELLs are adjusting to new ways of saying and doing things. As their teacher, you are an important bridge to this unknown culture and school system.

In the same way that ELLs go through stages of English language learning, they may also pass through stages of cultural accommodation. These stages, however, may be less defined and more difficult to notice. Being aware of these stages may help you to better understand "unusual" actions and reactions that may just be part of adjusting to a new culture.

Euphoria: ELLs may experience an initial period of excitement about their new surroundings.

Culture shock: ELLs may then experience anger, hostility, frustration, homesickness, or resentment towards the new culture.

Acceptance: ELLs may gradually accept their different surroundings.

Assimilation/adaptation: ELLs may embrace and adapt to their surroundings and their "new" culture.

It is also common for students who are learning a new language to be 'silent' for a period of time, when they are listening to the language around them without speaking yet (much as a young child listens to language first before learning to talk). This is considered the first stage of language acquisition.

Patience and creating opportunities for small successes in speaking with you and peers can help build students' confidence. In addition, keep in mind that students' silence could also be a sign of respect for you as an authority - and not a sign of their inability or refusal to participate.

Students may also have experienced trauma or face different kinds of hardship in the U.S. You can better prepare yourself for this possibility by:

Learn more from the following:

This award-winning documentary highlights how the Dearborn, MI public school district is helping its immigrant students succeed. Learn more about this project and see related videos.

Getting to Know Students

Learn how to pronounce students' names correctly

Don't forget to smile and use positive body language!

A lot of communication happens through expressions, body language, and tone. Smiling and using positive body language can go a long way in making students feel welcome and comfortable, particularly if they are newcomers, as seen in the vignette shared by a teacher below.

Build relationships with students

Veteran teachers of ELLs always point to building relationships as the most important step in their work with ELLs. Not only does it increase engagement and support students' later academic success, it also provides invaluable information that can inform your instruction and family engagement.

In addition, it can help build bridges with students who may have particularly unique experiences, such as children in migrant farmwork families or Indigenous students.

See more ideas on how to build these relationships from the following:

Video: Showing students you care

Corpus Christi teacher Christine Price talks about the importance of showing students you care early on.

Identify students' strengths and interests

It's important to remember that ELLs bring lots of strengths, talents, and rich experiences to the classroom. Getting to know students' interests can help:

build rapport

engage students in learning

find connections with new friends.

Families are also an important source of information and are often happy to talk about the activities that their child enjoys. They may also appreciate the fact that their child's teacher is taking an interest in the child's strengths and talents. (This is especially true in special education settings.)

Teacher Omar Salem describes a student who not only sings and dances but manages her own YouTube channel and edits all of the video she posts of her performances.

Video: Using parent letters to get to know my students

Albuquerque teacher Clara Gonzales-Espinoza asks her parents to write her a letter at the beginning of each school year telling her about the child's personality, interests, strengths, and anything else they think she should know. In this interview, Clara speaks more about this strategy and its impact on her relationships with parents and students.

Ensure that students have information about activities and clubs

Make sure that students have information about extra-curricular activities, sports, and clubs related to their interests. You can also encourage them to start their own club within the school.

ELL educator Christine Rowland notes, "Many students find involvement in school clubs and teams to be extremely helpful, as they are often experts in these areas, and they can provide a space where they more easily feel they belong."

Welcoming Students' Language and Culture

Invite students' cultures into the classroom

Encourage ELLs and their families to share their culture with you and your class. Show-and-tell is a good opportunity for ELLs to bring in something representative of their culture, if they wish.

Invite students and families to:

share photographs, visuals, or meaningful artifacts such as flags or mementos

tell a popular story or folktale using words, pictures, gestures, and movements

share information about important holidays or celebrations.

Looking beyond the classroom

Imagine that you are walking into your school for the first time as a parent.

What do you see on the walls?

If your first language weren't English, would you see signs in your language?

Would you see flags, maps, or books representing your home country?

Would you see your child's work on display in the hallway?

If you think more could be done to make families feel welcome, consider:

sharing some ideas with colleagues or administrators and taking small steps that you can point to as successes

looking for opportunities to celebrate all families and their languages, customs, and cultures, whether in the classroom or at a school-wide event

keeping a lookout for a special part of their lives that other families might appreciate getting to know.

See more ideas in the following:

Video: What happened when the students realized the Yemeni flag wasn't on stage

ELD Specialist Diana Alqadhi tells the story of some students who realized that the Yemeni flag was not featured prominently enough on stage before a school show.

Invite students' languages into the classroom

Label classroom objects to allow ELLs to better understand their immediate surroundings. These labels will also assist you when explaining or giving directions, and it gives peers an additional opportunity to learn some words in their classmates' language.

Start with everyday items, such as "door/puerta," "book/libro," and "chair/silla."

You may wish to ask students who can write in their first language or family members to help you with this project.

You can also invite students to teach the class some words from their home language.

Learn more about the resources available in students' home languages

Students benefit from support in their home language - what Dr. Fred Genesee calls their " most valuable resource." You have may have access to learning material in students' languages, or you may be able to find resources that support those languages.

Language access for multilingual families

In addition, it's critical to understand what language access resources you have available through your school and district, particularly for communication with families. Keep in mind that all families have a legal right to information in their home language. Family liaisons, interpreters, ESL teachers, or administrators may have more information about what language access resources are available in your district.

Video: What Do School Districts Need to Know About Language Access?

This helpful overview about what language access means for school districts is a great introduction to the requirements, best practices, and funding streams related to language access in public education. This interview features Dr. Jennifer Love, the Supervisor of Language Access and Engagement in Prince George's County Public Schools, Maryland.

Video: Language Access for Multilingual Families

What does appropriate language access mean for multilingual families? This interview also features Dr. Jennifer Love.

Ensure your students see themselves reflected in the classroom

Ask yourself if students can see representations of their culture, race, gender, and other aspects of identity reflected in your:

classroom materials and library

lesson plans and activities

classroom visuals (both in-person and virtual).

In addition:

Success in the Classroom

Encourage your students

Some ELLs may not answer voluntarily in class or ask for your help even if they need it. ELLs may smile and nod, but this does not necessarily mean that they understand. Offer one-on-one support and encouragement as much as possible. For convenience, it may be helpful to seat ELLs near your desk.

Assign a buddy

Identify a classmate who will make a good buddy for new students - someone who is friendly, patient, and a good communicator to be a buddy. This student can make sure that the new student understands what he or she is supposed to do during class activities. It is helpful if the peer partner knows the ELL's first language, but not necessary. However, remember to never use another student as an interpreter in any situation.

Learn more about ways to increase peer interaction and collaboration in these related strategies.

Ask the class how they can help welcome new students

Ask students to brainstorm ways to help ELLs in particular. You may wish to make a list of ideas on how to welcome new students at the beginning of the year so that students have these strategies in mind if a student comes with little advance notice.

Be vigilant about health issues, dietary concerns, and allergies

Students may have specific health issues or dietary restrictions due to health, cultural, or religious reasons. Be sure that you learn all essential information you need to know about student health and diet from parents or guardians. For ELLs, be sure to confirm and clarify this information with the help of interpreters.

If you learn information about a student that would be helpful for other staff to know, particularly regarding health or food allergies, talk with administrators about how to keep the child safe. In addition, be sensitive to cultural or religious norms, such as fasting for religious reasons.

Keep an eye out for signs of culture shock

Moving to a new country and leaving a familiar life, relatives, friends, and language behind can be traumatic for children in the best of circumstances. Those challenges are compounded if children have experienced trauma, violence, or upheaval. Learn more about how culture shock can impact students in the classroom and affect student behavior so that you recognize signs if newcomers act out.

Encourage students to take ownership of the classroom culture

Ask students to answer the following questions through drawings or written responses.

How can I be a good classmate to others?

What are examples of unkind or disrespectful behavior in the classroom?

To support ELLs in their discussions of these questions:

Encourage students who speak the same language to discuss their ideas in groups.

Provide scaffolded materials such as graphic organizers, sentence stems, and sentence frames.

