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SIOP & TIPS bookmark (yellow cardstock) (1).pdf

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Virtual Word Wall [Created by Esther Park @MrsParkShine]

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Origins Magazine: Student published Magazine

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Origins Magazine: Student published Magazine

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This local, student run magazine amplifies the voices of immigrant students. Check out the winning submissions from Pontiac students on page 10!

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https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/think-pair-share

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Think-pair-share is a collaborative learning strategy where students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This strategy requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question; and (2) share ideas with classmates. Discussing with…

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https://www.valentinaesl.com/blog/is-your-word-wall-really-supporting-the-learners-in-your-classroom

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Rooted Linguistics: Serving Teachers of Multilingual Learners

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What kind of word wall is on your walls? Does it support your learners or is it just there as part of the wall paper creating wall pollution?
Let me tell you first hand...I used to have a traditional word wall and I wholeheartedly thought I was doing what was best for my students. It was alphabetical and I put words on it that were Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III (thinking that I was supporting everyone). I tried playing games with my students using the word wall and I even let them add their own words to it so they could take ownership of the wall.
But as a lifelong learner I embrace new information and when I find something that is better for students, I recognize it. Recently I learned about Interactive Word Walls from Dr. Julie Jackson. She is a professor at Texas State University and travels to deliver professional development regarding these amazing word walls. Her expertise is in the field of science but I think the word walls can work in any content area. ​

The idea is that the word wall is not alphabetically organized, rather is it structured by theme or unit of study. In addition, these word walls can take many shapes. They are in the form of various graphic organizers (only really large on our walls). Students interact with them and add visuals, realia (real objects), sketches, or pictures to the categories. The word walls usually have a sentence stem or frame as well to support comprehension and synthesize meaning.
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Why is this type of word wall better than a traditional word wall?
Research shows that our brains work better when information is organized and categorized, connected and attached to a visual or real object. All of this is embedded in Interactive Word Walls. If you still aren't buying it, take a look at the two pictures below. Imagine that you are a student learning both content AND language in this classroom. How much would you learn from this traditional word wall?

Probably not much. Now take a look at this Interactive Word Wall. Are you able to gather any language from it and synthesize information from the word wall?

Even though this is a language that you (probably) don't speak, chances are that you are able to connect meaning from this type of word wall. Because of it's organization and use of visuals, the Interactive Word Wall allows our knowledge from L1 (first language) to transfer to our target language. So useful! Plus if there are any words that you did not know in your L1, you will be able to learn them easily since there are visuals to help you.
Let's take a look at the fist column. Did you initially think this column was electric energy and then when you looked more closely at the last few pictures (sun and fire) you thought...no, it can't be electric, it must be heat energy? Think of the high level of processing that your brain had to go through to come to that conclusion.
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Make it Even More ELL Friendly
One way to make it EVEN more ELL friendly is to add some Total Physical Response (click to learn more). When introducing the key words on the word wall, teach students a physical movement to go along with the meaning of the words. For example, if we were learning about heat energy, I might have my kids fan their faces because heat is hot. Or for sound energy we might put our hands around our mouths like a megaphone or cup our ears like we are listening.

Steps for making your own Interactive Word Wall:
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1. Select critical vocabulary based on grade level essential skills.
2. Sketch a map or graphic organizer that will best display the topic (Venn Diagram, Bubble, T Chart, Content Frame, etc.)
3. Create the graphic organizer frame on your classroom wall.
4. Allow students to add to the wall during class as learning grows.
5. Students can have their own copy of the graphic organizer to complete as well.
​
Like I mentioned, I learned how to make word walls more interactive and accessible from Dr. Julie Jackson. She taught me. Who will you teach? Pass this knowledge along. It will only make teaching and learning better for the greater good of our students.
​
Like George Bernard Shaw said, "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

​For more about interactive word walls, watch the short YouTube video below or visit the resources down here. Link to the Google Slides.