Use a picture book to talk about different kinds of behavior with students.

Create a shared set of classroom expectations together

Return to your earlier discussion of what a respectful classroom looks like.

Brainstorm ideas on possible class rules based on that discussion.

Streamline the list of class guidelines or rules.

Add any rules or guidelines that are missing.

In order to establish appropriate consequences for disrespectful behavior, you may wish to come up with ideas with the class or determine those consequences yourself.

Post the final list classroom rules in the classroom.

Translate the rules into ELLs' native languages so that they can keep the list handy and share it at home.

To see an example of this proces in action, take a look at ELL expert Carol Salva's process for developing a community contract each year.

Help your ELLs understand expectations for the classroom

ELLs may need some extra support in understanding expectations for classroom behavior. Helping them understand these expectations can avoid misunderstandings, discipline problems, and feelings of low self-esteem.

At the same time, it's important to remember that students bridging two cultures may need guidance which behaviors are appropriate in which setting (such as eye contact, physical proximity, etc.). If you have questions, talk with a cultural liaison in the school to learn more about appropriate responses and ideas for helping students navigate a new culture. You can also learn more about cultural norms of your students, particularly related to schooling, to help inform your approach.

Here are a few strategies that you can use in class:

Use visuals like pictures, symbols, and reward systems to communicate your expectations in a positive and direct manner.

Physically model language to ELLs in classroom routines and instructional activities. ELLs will need to see you or their peers model behavior when you want them to sit down, walk to the bulletin board, work with a partner, copy a word, etc.

Be consistent and fair with all students. Once ELLs clearly understand what is expected, hold them equally accountable for their behavior.

Post a daily schedule. Even if ELLs do not yet understand all of the words that you speak, it is possible for them to understand the structure of each day. Whether through chalkboard art or images on Velcro, you can post the daily schedule each morning. By writing down times and having pictures next to words like lunch, wash hands, math, and field trip, ELLs can have a general sense of the upcoming day.

Finally, remember ELLs can make unintentional "mistakes" as they are trying hard to adjust to a new cultural setting. They are constantly transferring what they know as acceptable behaviors from their own culture to the U.S. classroom and school. Be patient as ELLs learn English and adjust - and remember that you will learn a lot from this experience too!

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How to Create a Welcoming Classroom Environment for ELLs

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An important first step in helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed is making them feel welcome in the classroom. This will: increase their confidence make them feel more comfortable in the class build a foundation for positive relationships with you and their peers. Here's how you can get started!

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Sequencing Template for Jamboard (Images)

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Sequencing Template for Jamboard (Images)

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Colorín Colorado

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Albuquerque teacher Ali Nava walks her students through a cooperative paragraph summarizing the beginning, middle, and end of Burro's Tortillas and uses the exercise as an opportunity to practice their writing skills.

School Name: Lew Wallace Elementary School, Albuquerque, NM

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Ali Nava is an elementary teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico and a member of the first-grade cadre in our Common Core in Albuquerque project.In this video, Ali walks her students through a cooperative paragraph summarizing Burro's Tortillas, a southwestern adaptation of the classic folk tale "The Little Red Hen."

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Math Constructive Conversation Skills Poster

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Math Constructive Conversation Skills Poster

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Zwiers, O’Hara, & Pritchard, 2014

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

Looking at my partner

Telling my partner what I think

Use evidence from that text

Use evidence from the illustrations

Speaking in complete sentences

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

Looking at my partner

Listening carefully to my partner

Asking my partner "Why do you think that?"

Asking my partner "What is your evidence?"

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

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

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

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

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

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Larry Ferlazzo, Education Week, 2019

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

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

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

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

We pose a question.

WAIT about 5-10 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Meaningful Classroom Talk: Supporting English Learners Oral Language Development

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Meaningful Classroom Talk: Supporting English Learners Oral Language Development

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A. Walqui & M. Heritage (2018, Fall)

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

Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen?

Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Framework for Oral Language

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Productive Talk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lavinia: But they don't speak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six Guidelines for Promoting Quality Interactions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Common Misconceptions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Endnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com helps you read more, understand better, learn new words, and teach more effectively.

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Shanahan, 2013

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There is an iconic childhood moment that spans generations. My father, a boy in a clapboarded, one-room schoolhouse, along with the only other student in his grade, endured it; I timidly shared the experience with 50 Pattys, Connies, and Billys shoehorned tightly into an amber-lit classroom; the children I taught did it (seemingly a lifetime ago); and the young teens I watched last week in the midst of a middle school science lesson, their teacher patrolling the aisles, persevered at it as well.

The event to which I refer is the one in which a teacher leads a group of students in the communal act of reading a text. Such communal reading events are usually aimed at transforming children into readers or exposing them to science or social studies information. This event has been repeated so often in each of our lives that it may seem more like a Norman Rockwell painting than an actual memory: the boy wiggling in his chair, the dutiful pigtailed girl, the teacher's opaque questions, children's hands waving in the air, a monotone child's voice quavering as it makes its way uncertainly up the street of sentences.

One can also easily imagine a visit from the proverbial Martian anthropologist. Considering the ubiquity of communal reading, or what I call "the reading lesson," and its sameness across otherwise diverse classrooms, it would likely be classified as ritual. And as ritual, this little green observer would try to determine which of the actions maintained any discernible functional purpose and which had become purely symbolic, persisting mainly for the sake of tradition. Social scientists have long speculated about the reason for rituals; many now think they express and reinforce the shared values and belief systems of a society. 1 Our extraterrestrial visitor would surely want to know more about our reading lessons.

But we'll come back to that.

Common Core State Standards

In 1989, members of the National Governors Association (NGA) agreed to take the lead on educational reform. The agreement called for states to set educational goals or standards, with some federal assistance. 2 By the early 1990s, all 50 states had done so, but not necessarily standards rigorous enough to propel students toward college or career readiness-nor was there leverage to ensure that even these undernourished standards would be reached by sufficient numbers of students. 3

In 2002, this changed in a big way. No Child Left Behind became the law of the land, and it put federal financial support for education at risk if students failed to meet a state's standards. The result wasn't higher achievement, however. Instead of working more diligently to meet these standards, most states simply reduced their already low criteria to keep the federal dollars flowing. 4

In 2009, the NGA, now in concert with the Council of Chief State School Officers and with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, endorsed the idea of common or shared educational standards across states. Instead of each state setting up its own idiosyncratic goals in math and reading, this plan would have all or most states striving, for once, to accomplish the same outcomes. By the time the dust settled, a new set of standards had been written and adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia (this is the number that embraced the English language arts standards, but only 45 states accepted the math goals-Minnesota made a split decision).

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), as they are known, are a major advance not only because of their shared nature, but also because they represent a more rigorous set of goals than most individual states had previously adopted. The standards' authors were plainspoken in their claim that these were new learning goals, not methodologies, for teaching: 5

Fact: The best understanding of what works in the classroom comes from the teachers who are in them. That's why these standards will establish what students need to learn, but they will not dictate how teachers should teach. Instead, schools and teachers will decide how best to help students reach the standards.

And yet, these standards will likely lead to the greatest changes in reading instruction seen for generations. One of the biggest transformations will be to reading lessons, involving changes that will upset traditional approaches that have been in place for decades. These communal reading lessons have gone by many names (e.g., directed reading lessons, guided reading), but all variations include a group of students reading a text together under the supervision of a teacher, and it is that daily event that will change most.

Matching Students to Books versus Having Them Grapple with Challenging Texts

Past educational standards have been stated in terms of cognitive behaviors or actions that students must learn to exhibit. For example, here is a typical fifth-grade reading goal, this one from Virginia, one of the four states that did not adopt the CCSS: "The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of fictional texts, narrative nonfiction, and poetry." 6 Some of the ways the students have to demonstrate this ability is by describing character development, identifying cause-and-effect relationships, and summarizing supporting details from such texts. As such, standards tend to be verb-centric; they describe a whole lot of locating, inferring, connecting, and comparing.

This characteristic Virginia standard describes a cognitive action students are to do, but it does not tell how well students need to do it or what the level of challenge should be. Prior to the CCSS, standards usually ignored the fact that some texts are harder to read than others. 7 Drawing inferences or making comparisons in an easy text is, well, easy, while trying to do so in a more complicated one is quite another thing. Look at the simple comparison of Fun with Dick and Jane and James Joyce's Ulysses (see Table 1 below).* Even with such brief segments, it should be apparent that making sense of the old primer is a much easier lift than making sense of the modernist classic. Dick simply doesn't do much beyond running and jumping, while Leopold Bloom's day is a rich mix of goings-on. Dick is narrow, too, in emotional terms, but Bloom displays an impressive gamut of hope, reluctance, lust, regret, envy, self-satisfaction, uncertainty, trepidation, and relief. Analyzing characterization in one book is a major intellectual challenge, while doing so in the other is a necessary, though comparatively modest, accomplishment along the road to literacy. This is a big difference, and yet past standards couldn't distinguish any difference. By ignoring the challenge level of texts, standards made it look like students were reaching goals even when performance levels were embarrassingly low; remember this the next time someone tells you that their previous state standards were every bit as demanding as the CCSS 8 -they are, if one only looks at the verbs and ignores the texts those verbs operate on.

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Think of it this way: if states had adopted weightlifting requirements, instead of reading requirements, past standards would have said "all students should do bench presses," but would have omitted any mention of how much weight had to be on the bar or how many reps were expected. Let's face it, bench-pressing 5 pounds once, which almost all of us could do, is nothing like bench-pressing 100 pounds 10 times, which few of us could do. And that is what we have been doing: emptily requiring particular mental gymnastics during reading, without consideration of challenge levels.

The CCSS change that equation. At each grade level, there are 10 reading comprehension standards. The first nine note the same kinds of cognitive processes long emphasized in standards, but the 10th one, in grades 2 through 12, sets a specific level of text challenge.

What is the problem with this for teachers? It flies in the face of everything they have been taught. Reading authorities have been dogmatic about the value of appropriate book placement, and the need to differentiate book placement by reading levels has been the major approach to differentiation; 9 this is where ideas like the old "three reading groups" and the more recent "book rooms" have come from. The claim has been that there is a special text level at which students should be taught if they are to make optimum learning gains. This theory holds that if students are taught from texts that are easier or harder than their "instructional level," then less learning or no learning results. Accordingly, teachers have been taught not to give their students hard texts to read. But now the CCSS are requiring just that.

That this is disquieting is an understatement. It seems to be a violation of principle and a rejection of the research evidence that teachers have been admonished to follow. This is why teachers are so surprised to find that there is not really a firm base of research supporting the idea of matching kids to texts. 10 Despite the ubiquity of the practice, research has found no consistent relationship of student-text match and learning. 11 Despite the hard work of so many teachers to make certain that students are in the "just right" book, doing so does not appear to promote better learning.

It is not that student and text levels don't matter-they are certainly part of the learning equation-but so is the amount of support or scaffolding that teachers provide. Unfortunately, teacher preparation typically includes few tools for helping students to learn from challenging texts. No wonder teachers so often resort to reading the texts to students, using round-robin reading, or, in history or science, not using the textbook at all.

Under the CCSS, students will be more frustrated by challenging texts, and this means other instructional supports will be needed to help and encourage them along this path. Teachers must learn to anticipate text challenges and how to support students to allow them to negotiate texts successfully, but without doing the work for them. Look, for example, at the fifth-grade science passage in Table 2 (below); a text like this, previously, would have appeared in a sixth- or even seventh-grade textbook, but will be served up to 10-year-olds under the CCSS. A major challenge posed by this passage is that it is difficult to get all the ideas connected properly into an explanatory chain. 12 For example, the word "it" is used repeatedly throughout this paragraph, sometimes referring to the nebula, sometimes to the protoplanetary disk, and sometimes to the sun's gravity. Guiding students to make the right links and to weave these chains of meaning together can help them make sense of the text without just telling them what it says.

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Similar supports can help students interpret sophisticated vocabulary or literary devices, untangle the tortured syntax of complex sentences, or discern subtle organizational structures or bewildering authorial tones. Such instruction, however, looks less like traditional reading lessons and more like team problem-solving, with teachers offering guidance and support, and the children reading and rereading to figure out the meaning.

Preparing to Read versus Actually Reading

Reading lessons have not actually started with reading for a very long time. Instead, such lessons usually prepare students to think about the text they are working on prior to reading, and such preparation can take substantial classroom time. Reading preparation includes discussions of relevant background information, explanations of context in which the text was produced, previews or overviews of the text itself, "picture walks," predictions, and purpose-setting.

Common Core proponents espouse a less thorough regime of reading preparation. 13 The explanation of why the CCSS are taking on this sacred cow goes back centuries and has much to do with arguments over the nature of reading itself. The anti-reading-preparation stance can be traced all the way back to the Protestant Reformation. One of Martin Luther's basic tenets was that ordinary laypeople could read the Bible themselves, without an intermediary priest to interpret for them. Four hundred years later, the same argument divided English departments: Could students read literature without the explanations and interpretations of their professors? The result was the "New Criticism," and its advocates championed the idea of "close reading": having students read and reread texts while paying close attention to the words and structure, with little reliance on other information. 14 The New Critics believed meaning resided not in the context or author's intentions that produced it, but in the words the author used to give expression. 15 Exit considerations of the author's biographical details or the teacher's interpretations of the text; enter an intensive focus on the texts themselves-not just on what a text had to say, but how it worked-how the author's words or structures aligned with the meaning. Basically, texts were viewed as complete unto themselves, without need for additional information about the author or opinions from other people or texts. As such, they were coherent representations of meaning and craft that students could make sense of if taught what to pay attention to and given an opportunity to analyze the text-and the text alone-carefully. 16

This sparser view of reading preparation conflicts with the daily reading ritual found in most US classrooms. Instead of guiding students to read texts closely, such lessons usually provide a veritable flood of extra information-previews, explanations, and reading purposes, along with analysis of relevant context or background information and the like. If students are to read about tide pools, for example, teachers are counseled to start out by asking questions such as, "Have you ever visited a beach? What plants and animals did you see near the shore?" Or if students are to read Charlotte's Web, they might first learn the biographical details of E. B. White's life.

With so much of that preparation, the reading itself sometimes must be sacrificed; it is almost always attenuated. I recently observed a primary-grade reading lesson that included such a thorough and painstaking picture walk (previewing and discussing each illustration prior to reading) that eventually there was no reason for reading the eight-sentence story; there was no additional information to be learned.

"Close reading" sounds like a welcome idea that could push kids and teachers back into books. But there can be problems with such a scorched-earth approach to reading preparation, not the least of which is evidence from research suggesting that some such supports can actually improve comprehension. Such research seems particularly germane at a time when texts are supposed to get harder for kids.

If you ask most teachers the reason for all of the reading preparation, their most likely reply would be their students' "lack of background" or "lack of prior knowledge." What they mean is that their kids don't know very much about the topics to be read about, and that matters, because learning, to an extent, depends on what is already known. † The great variation in academic background that students bring to school makes this issue particularly vexing for teachers. Cognitive psychology has defined reading comprehension in terms of a reader's ability to integrate text information with prior knowledge to form a mental representation or memory. 17 Thus, "close reading" of a text for which one lacks the necessary background information required to understand it may not be a very productive process for some learners. As a fairly thorough review of research on the role of prior knowledge in reading explained: 18

Across all levels of age and ability, readers use their existing knowledge as a filter to interpret and construct meaning of a given text. They use this knowledge to determine importance, to draw inference, to elaborate text, and to monitor comprehension.

Extensive research into readers' knowledge consistently finds that readers interpret texts through their background knowledge and that they store text information in their memories as if storing it in a filing cabinet, combining the new information into existing files. While these findings are not at issue, current approaches to facilitating the use of prior knowledge in reading have calcified into rigid routines that may no longer be consistent with either research or our learning goals for students.