Resources:
http://www.thesciencetoolkit.com/about-me/
www.thesciencetoolkit.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Interactive-Word-Walls-Science-Scope.pdf
http://www.thesciencetoolkit.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Interactive-Word-Walls-Science-and-Children.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuaOjtk9QoM

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Is Your Word Wall Really Supporting the Learners in Your Classroom?

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What kind of word wall is on your walls? Does it support your learners or is it just there as part of the wall paper creating wall pollution? Let me tell you first hand...I used to have a...

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https://www.teachervision.com/reading/directed-reading-thinking-activity

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Directed Reading-Thinking Activity: Teaching Strategy (Grades K-3)

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Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) is a teaching strategy that guides students in making predictions about a text and then reading to confirm or refute their predictions. This is an excellent method of teaching to introduce to your students.

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https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/teaching-strategies/close-and-critical-reading/gist

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What?

Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts (GIST) is a summarization procedure that helps students digest complex texts by requiring contextual word learning. GIST explicitly combines the most important words with reading and writing to comprehend complex texts.

Before, during and after reading

The skills required for GIST are the core of reading for understanding. This strategy provides all students with the opportunity to deeply understand and gain access to rigorous and complex texts.

1. Select a central text.

2. Highlight a passage that either explains an important concept, including difficult vocabulary, or promotes discussion about a central topic or theme. These might include social justice, social action, racial or cultural discrimination, or linguistic diversity. Do not consider reading level when selecting the passage.

3. Project a copy of the text in a visible location.

4. Read the text aloud and then direct students to read a section aloud using choral reading.

5. Revisit your targeted vocabulary words you selected during Word Work.

6. Ask students what words or concepts they consider most important to understanding the text. Highlight both the vocabulary words you selected and the words the students choose. Add them to the GIST Worksheet.

7. As a group, fill out the "5Ws and H" (who, what, where, when, why and how) in the GIST organizer worksheet template.

8. Check for student understanding of key vocabulary using the context of the central text.

9. Have students think aloud and write a one-sentence summary of the text using as many of the listed vocabulary words and concepts as possible.

10. Repeat the process through subsequent sections of the text.

11. Create a topic sentence to precede the summary sentences; students can edit the end result into a summary paragraph.

English language learners

The GIST strategy is effective because it encourages the use of simple answers (who, what, where, when, why and how) to craft a more detailed answer. By working with smaller chunks of information at a time, English language learners are better able to process the information and ultimately arrive at a more detailed summary. Collaborating and partnering throughout the task also benefits English language learners. Whether an English language learner completes the larger summary sentence or not, by engaging in GIST he will definitely be able to answer some of the 5Ws and H questions.

Connection to anti-bias education

The GIST strategy is effective for building an inclusive classroom. It allows all students to approach a complex text on equal footing because classmates help each other access difficult vocabulary and develop summarizing skills. The structure of the strategy allows all students the opportunity to be successful regardless of vocabulary limitations.

For more information on the GIST strategy, click here.

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Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts (GIST) is a summarization procedure that helps students digest complex texts by requiring contextual word learning. GIST explicitly combines the most important words with reading and writing to comprehend complex texts. Before, during and after reading The skills required for GIST are the core of reading for understanding.

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https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/teaching-strategies/close-and-critical-reading/sqp2rs

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What?

SQP2RS stands for survey, question, predict, read, respond and summarize. SQP2RS (or "Squeepers") ensures students recognize the steps to reading and understanding informational texts.

Before, during and after reading

Why?

SQP2RS facilitates the development of the meta-cognitive skills and awareness students need to understand complex texts and become independent, self-regulating readers.

How?

Begin by selecting a central text. Explain and model all steps before making students responsible for SQP2RS activities. Provide students with a copy of the SQP2RS graphic organizer so they can document their steps.

1. Survey: Have students take 1-2 minutes to scan the new text and preview the concepts they will learn. Prompt students to read the title, notice text features (e.g. pictures, captions, headings, bolded text) and read the first few paragraphs. After reading, ask: What key concepts do you think you will learn from reading this text?