If a text presupposes some reader knowledge, providing such information ahead of time can facilitate comprehension. 19 For example, consider this old Henny Youngman joke: "Doctor, my leg hurts. What can I do?" The doctor says, "Limp!" The listener must recognize the reason someone tells a physician about a bum leg is to get advice on how to alleviate the problem. The humor comes from the violation of expectations that occurs when this apocryphal doctor takes the question literally rather than as a request for assistance. If the audience knows why the man would ask his doctor such a question, the joke can work; without it, a "close reading" isn't likely to get you there. Background knowledge is needed to bridge the gap, and providing such knowledge ahead of time can enhance understanding. That's one point for pre-reading preparation.

Similarly, activating already existing prior knowledge-that is, getting students to think about what they already know about a topic-can be helpful, too. Thus, having students discuss a topic prior to reading can improve understanding 20 even when such a discussion does not offer any new information. Students can even be taught to conduct this kind of prior knowledge activation themselves. 21 But, research also suggests that activating prior knowledge does not always pay off; sometimes it can even backfire, such as when the readers' knowledge conflicts with information in the text. 22 On balance, while the research offers a note of caution, this is another point in support of pre-reading preparation.

However, as useful as knowledge is in the interpretive process, pre-reading preparations have grown into something contradictory to good sense. Given how ubiquitous background reviewing has become, it is no wonder that teachers and publishers have slipped into a somewhat perfunctory and ritualistic use of these practices. Background preparation is provided not only when it is needed, such as when a text is particularly unfamiliar to students or when an author presupposes particular information that would aid comprehension, but almost always during these pre-reading preparations. Such background preparation may even be irrelevant to the comprehension challenges that students face. They are not likely to benefit much from visualizing E. B. White's barn prior to reading Charlotte's Web, since that won't help them with the real challenge of making sense of the book, but they may benefit from background preparation on the big issues of friendship and loyalty, and on the notion of the life cycle and how we proceed as a species even after individual deaths.

Another point of concern should be the extent of the background preparation. In many studies in which activating prior knowledge was found to be beneficial, background knowledge was activated by nothing more than giving students the topic or a title for an article.23 Given that readers use their prior knowledge, making it obvious to them what knowledge to use can be facilitating. But unlike in these studies, in many classrooms, reading lessons incorporate extensive reviews of background information-way more than is justified by actual research findings.

Of course, one person's presupposed background information is another's plot summary. One group of researchers 24 found that giving information ahead of time powerfully enhanced comprehension and recall. However, what they offered was an extensive preview that was repetitive of the text itself. Students were asked to discuss a theme-related topic prior to reading a story; they were also given a story synopsis and a description of the setting, each character was introduced and described, the author's point of view was specified, and the plots were revealed up to the point of climax. It seems pretty obvious that students who received such previews answered more questions about the text than students who did not. Sometimes the questions could be answered from the preview itself, while in other cases students could use the previewed information to formulate logical inferences about the text, or, failing that, they could reduce their amount of reading effort by focusing attention on only the unknown information ("since I already know everything up to the resolution, I'll read that and find out how it comes out"). Is this really a boon to reading comprehension, or is such preparation simply taking the place of reading? Think of it this way: Are teachers really going to follow kids through college and career-or even into their accountability exams-preparing them for each text they are to read?

Part of the point of the CCSS (and of "close reading") is that text must play the central role in reading and cannot profitably be ignored. Students who are engaged in a discussion of the life cycle or of friendship prior to reading Charlotte's Web likely have some advantage in grasping the ideas from that book more quickly or more certainly. But is that really the point of reading instruction: to make kids into quick but somewhat shallow recognizers and comprehenders? We need to remember that one can read a text more than once, and that the purpose of reading is to interpret the text based on the information on the page rather than from the pre-reading activity initiated by the teacher. Unfortunately, previewing has devolved from a brief "look over" into telling students key information from the text before they get a chance to read it themselves. This deprives them of any opportunity to make sense of-or simply enjoy-the text without the teacher predigesting it for them.

The CCSS place the text-not the teacher-at the center of the students' negotiation of text meaning. Accordingly, they want pre-reading rituals reduced. It is certainly okay for a teacher to provide a brief introduction to a text so that students have some idea of what they are being asked to read, what genre it is, and why they should read it: "Now we'll read a play about a boy's first day at school," or "We've been reading about the Civil War, and this next chapter will tell us about the final stages of the war and how it was won." Such previews are sufficient preparation, allowing students to activate any prior knowledge they may have. It is also acceptable to use such preparation to fill gaps in student knowledge: "We're going to read about Antarctica, and the chapter will tell you a lot about it, but it doesn't make it very clear where Antarctica is. Let's find it on our map before we read about it."

None of these examples would steal appreciable time from reading, and in none would the teacher provide much information in place of what the author is going to provide. Instead of preparing students so thoroughly that they confront no problems in understanding a text, briefer introductions simply get students started. Any interpretive problems that may ensue can be dealt with along the way.

How much background information is appropriate depends on the text. If students are to read a story set during the Civil War, but not much about the war is revealed in the text, there is nothing wrong with telling or reminding students when and where the war took place and what it was about. That, as research has shown, can help students interpret the text, and it is probably consistent with what the author expected of his or her reading audience. But telling this same information before reading a book that does teach readers about the Civil War is unreasonable because it gets between the text and the reader. This shift away from extensive and repetitive spoilers to a more pointed and strategic introduction should allow students to understand what is expected of them and to use their prior knowledge in making sense of the text.

Discussion of Text versus Integrating Knowledge and Ideas

Then what? Usually, students read, teachers ask questions about what they have read, and students respond to these questions, sometimes even answering them. Many teachers would tell you these questions ensure that kids read the book. However, research suggests such questions can do more than that. Teachers' questions can influence student reading comprehension by highlighting which information is most important. If, during a history reading lesson, the teacher asks about dates, students will, over time, become more vigilant about dates. Teachers' questions serve as a training guide that shows students what information to pay attention to while reading. Studies also reveal that some questions generate deeper and more extensive thinking than others, and engaging in deeper thinking also promotes higher comprehension. 25

Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy is probably the most widely known scheme for formulating such questions. 26 It arrays behaviors from simple to more complex, depending on the degree of difficulty or the amount of intellectual demand. Knowledge is the lowest level in this taxonomy, and it refers to memory for facts, terms, or basic concepts. It is followed by comprehension, which requires a restatement of information into one's own words, or organizing or interpreting the information, such as determining a main idea. Then comes application, the use of information in a new context; followed by analysis, in which one examines and breaks information down into its parts, makes inferences about relationships, and finds evidence to support generalizations; which is followed by synthesis, in which information is combined in new ways. Finally, at the highest level of demand is evaluation, the making of judgments to assess validity or quality.

Other questioning schemes for reading tend to be consistent with Bloom's taxonomy. 27 They place recall of what a text explicitly says at the most basic level, followed by the logical inferencing that readers need to fill gaps or make connections implied by the author, to high-level evaluations or judgments about the information.

The CCSS do not discuss levels of questions or levels of thinking this overtly, and yet they have their own considerations for question formulation. Thus, the Q&A follow-up to reading is not going away any time soon, while some very different questions are likely to be asked during reading lessons due to the CCSS.

The CCSS question-asking convention garnering the most attention so far has to do with the idea of "text-dependent questions." This idea is drawn from testing and refers to whether students need to read the text to answer. 28 This is evaluated by giving students the test questions without the texts to determine if they can be answered correctly anyway. Given that the CCSS are placing the text at the center of reading in so many ways, it should not be surprising that they emphasize the idea of asking questions specifically about the text.

The problem with text dependency is that it is easy to ask questions that depend upon the text but are not very important within the universe created by that text. Table 3 (below) illustrates this with various text-dependent questions about well-known fairy tales. It would be impossible to answer any of these questions without knowing the texts-which accomplishes the text-dependency criterion-but only some of these questions would be worth asking. The point of the CCSS is to emphasize the text above all else in text discussions, not to turn such discussions into quiz-show trivia. Even a cursory examination of examples of so-called text-dependent questions on the Internet suggests that many educators are getting the first idea, but not the second.