2. Question: Assign students to small groups to generate questions they anticipate will be answered by the text. Display student questions in a visible location; mark the most frequently asked questions. After students begin reading, prompt them to attend to the questions by asking: What questions do you have as you read the beginning part of this text? If the text is too lengthy to be read in one sitting, have students formulate new questions for each section as they come to it.

3. Predict: Ask the whole class to come up with three or four key concepts they think they will learn while reading. The predictions should be based on the questions generated in the prior step, especially those marked "frequently asked."

4. Read: Have students read the text, either independently, with a partner, in small groups or one-on-one with you. Instruct students to search for answers to their questions and confirm (or refute) their predictions. Their answers should include textual evidence, and students should use sticky notes to mark those places where their questions are answered or predictions confirmed.

5. Respond: Independently, with partners or in small groups, students should write or discuss answers to their questions from step 2. Again, require students to cite textual evidence, both in discussions and their writing. Lead a whole-group discussion of the text's key concepts, prompting students to use textual evidence to support their ideas and claims. Clarify any misunderstandings.

6. Summarize: Independently, with partners or in small groups, students should summarize the text's central ideas in writing or through discussion. Consider these prompts:(Oral): In your own words, tell your group and/or a partner the most important ideas and facts from what you just read. You should use your text to support your thinking.

(Written): Write a summary of this text in your own words. Include the important ideas and facts from each section of the text. You should use the text to help you write your summary.

English language learners

This strategy allows English language learners to direct their own learning. English language learners can use the survey step (step 1) to determine new vocabulary words they need help to learn. By asking students to generate their own questions, they rely on background knowledge to control the direction of the lesson. To ensure English language learners are fully comfortable with this strategy, group them with students who speak the same native language.

Connection to anti-bias education

Providing students with the tools necessary to comprehend and analyze text helps equalize opportunities to learn. A strategy like "Squeepers" improves students' access to texts. By allowing students to identify unfamiliar key words and independently generate questions, the strategy honors the individual reader-response perspective.

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SQP2RS stands for survey, question, predict, read, respond and summarize. SQP2RS (or "Squeepers") ensures students recognize the steps to reading and understanding informational texts. Before, during and after reading SQP2RS facilitates the development of the meta-cognitive skills and awareness students need to understand complex texts and become independent, self-regulating readers.

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Padlet: 7 Steps to Language Rich classroom

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Padlet: 7 Steps to Language Rich classroom

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Current events, Leveled for ELs

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English news and easy articles for students of English

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News in Levels « World News for Students of English

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We write news in three different levels of English. We want to help you understand English more. Now all students can enjoy reading and listening to news.

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MrsPark.org

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Strategies and Tech Tools to Support Remote Learning- Do Not Delete 

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Ed Tech

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

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

In short, digital graphic organizers are more versatile.

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

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

Creating graphic organizer templates with Google Drawings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking for even MORE G Suite resources?

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©2023 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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

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

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What Is Comprehensible Input?

Comprehensible input is a critical concept for second-language development for students with and without learning difficulties. Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the essence of what is being said or presented to them. This does not mean, however, that teachers must use only words students understand. In fact, instruction can be incomprehensible even when students know all of the words. Students learn a new language best when they receive input that is just a bit more difficult than they can easily understand. In other words, students may understand most, but not all, words the teacher is using.

10 Tips and Strategies

More ELL Resources

Using context and visual cues

Making teacher talk comprehensible to students goes beyond the choice of vocabulary and involves presentation of background and context, explanation and rewording of unclear content, and the use of effective techniques such as graphic organizers. By using context or visual cues, or by asking for clarification, students enhance their knowledge of English. When input is comprehensible, students understand most aspects of what is required for learning, and the learning experience pushes them to greater understanding

Provide enough relevant background information

One way teachers can ensure that material is sufficiently comprehensible is to provide relevant background knowledge and content. Teachers should try to explain ideas or concepts several times using slight variations in terminology and examples.