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Unlike with various question-asking taxonomies, memory questions in the CCSS are not necessarily low level, with evaluative ones automatically placed higher in the pecking order. The issue is initially one of relevance to the text, but once relevancy or dependency is satisfied, it is essential to recognize that not all relevant questions are equal. One can ask inconsequential questions about an experience: "Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

How do you determine which questions are worth asking? The CCSS provide valuable guidance in the form of their organizational plan for reading. The reading standards are divided into three categories: key ideas and details, craft and structure, and the integration of knowledge and ideas.

This blueprint seems to harken back to an approach to "close reading" first espoused by two scholars in 1940. 29 They advocated the idea that great books be read multiple times, with each reading constituting a separate journey, and each of these journeys resolving different concerns. According to this approach, a first reading would be about figuring out what a text says. If one were reading a story, then being able to describe the characters and their motivations and to retell the plot would be crucial, since those would usually represent the key ideas and important details of a story or novel. Similarly, if one were reading a science experiment, it would be important to understand the purpose of the experiment, the basic steps undertaken, and the results. The important reading issue here isn't whether the author stated it explicitly, which would just require recognition or memory, or whether the idea was implied and required some kind of logical inference by the reader, but whether the information mattered in the context of the text.

What information will be important cannot be determined separately from the text; thus, if one follows question-asking schemes too carefully, trivial questions almost always result. For example, knowing why the dog is called "Old Yeller" in Fred Gibson's book by the same name is not very important in the context of that book, since it is more a description of the dog than a true name. This is not to suggest names don't ever matter. Knowing the names of the characters in East of Eden is essential, since some of those names are literary allusions connecting these characters to those in Genesis. Asking about the names of the brothers Caleb and Aron would be placed very low in Bloom's taxonomy and yet would be encouraged by the CCSS because of their centrality to the matter at hand, making deep sense of this text.

In many reading lessons, when students can retell the key ideas and details of a text and answer questions about it, teachers often declare victory and move on. But the CCSS advocate reading such texts yet again, this time to make sense of the workings of their craft and structure, or how the text said what it said. How did the author organize the information? What literary devices or data presentation devices were used, and what was their effect? Why did the author choose this word or that word? Were the meanings of key terms consistent or did they change with use across the text? Such second readings may require a full rereading of the whole selection, but often no more than a series of targeted second looks at specific portions of the text-portions relevant to craft and structure-is sufficient. Thus, after the first round of reading East of Eden, the teacher may have established that the names of the brothers were Caleb and Aron, but now the teacher will start probing about the meaning of the name of the book: Is it a good name? Why or why not? What does it refer to? Has anyone heard of Eden in any other context? Are there any clues in the book that help you to make sense of that name? Eventually, such questions will guide students to look for parallels between Cain and Abel, and Caleb and Aron. (It should be noted that the heavy emphasis on analyzing the language of the texts has not been common in states' standards prior to the CCSS.)

Again, not all questions about craft and structure are going to be important (nor are craft and structure considered to be higher-level considerations than key ideas and details). Craft and structure questions should matter to the interpretation of the text at hand. In one text, a title or a name or some other fact may serve as no more than a bit of description, while in another, these seemingly "low-level facts" might be essential to understanding how the text works. With history texts or rhetorical texts, like speeches or political tracts, analysis of word choices or even the inclusion of particular facts can be enough to allow the reader to determine an author's biases or point of view. In a science text, carefully tracing the author's chain of reasoning can help assess the evidence supporting a theory or uncover discrepancies or errors in logic.

With the information gleaned from the first two readings, the reader is now ready to go even deeper into integrating knowledge and ideas: What does this text mean? What was the author's point? What does it have to say about our lives or our world? How valid is it? How good is it? How does it connect to other texts (or to other experiences, videos, or experiments)? By waiting until we have achieved a deep understanding of a text-of what it says and how it works-we are finally in a good position to critically evaluate the text and to compare its ideas and approach with those of other texts.

Finally, for each of these readings, in answering any of the types of questions emphasized in the CCSS, students are expected to do more than provide answers. They are required to glean information from texts as evidence that supports and justifies the conclusions they draw and the connections they make. It is not enough to get the right answer; students must become adept at collecting and using information that they gain when reading the texts.

* * *

Cultural practices that initially accomplish functional purposes, through repetition and the fullness of time, often lose their functionality and become traditions that convey other meanings to those within the culture. Various factors have guided the reading lesson across the decades. Teachers have often tried to follow research in this regard, assigning students relatively easy materials to ensure adequate levels of comprehension, providing extensive previews and background information toward the same end, and monitoring student reading with questions calculated to be at a high intellectual level.

However, teachers have been misled as to the strength or direction of the research related to issues such as the importance of matching text difficulty levels with student reading levels. Accurate research findings have been stretched beyond their original scope in support of classroom practices never actually evaluated by research. For example, the research finding that activating background knowledge can improve reading comprehension under some circumstances has been transformed into the idea that background activation is needed before every reading and that such efforts must be extensive and continuous. Sometimes a research-supported view (e.g., the idea that questions eliciting higher-order thinking tend to build comprehension better than those aimed at memory alone) simply gets twisted in the application. If teachers, textbook publishers, and test makers decide that they need to ask a particular type of question for every text, then, at least some of the time, such questions will be tangential to particular texts.

As practices are inadvertently transformed from functional purposes to symbolic rituals, one starts to wonder about larger cultural implications. With the reading lesson, the daily rituals increasingly have elbowed the text aside. Instead of serving to focus students' attention on making sense of each text within its own interpretative universe, the reading lesson has too often conveyed to students that reading is a ceremonial event to which the text is of only marginal importance. Thus, we mistakenly worry more about how well the text matches the student reading level than whether it is worth reading at all; we inappropriately tell students what a text says before they have a chance to read it themselves (thereby minimizing the demands of actual reading); and we regrettably ask questions that, although of high intellectual level, probe more into the reader's background experiences than into the text itself.

Perhaps the purpose of this ritual has somehow been to celebrate the students themselves-it is, after all, their reading levels, their background knowledge, and their experiences that seem to be of greatest import in these daily observances. Paradoxically, by putting the focus on students in this way, they too may be marginalized. Instead of emphasizing the ideas in texts, and empowering students to understand those ideas-what they are, how they are expressed, and what they mean-we have ritually kept students in a state of ignorance and helplessness. In a milieu in which everything of importance is told, where ideas can be gained without the hard currency of analytical and critical thought, where one's reach is never allowed to exceed one's grasp, and where all opinions are equal and there are no consequential facts upon which to make decisions, the individual's value is diminished. The most important fact about the Common Core State Standards may be that they are getting educators to rethink this ritual-and to move ideas, and thinking about ideas, back to the center of the reading curriculum.
Timothy Shanahan is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the director of its Center for Literacy. Previously, he was the director of reading for Chicago Public Schools. A past president of the International Reading Association, he is the chair of the National Early Literacy Panel and a member of both the National Reading Panel and the English Language Arts Work Team for the Common Core State Standards Initiative. His research and teaching focus on reading achievement and family literacy.
*By the end of high school, the Common Core's recommended texts are very complex-complex enough to prepare students for college-level texts like Ulysses.

†For more on how reading comprehension depends on knowledge and vocabulary, see the Spring 2006 issue of American Educator, available at www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/spring2006/index.cfm.

Endnotes

1. Evangelos Kyriakidis, ed., The Archaeology of Ritual (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2007).

2. John F. Jennings, Why National Standards and Tests? Politics and the Quest for Better Schools (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).

3. Laura S. Hamilton, Brian M. Stecher, and Kun Yuan, Standards-Based Reform in the United States: History, Research, and Future Directions (Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy, 2008).

4. Hamilton, Stecher, and Yuan, Standards-Based Reform.

5. National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, "Myths vs. Facts," 2010, accessed August 20, 2013, www.corestandards.org/resources/myths-vs-facts.