Build context through relatable experiences

Comprehensible input is related to more than just language development and curriculum content. Appropriate context is crucial. One way for teachers to be sensitive to the language and cultural backgrounds of their English-language learners with learning difficulties is to provide instruction that draws on the experiences of their students. This does not mean that teachers have to be experts in their students' cultures, but they do have to understand how effective it can be to connect students' learning to their past experiences. Such understanding can often be gained by listening carefully and attentively to students.

Choose vocabulary, gestures, and visuals carefully

Many other techniques can be used to increase the likelihood that students will understand what is being said to them, such as the use of consistent language, frequent use of visuals, and providing frequent opportunities for students to express their ideas.Comprehensible instruction requires that teachers carefully control their vocabulary and use graphic organizers, concrete objects, and gestures when possible to enhance understanding. It is important to limit the length and number of lecture-type presentations.

Stress accuracy, not rigidity

During instructional dialogs, the focus should be primarily on accuracy of content, not rigid requirements associated with correct language use. Spending time defining, discussing, and clarifying vocabulary words unlikely to be familiar to the students prior to reading a passage has demonstrated consistently positive effects on reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension for students with learning, speech, and language disabilities.

Encourage interactivity through use of native languages

To continually modulate and clarify the language of instruction, teaching must also be highly interactive. Teachers must constantly involve students, ask many questions, and encourage students to express their ideas and thoughts in the new language. One strategy for motivating students is to give them opportunities to share their language, culture, country, and experiences. Opportunities to use language orally creates, in turn, opportunities to increase receptive language skills.

Sometimes, talking in class is okay!

Give ELL students more opportunities in the classroom to use oral language and to engage in cognitively challenging tasks.

Leverage peer tutors and group activities

Cooperative learning and peer tutoring strategies have the potential to effectively and rapidly increase English-language development, particularly when working with highly decontextualized and cognitively challenged language concepts.

Use journals to help with guidance and feedback

For older students, expressing ideas orally can be risky in some classrooms. The use of dialog journals, even computer journals, with feedback from the teacher, can become a more comfortable vehicle for English language development.

Progress, not perfection

In conclusion, it is important to realize that comprehensible input is as much an ideal as it is an achievable reality. In teaching English-language learners with learning difficulties, we can attempt to reach this ideal level of support and challenge, but in the context of complex and fast-paced classroom interactions, it may rarely be achieved as much as we would like. Nonetheless, this is a critical principle as you develop an instructional program for each English-language learner.

Excerpted from Teaching English-Language Learners with Learning Difficulties

More resources on Teaching English-Language Learners

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What Is Comprehensible Input for ELL Students?

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Comprehensible input is a critical concept for second-language development for students with and without learning difficulties. Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the essence of what is being said or presented to them. This does not mean, however, that teachers must use only words students understand.

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Valentina Gonzales

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Readworks - great for building background knowledge and exposure to academic language at many reading levels.

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Readworks - great for building background knowledge and exposure to academic language at many reading levels.

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Choose a video, embed prompts for comprehension.

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Valentina Gonzales

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Serving Multilingual Learners of All Ages

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If you are not using a structured conversation or talk technique regularly in your classroom yet, this is THE one to implement NOW. It's not only easy to implement right away, but it can also be used in every grade level and content area. There is practically no prep work need yet the benefits for students rock!

The benefits of academic talk are too great to avoid. If, as teachers, we do all the talking, then WE do all the learning. Talk makes learning stick. Students must verbalize to internalize.

When I was an ESL specialty teacher, I would spend the day co-teaching in various classrooms on my campus. One thing I noticed about classrooms, is that some were like rainforests. Picture this: plants of all types, flowers blooming, creatures crawling around, brightly colored birds and butterflies flying through, monkeys swinging through branches, frogs hopping about, etc. The rainforest was vibrant and alive and all types of life thrives in the ecosystem. While other rooms were like desolate, deserted islands...no life, no sound, no energy.