6. Virginia Department of Education, English Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools (Richmond: Virginia Department of Education, 2010), 17, www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/english/2010/stds_all_english.pdf.

7. Arthur C. Graesser and Joseph P. Magliano, "Context and Cognition," in Context and Development, ed. Robert Cohen and Alexander W. Siegel (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991); and Paul van den Broek, Catherine M. Bohn-Gettler, Panayiota Kendeou, Sarah Carlson, and Mary Jane White, "When a Reader Meets a Text: The Role of Standards of Coherence in Reading Comprehension," in Text Relevance and Learning from Text, ed. Matthew T. McCrudden, Joseph P. Magliano, and Gregory Schraw (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2011), 123-139.

8. Joy Pullmann, "Why Indiana Should Delay the Common Core," Indianapolis Star, February 28, 2013; and Virginia Department of Education, Comparison of Virginia's 2010 English Standards of Learning with the Common Core State Standards for English and Literacy (Richmond: Virginia Department of Education, 2010).

9. Emmett A. Betts, Foundations of Reading Instruction (New York: American Book Co., 1946); and Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996).

10. Rollanda E. O'Connor, H. Lee Swanson, and Cathleen Geraghty, "Improvement in Reading Rate Under Independent and Difficult Text Levels: Influences on Word and Comprehension Skills," Journal of Educational Psychology 102, no. 1 (2010): 1-19; William R. Powell, Reappraising the Criteria for Interpreting Informal Inventories (Washington, DC: ERIC, 1968); and Timothy Shanahan, "The Informal Reading Inventory and the Instructional Level: The Study That Never Took Place," in Reading Research Revisited, ed. Lance M. Gentile, Michael L. Kamil, and Jay S. Blanchard (Columbus, OH: Merrill, 1983), 577-580.

11. Alisa Morgan, Bradley R. Wilcox, and J. Lloyd Eldredge, "Effect of Difficulty Levels on Second-Grade Delayed Readers Using Dyad Reading," Journal of Educational Research 94, no. 2 (2000): 113-119; O'Connor, Swanson, and Geraghty, "Improvement in Reading Rate"; and Powell, Reappraising the Criteria.

12. Zhihui Fang and Mary J. Schleppegrell, Reading in Secondary Content Areas: A Language-Based Pedagogy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008).

13. David Coleman, "Bringing the Common Core to Life," April 28, 2011, transcript and video available at http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/resources/bringing-the-common-core-to-life.html.

14. Charles E. Bressler, Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2006).

15. Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947).

16. Gerald Graff, Poetic Statement and Critical Dogma, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

17. Walter Kintsch, Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

18. Janice A. Dole, Gerald G. Duffy, Laura R. Roehler, and P. David Pearson, "Moving from the Old to the New: Research on Reading Comprehension Instruction," Review of Educational Research 61, no. 2 (1991): 241.

19. Kathleen C. Stevens, "Can We Improve Reading by Teaching Background Information?," Journal of Reading 25, no. 4 (1982): 326-329.

20. Hiller A. Spires and Jan Donley, "Prior Knowledge Activation: Inducing Engagement with Informational Texts," Journal of Educational Psychology 90, no. 2 (1998): 249-260.

21. Sonya C. Carr and Bruce Thompson, "The Effects of Prior Knowledge and Schema Activation Strategies on the Inferential Reading Comprehension of Children with and without Learning Disabilities," Learning Disability Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1996): 48-61.

22. Donna E. Alvermann, Lynn C. Smith, and John E. Readence, "Prior Knowledge Activation and the Comprehension of Compatible and Incompatible Text," Reading Research Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1985): 420-436.

23. John D. Bransford and Marcia K. Johnson, "Contextual Prerequisites for Understanding: Some Investigations of Comprehension and Recall," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11, no. 6 (1972): 717-726; Ann L. Brown, Sandra S. Smiley, Jeanne D. Day, Michael A. R. Townsend, and Sallie C. Lawton, "Intrusion of a Thematic Idea in Children's Comprehension and Retention of Stories," Child Development 48, no. 4 (1977): 1454-1466; and Diane Lemonnier Schallert, "Improving Memory for Prose: The Relationship between Depth of Processing and Context," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 15, no. 6 (1976): 621-632.

24. Michael F. Graves, Cheryl L. Cooke, and Michael J. Laberge, "Effects of Previewing Difficult Short Stories on Low Ability Junior High School Students' Comprehension, Recall, and Attitudes," Reading Research Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1983): 262-276.

25. Matthew T. McCrudden, Gregory Schraw, and Stephen Lehman, "The Use of Adjunct Displays to Facilitate Comprehension of Causal Relationships in Expository Text," Instructional Science 37, no. 1 (2009): 65-86.

26. Benjamin S. Bloom, Max D. Engelhart, Edward J. Furst, Walker H. Hill, and David R. Krathwohl, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain (New York: Longman, 1956).

27. See, for example, Frederick B. Davis, "Research in Comprehension in Reading," Reading Research Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1968): 499-545; Betty C. Holmes, "The Effect of Four Different Modes of Reading on Comprehension," Reading Research Quarterly 20, no. 5 (1985): 575-585; P. David Pearson and Dale D. Johnson, Teaching Reading Comprehension (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978); and Harry Singer, "Active Comprehension: From Answering to Asking Questions," The Reading Teacher 31, no. 8 (1978): 901-908.

28. J. Jaap Tuinman, "Determining the Passage Dependency of Comprehension Questions in 5 Major Tests," Reading Research Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1973): 206-223.

29. Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940).

Reprinted from American Educator, Fall 2013

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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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OELA, 2019

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Ten Commitments for Equitable Educators | Equity Literacy Institute

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Free handout on the ten commitments for educational equity

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Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework from the New York State Education Department

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Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework from the New York State Education Department

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Yes, We Could!! The Story Of How Latino Parents Revived Our School’s PTA

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Yes, We Could!! The Story Of How Latino Parents Revived Our School’s PTA

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Note: This post is a guest blog written by Bilingual Community Liaison Ingrid Montenegro of Fulton County Schools. Montenegro and SupportEd President Diane Staehr Fenner met at the Kennesaw State University 2018 ESOL Conference.
I am a Bilingual Community Liaison for Fulton County Schools in Georgia. My school, Lake Forest Elementary, is located in the heart of Sandy Springs, Georgia. Since the school first opened its doors in August 2008, more than 90% of its students have been of Mexican origin, mostly from the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. These regions of Mexico are among

the top five states with the highest poverty and illiteracy levels in the entire country. In this blog post, I'll share our story of how we turned around our Latino families' engagement and became a National PTA School of Excellence.

Challenges We Faced

Poverty, including lack of basic services such as healthcare and education, has characterized the lifestyle of most of the families of Lake Forest students for a long time. When they emigrated to the United States, they not only had to face the language barrier, but also the cultural change and the challenge of integrating themselves into a new way of life. They also had to integrate their children into the U.S. educational system, where parents are involved in the educational process (a difference from Mexico), and participate in decision making that directly impacts the quality of the services offered by the schools.

When it comes to invitations or calls to participate in organizations such as Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) or School Governing Council, Latino parents tend to react with a high level of what seems like resistance, due to fear of not understanding or not speaking enough English. They also tend to feel a sense of incapacity. This leads to self-segregation, to the point of sabotaging their opportunity to take part or express themselves in meetings that involve leadership roles. Actions as simple as raising ideas or giving solutions to any problem are usually considered too risky for them. Even individuals who have lived in the United States for many years and who understand and speak English fluently may feel very insecure and even uncomfortable expressing their opinions. They may feel that they do not measure up due to their lack of education, or they may claim that their English is not good enough. Therefore, they may think that nothing they'd say will be taken into consideration.

How We Began

Although all the factors were against Lake Forest to create a Parent Teacher Association due to the lack of parental involvement at the time, the founding principal, against all predictions, laid the foundation for the first and incipient PTA. For the first five years, the board of directors consisted of one American[1] mother, one bilingual father, and teachers and staff members of the school, including me. After a while, the only two parents who had been part of the PTA resigned from their positions when they reached the maximum number of years that they could serve on the board of directors. On the staff side, the workload that was already heavy with the day to day functioning of an elementary school, coupled with PTA membership responsibility, made the cargo untenable.