What made the classrooms vibrant rainforests where children thrived while others were desolate, deserted islands? The answer was ample opportunities for structured academic TALK.

Classrooms where talk was scaffolded, taught and fostered with fidelity bred a natural sense of community. In these classrooms students felt safe to take risks and speak about the thoughts going on in their mind. They felt safe to change their mind when new information was learned. Students and the teacher recognized that it was more important to process thinking than to get the answer right.

is probably the best structured conversation technique that I have used. I first learned about it from the book 7 Steps to a Language-Rich Interactive Classroom written by John Seidlitz.

Begin by posing an open ended, essential . Thought provoking questions are the best for structured conversations. Crafting great questions takes practice and collaboration with other teachers can help. Post the question so students can see if and easily refer back to it during their conversation.

Next, provide students with a sentence for the answer to the question. As a class rehearse how to say the sentence stem. This rehearsal not only helps students understand that they will need to use the stem but also helps if students aren't quite sure of how to say some of the words.

Third, tell students to stand or give a thumbs up when they can complete the sentence. It can be any signal that you think of really. I like to use hands on hips and thinkers chin. This step is critical for 100% participation. When you begin to implement this step, it may take longer than you would like. BUT don't skip it. Kids will test you. If you stand your ground they will learn that you EXPECT EVERYONE to participate. Remember: It's not about getting the right answer. It's about thinking and learning. Gone are the days that we ask a question and call on one kid to answer it while everyone else zones out!

​Now that all kids are ready, we partner them up and let them their answers. Partnering can take the form that you see fit. It may be a group share or it could be A/B partners. The important part here is that students know how they will share with their peers. Explicit instructions on sharing need to be delivered so that students who are reluctant speaks will understand the expectations while those that dominate talk will also understand where to draw the line. ​ This share time gives the teacher an opportunity to listen in on conversations. The teacher can wonder the crowd and take notes that will guide the next steps in instruction. Note of caution: As you listen to conversations, be careful of your feedback. Often saying "Good job" can halt a discussion by making students feel they have completed the task. Perhaps feedback like, "You're on the right track. Can you say more?" or "What else can you tell us about that?"

The final step in Q Triple S A, is to . This simple means that the teacher will RANDOMLY call on a few students to share their answer with the whole group. Now remember, they've all been given the opportunity to share in small group (which helped to lower their affective filter). That opportunity also provided a listening experience for them, so they may build on their initial answer. The reason for randomly calling on students is that it helps us to avoid always calling on the same kids. It also keeps everyone on their toes. We hold our kids accountable to the learning.

Whether you are a kinder teacher or a high school algebra teacher, I challenge YOU to try this amazing technique with your kids! And let us know how it goes.

Resources:
​Seidlitz, J. & Perryman, B. (2011). 7 Steps to a language-rich interactive classroom: Research based strategies for engaging all learners. San Clemente: Canter Press. ​

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Q Triple S A--An Amazing Structured Conversation Technique

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If you are not using a structured conversation or talk technique regularly in your classroom yet, this is THE one to implement NOW. It's not only easy to implement right away, but it can also be used in every grade level and content area.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity

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Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity

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Sydney Snyder - Diane Staehr Fenner

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Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners

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What will you do to promote multilingual learners’ equity? Our nation’s moment of reckoning with the deficit view of multilingual learner…

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Much of my work is at the grassroots level to empower teachers who work with children like I was. This is life-giving work, yet I am haunted by comments made repeatedly by teachers all around the worl...

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Blog Archives | ELL Strategies | Empowering ELLs

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Much of my work is at the grassroots level to empower teachers who work with children like I was. This is life-giving work, yet I am haunted by comments made repeatedly by teachers all around the worl...