[1] In the author's context, "American" indicates American-born and/or native English-speaking.

Our Next Steps

Already tired and frustrated at this point, I decided to take on the challenge of restructuring the PTA board of directors. I began by inviting some of the most active and uninhibited parent volunteers. More than an invitation, it was a desperate call and an ultimatum, "Either you (parents) take leadership positions on the PTA board, or the organization will have to close at Lake Forest." The response of each person at the beginning was mostly negative and pessimistic. They told me, "I do not know what to do, I will not be able to, I do not have time," and many more excuses. To convince them all, I promised that I would stay and work side by side with them. I told them that together we would learn everything we needed to make our organization work and grow. I started by offering leadership and protocol classes with the help of a Latino community leader. Little by little, with successes and failures, the pioneer Latino parents started organizing their first fundraising events and leading their own board meetings.

Where We Are Today

I can proudly say that after five years of hard work and continuous learning, last year our Lake Forest PTA was named a National PTA School of Excellence for the remarkably high level of parental involvement and the positive impact it was having on students and families. When I received the news about this distinction I felt very proud and accomplished. I never thought that we would get this far. The parents were so excited and said to each other, "Did you see what we are capable of doing?"

Why We Succeeded

We succeeded in inspiring and empowering those first five scared and highly unmotivated parents who believed that their ideas and voices would have no reach or power. Today, I give testimony to having on board twelve Latino parents who actively serve in leadership positions on the Lake Forest PTA Board. How did I do it? Well, I believe in perseverance, and I am certain that each individual has the ability and the right to develop their talents, regardless of their home language, social status, or schooling level. I also believe that barriers and paradigms can be broken down, inspired by the belief in a common good, and armed with only one tool: the knowledge that when there is a will, there is a way!

Our Job as Educators

Undocumented low-income Latino parents in the United States, like all parents in the world, want the best for their children, but sometimes they aren't aware of how education can be the key to getting out of poverty. They might be convinced that college is a difficult dream for their children to reach, and they tend to be paralyzed by the fear of their immigration status. Our job as educators is to give them the tools to empower them, to teach them how to participate actively in their children's education, and to instill in them the certainty that there is no one with more influence to inspire and motivate their children than themselves. After all, parents are our first teachers in life.

Author Bio: My name is Ingrid Montenegro. I was born, raised, and educated in Venezuela, and I became a citizen of the United States in 2015. I am the first college graduate in my family and my bachelor's degree is in Business Administration. I am a mother of a 14-year-old young man, and Atlanta has been my home for the past 23 years. I have worked as the Bilingual Community Liaison for Fulton County Schools since 2009. I also work part-time as a Parent Liaison for two non-profit organizations (La Amistad and Horizons) that academically support Latino and other minority children. I love my job and getting the resources to support children's education in my community is my passion. You can connect with me on Twitter at @montenegrofcs or by email at Montenegro@fultonschools.org.

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Yes, We Could!! The Story of How Latino Parents Revived Our School's PTA

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Discover effective learning techniques for adults with SupportEd. Explore the inspiring story of how Latino parents revived their school's PTA.

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The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today

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The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today

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Schulten, 2018

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Mispronouncing Students' Names: A Slight That Can Cut Deep

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Mispronouncing Students' Names: A Slight That Can Cut Deep

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Mitchell, 2016

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Mispronouncing Students’ Names: A Slight That Can Cut Deep

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When people come across Michelle-Thuy Ngoc Duong’s name, they often see a stumbling block. The 17-year-old sees a bridge.

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

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

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Genesee, 2015

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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.

Overview

Webcast: ELLs and Reading

Learn 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 Language

Until 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.

Home Language in the Classroom

In 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 knowledge

who 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.

Education for All

A 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.

Video: Using the Home Language as a Resource

Dearborn Public Schools ELD Director Rose Aldubaily discusses the value of using students' home language as a resource.

About the Author

Fred 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.

Acknowledgements

Our 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.

References

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.) (2006). Developing literacy in second language learners. Report of the national literacy panel on minority-language children and youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bialystok, E. (2006). The impact of bilingualism on language and literacy development. In Bhatia, T.K., & W.E. Ritchie (Eds.) The handbook of bilingualism (pp. 577-601). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Chin, N.B., & Wigglesworth, G. (2007). Bilingualism: An advanced resource book. London: Routledge.

Cloud, N., Genesee, F., & Hamayan, E. (2009). Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fry, R. (2007). How far behind in math and reading are English language learners? Washington, D.C.: Report of the Pew Hispanic Center.

Genesee, F. (1999). Program alternatives for linguistically diverse students. Educational Practice Report #1. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence.

Genesee, F., & Lindholm-Leary, K. (in press). The education of English language learners. In K. Harris, S. Graham, & T. Urdan (Eds), APA Handbook of Educational Psychology. Washington DC: APA Books.

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does - and does not - say. American Educator, 32, 8-23, 42-44.

Kovacs, A.M., & J. Mehler, J. (2009). Cognitive gains in 7-month-old infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(16), 6556-6550.

Lindholm, K.J., & Aclan, Z. (1991). Bilingual proficiency as a bridge to academic achievement: Results from bilingual/immersion programs. Journal of Education 173, 99-113.

McNeil, L., Coppola, E., Radigan, J., & Vasquez-Heilig, J. (2008).Avoidable losses: High-stakes accountability and the dropout crisis. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 16(3): http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/

National Center for Education Statistics (2004). Language minority learners and their labor market indicators: Recent trends. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004009.pdf

Passel, J.S., & Cohn, D. (2008). U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic Trends.

Planty, M., Hussar, W., Snyder, T., Kena, G., Kewal Ramani, A., Kemp, J., Bianco, K., & Dinkes, R. (2009). The Condition of Education 2009 (NCES 2009-081). Washington, DC.: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Riches, C., & Genesee, F. (2006). Cross-linguistic and cross-modal aspects of literacy development. In F. Genesee, K. Lindholm-Leary, W. Saunders, & D. Christian, D. Educating English language learners: A synthesis of research evidence (pp. 64-108). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Rumberger, R. (2007). Lagging behind: Linguistic minorities' education progress during elementary school. University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute Newsletter, 16(2), 1-3

Reprints

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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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.

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Culturally Responsive Instruction for Native American Students

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Culturally Responsive Instruction for Native American Students

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The Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation

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Welcome to this professional learning series on culturally responsive instruction for Native American students. This series provides a framework for instruction that emphasizes experiential, active, and student-centered learning. It supports all teachers in creating culturally responsive instruction for their Native students. If you are already familiar with your students' cultures and communities, you should be ready to dive into implementing this framework. If you are not yet familiar, this series will guide you on your journey to become more knowledgeable. We do not provide lessons or curricula on particular cultures, histories, or languages. Instead we provide the pedagogical principles to support you in creating (or adjusting) lessons and curricula informed by and integrating your students' cultures. Implementing this process will pave the way for your students' to achieve success, both in and out of the classroom.

If your role is to support teachers and advocate for Native students, this series is right for you as well. It can help you know what to look for in classroom observations, guide your feedback to teachers and schools, and inform your recommendations to improve programs for Native students.

The series was developed by education researchers Barbara Jones and Joan Herman through a review of the literature on culturally responsive instruction for Native American students, and through regular consultation, feedback, and contributions from David Sullivan, member of the Kiowa Nation and Special Programs Director at Anadarko Public Schools in Oklahoma. Feedback was also provided by Georgina Owen, Title XI State Coordinator at the Colorado Department of Education, who also helped organize the pilot study for these training materials with Title XI Coordinators in Colorado. This project was created through a collaboration between CRESST and WestEd, with funding provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

This series addresses the following questions.

What is culturally responsive instruction?

Why is it important for Native American students?

How does culturally responsive instruction connect to traditional Native American educational approaches?

What are specific guidelines for providing culturally responsive instruction for Native students?