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Valentina's Elementary English Learners Blog

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Valentina's Elementary English Learners Blog

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Home page for teachers of English Learners/Multilingual Learners

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This is a website designed to support teachers of English Learners/Multilingual Learners.

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Think Pair Synthesize Talking Placemat [Created by Esther Park @MrsParkShine]

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

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

Bilingual and English-immersion early care and education programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Differentiate instruction and classroom assessment for language

Interpret ACCESS for ELLs test scores

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

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

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This discussion technique gives students the opportunity to respond to questions and/or discuss information with a variety of peers in a structured manner. Students form two concentric circles and exchange information with a partner until the teacher signals the outer circle to move in one direction, giving each student a new peer to talk to.

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Help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively with these free graphic organizer templates, available for download. They can be used to structure writing projects and help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research, and brainstorming.

Printable Graphic Organizers

Select a blank graphic organizer from the following categories depending on your curriculum needs.

Sequence of Events

Main Topic and Key Details

Compare/Contrast

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Free Downloadable Graphic Organizer Templates

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Use these free graphic organizer templates to help your students communicate more effectively by classifying ideas, structuring writing projects, and more.

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Copy and paste to simplify text

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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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Review

“A book that brings together kids, families, teachers, and administrators in conversation. Tough, vulnerable, important conversation.” ―Matthew Winner, The Children's Book Podcast
"STARRED REVIEW: A guidebook for taking action against racism. The clear title and bold, colorful illustrations will immediately draw attention to this book, designed to guide each reader on a personal journey to work to dismantle racism. In the author's note, Jewell begins with explanations about word choice, including the use of the terms "folx," because it is gender-neutral, and "global majority," noting that marginalized communities of color are actually the majority in the world. She also chooses to capitalize Black, Brown, and Indigenous as a way of centering these communities' voices. Organized in four sections—identity, history, taking action, and working in solidarity—each chapter builds on the lessons of the previous section. Underlined words are defined in the glossary, but Jewell unpacks concepts around race in an accessible way, bringing attention to common misunderstandings. Activities are included at the end of each chapter; they are effective, prompting both self-reflection and action steps from readers. The activities are designed to not be written inside the actual book; instead, Jewell invites readers to find a special notebook and favorite pen and use that throughout. Combining the disruption of common fallacies, spotlights on change-makers, the author's personal reflections, and a call to action, this powerful book has something for all young people no matter what stage they are at in terms of awareness or activism. Essential. (author's note, further reading, glossary, select bibliography)―
Kirkus Reviews
“WOW. Have you ever wanted to better understand who you are? What’s happening to us in this racially-divided world, and what we can do about it?
This Book Is Anti-Racist is bold in its honesty, and brilliant in its illustrative breakdown of an essential vocabulary on race and identity. This racial and intersectional literacy tool models what creative anti-racist work can look like. It has renewed us to keep up the fight.”―Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi, student activists, authors of Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, and Identity, and co-founders of Choose.org
“I was so fortunate to have my kids learn about social justice in Tiffany’s classroom, so I know firsthand the profound impact her teachings have. Now young people everywhere can benefit from Tiffany’s wisdom with her debut title,
This Book is Anti-Racist. This book is a gift to our future.”―Jarrett J. Krosoczka, National Book Award Finalist and author of Hey Kiddo
"STARRED REVIEW: Using clear, compelling language, Jewell employs four sections to deftly explain progressive understandings of identity, history, action, and solidarity as tools to encourage antiracist reflection, thought, and action. From the author’s note introducing the idea that “racism is a problem, a very serious problem,” to the volume’s explorations of “spending that privilege” and “calling out and calling in,” Jewell offers readers at various points in their activist journeys a necessary primer on antiracist thinking (a glossary helpfully defines underlined terms used throughout, including cisgender, neurodiverse, and femme). Thoughtful, energizing calls to action and journal prompts encourage readers to check in with themselves and to “grow from our discomfort.” Durand’s stylish illustrations punctuate the text-heavy pages; robust supplemental materials, including notes on the text and suggested reading, point toward ongoing learning."―
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“…help[s] young people learn in a gentle, thoughtful way.”―
USA Today
“…equip[s] young people with the tools they need to be actively antiracist.”―
TIME Magazine
“…empower[s] teens and young adults to undo racial oppression.”―
ESSENCE
“…a clear guidebook for how to stop racism in our own hearts and minds.”―
TODAY.com
“Writer and educator Jewell successfully combines personal experience and social and historical issues in this colorful and informative guidebook. Each chapter contains exercises to help readers conceive of their own identities, recognize how society allocates power to certain people, and learn how individuals can stand up to injustice while keeping themselves safe from harm. Durand’s vivid, dynamic illustrations are as crucial to the book as the text itself. Though the formatting, which involves pull quotes, font changes, shifting columns, and other graphic elements, may be confusing to some young readers, the information is written clearly and thoughtfully. Concepts like institutional racism and internalized inferiority are relayed in concise language without talking down to the audience. Several terms are underlined and defined in the glossary. Footnotes and a bibliography also appear in the back matter. A further reading list includes a mix of adult, teen, and children’s materials. The work will particularly resonate with fans of Anastasia Higginbotham’s Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness. VERDICT A visually exciting and well-crafted antiracist guide for all children. A work that fills a much-needed gap between the feel-good but vague messages of empathy and acceptance in some picture books, and the advanced terminology and theory in young adult nonfiction on racial justice. Recommended for any juvenile nonfiction collection.”―
School Library Journal, Starred Review