What does culturally responsive practice look like in different subject areas?

What are the steps to take to develop a culturally responsive practice?

Working Together!

We recommend that if possible, you work through this professional learning series together with peers in a professional learning community (PLC). This PLC can be in-person at your school site, or a video/phone conference-based community, e.g., across rural schools in a district.

Our vision for using these materials involves:

Individuals, on their own time, completing one section of the professional learning series at a time. This includes watching the course video and any additional material, such as completing any handout or inventory activities that go along with the section. To support productive meetings, we've included a document on establishing meeting norms below.

After completing the section activities, individuals come together and meet with their PLC and discuss:

What they've learned through the videos and application activities

Questions that have come up

Experiences/reflections related to culturally responsive instruction in their classrooms

Goal setting for each participant

Linked below is a sample meeting agenda for these meetings.

Additionally, teachers may come together for Video Study Groups (VSG). These are more targeted meetings to provide peer feedback to one another based on video recordings teachers take of their classrooms. To support this effort, we've included a sample initial meeting agenda and an agenda for follow up VSG meetings.

Meeting Norms | PLC Meeting Agenda | VSG Meeting Agenda 1 | VSG Meeting Agenda 2

Let's get started!

The series of videos and tasks are presented in sequential lessons and build on each other. Follow the steps to complete each lesson before moving on to the next video.

1. The What and Why of Culturally Responsive Instruction

This section introduces culturally responsive instruction and explains why it's critical for the academic success of Native American students.

Steps to complete section:

Watch the course video

Click on the link below to answer the Exit Questions for this section. Note: you will be prompted to make a copy of the Google doc before using it. Keep track of where you save it for later reference. If you don't yet have a Google account. Click here to get started.

Complete the Reflection handout

Exit Questions I Reflection handout

2. Understanding Culture and Native American Diversity

This section provides a framework for considering culture in classroom settings and explores the range of diversity among Native students.

Steps to complete section:

Watch the course video

Answer the video Exit Questions

Read the article on the historical and cultural underpinnings of education in Native American communities

Complete the Student Inventory - either for teachers or for those who support teachers

Exit Questions | Historical & Cultural Underpinnings of Native Americans and Education | Student Inventory for Teachers | Student Inventory for those who Support Teachers

3. Foundations for Culturally Responsive Practice

This section elaborates on the foundations for our instructional guidance in this series, including traditional Native American values, epistemologies, and educational strategies, and general principles of culturally responsive instructional practice.

Steps to complete this section:

Watch the course video

Answer the Exit Questions.

Complete the Culturally Responsive Practice Inventory - either for teachers or for those who support teachers

Exit Questions | Culturally Responsive Practice Inventory for Teachers | Culturally Responsive Practice Inventory for those who Support Teachers

4. Where to Start: Initial Guidelines for Instruction

This section provides initial guidelines for providing culturally responsive instruction for Native students. It covers the areas of: instructional strategies, instructional activities, norms of social interaction, and teacher attitudes. It links these guidelines to specific, traditional Native American teaching and learning methods.

Steps to complete section:

Watch the course video

Answer the Exit Questions.

Complete the Initial Guidelines handout - either for teachers or for those who support teachers.

Exit Questions | Initial Guidelines: Handout for Teachers | Initial Guidelines: Handout for those who Support Teachers

5. Going Further: More Guidelines

This section provides more guidelines for providing culturally responsive instruction for Native students. It covers the areas of: instructional materials, curriculum, and parent and community involvement. It links these guidelines to specific Native American values and epistemologies.

Steps to complete section:

Watch the course video

Answer the Exit Questions.

Complete the More Guidelines handout - either for teachers or those who support teachers.

Exit Questions | More Guidelines: Handout for Teachers | More Guidelines: Handout for those who Support Teachers

6a. Pedagogical Implications for Math, Science, and Social Studies

6b. Pedagogical Implications for ELA, Native Language & Problem/Place-based Scenarios

This section illustrates what culturally responsive instruction for Native students looks like in English Language Arts and in Native languages. It also provides an in-depth example of culturally responsive principles in action in the problem/place-based scenario. This scenario is a student activity spanning many lessons. It is multi-disciplinary and engages the local community.

Steps to complete section:

Watch the course video

Answer the Exit Questions.

Read the Kiowa story, San-Ko and Tahlee Tdahn by David Sullivan, to begin thinking about incorporating traditional stories into lessons.

Complete the Kiowa story handout to reflect on the story's message and how stories like these can be integrated into instruction.

Review the Problem/Place-based Scenario Steps.

Complete the Try It Out handout for teachers or the Observation Tool for those who support teachers. Note: you will use the Strategies by Subject Area handout to support your planning processes.

Exit Questions I Kiowa Story I Kiowa Story Handout I Problem/Place-based Scenario Steps I Try It Out I Observation Tool for those who Support Teachers

7. Developing a Culturally Responsive Practice

This section illustrates the six key steps teachers need to take to become culturally literate and competent for the purpose of providing culturally responsive instruction to Native American students. ​These steps include: 1) self-assessment, 2) inventory of cultural knowledge, 3) investigation of students' culture, community, and language, 4) design and enact instruction based on this evidence, 5) reflect and repeat, and 6) moving forward.

Steps to complete section:

Watch the course video

Answer the Exit Questions.

Complete the step-by-step handouts that will guide you on your path towards achieving culturally literacy and competency.

Literature on Culturally Responsive Instruction for Native American Students

Review this list of references and tools that informed development of this Spotlight.

Additional Resources
Formative Assessment for Improving Native American Student Learning and Language Development: A Series of Professional Learning Modules
This series addresses formative assessment implementation with Native students across content areas with a focus on language development, including academic English and Native language. Students' levels of prior content knowledge and language development vary greatly from one to another. It is important that instructors know where each student is on their learning pathway, and then target instructional experiences that are matched to their levels. With formative assessment, teachers have the tools to do this work. It is only in connecting with students where they are on the pathway, that they are able to progress towards meeting their Learning Goals.
Formative Assessment in Action
The Formative Assessment in Action Spotlight aims to provide educators with resources that support learning about the formative assessment process. The spotlight includes classroom videos that showcase formative assessment in action, and opportunities to deepen learning about formative assessment with video viewing protocols. Educators can use the opportunities to analyze others' practice with an eye towards incorporating new learning into current instructional routines. Note: you'll see some of the same classroom videos that are in this professional development program, plus many more!
High-Leverage Principles of Effective Instruction for English Learners
New college and career ready standards (CCRS) have established more rigorous expectations of learning for all learners, including EL students, than what was expected in previous standards. A common feature in these new content-area standards is their emphasis on students' use of language to articulate and convey understanding of the content. The heightened role that language plays in CCRS presents new challenges for EL students and their teachers by calling for improved instructional strategies that simultaneously address language and content-area learning.

The purpose of this resource is to provide teachers of EL students with effective, high-leverage learning and teaching principles that can be incorporated into daily instructional plans and routines.

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Culturally Responsive Instruction for Native American Students

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Welcome to this professional learning series on culturally responsive instruction for Native American students. This series provides a framework for instruction that emphasizes experiential, active, and student-centered learning. It supports all teachers in creating culturally responsive instruction for their Native students.

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How to Support Culturally Responsive Instruction in Your School

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How to Support Culturally Responsive Instruction in Your School

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SupportEd blog post

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How to Support Culturally Responsive Instruction in Your School

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Explore how to implement a culturally responsive instruction for all students including English learners and multilingual learners.

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Teaching Tolerance

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan-texts, student tasks and teaching strategies-our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom-all for FREE.

Not sure where to begin? Get to know our Social Justice Standards, anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains-Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. The Standards provide a common language and a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level.

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan-texts, student tasks and teaching strategies-our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom-all for FREE.

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Resources for Addressing Multicultural and Diversity Issues in Your Classroom

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Resources for Addressing Multicultural and Diversity Issues in Your Classroom

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National Education Association

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NEA views the diversity that exists among our members, staff, students, and communities as a great asset for public education and works to maximize this asset through the National Diversity Training Program.