About the Author

Tiffany Jewell is a Black biracial writer and Montessori educator. She spends her time baking bread, building LEGOS, watching British detective shows, and dreaming up how she can dismantle white supremacy. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her two sons, her husband, and a turtle she's had since she was nine. This is her first book for children and young adults. Find her on instagram: @tiffanymjewell
Aurélia Durand is a French illustrator based in Paris. Her work is dedicated to representing people of color in society, and she uses bold art as a vivid demonstration. "I use vibrant colors and joyful music to spread good vibes to talk about diversity and open a conversation about why it matters to include more color in our society." She wants to create more nuanced illustrative stories by portraying women of color standing proudly and fiercely. Her work has been featured in advertising campaigns, galleries, and editorial magazines. Her clients include Apple, Refinery29, and Tinder. She shares her work online on different platforms, mainly Instagram, where she posts daily illustrations, live paintings, and animations. Find her on Instagram: @4ur3lia.

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This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work (Empower the Future, 1)

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This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work (Empower the Future, 1): Jewell, Tiffany, Durand, Aurelia: 9780711245211: Books

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Directly teach text structures with key words, graphic organizers, and paragraph frames. 

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Directly teach text structures with key words, graphic organizers, and paragraph frames. 

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Graphic organizers and text structure frames

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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Marzano Vocabulary List by Grade and Subject

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Marzano Vocabulary List by Grade and Subject

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This helps me plan appropriate targeted vocabulary.

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Sealy ISD Staff - Be sure to click on the Google image below to login.

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1. Students number off 1-2.
2. ONES make a line, shoulder-to-shoulder.
3. TWOS make a line facing the ones.
4. At the signal, ONES step forward. Students share.*
5. When finished sharing, ONES step back.
6. TWOS step to the left for a new partner.
7. One student at the end moves down the line to their new partner.**
8. Repeat 1-7!
*Students can share by asking a question and getting a response, making up a sentence with a given vocabulary word, reading a category and asking for exemplars, etc etc etc! You may want to give students some type of support, for example an index card with information written on it. You may also want to ask students to trade cards after they share, and take a new card to their next partner. For example: Students have index cards with vocabulary words on them, and are directed to say a sentence with their word to their partner. They then trade cards, move to a new partner, and say a sentence with the vocabulary word on their new card.
**Students might dance, boogie, walk, turn cartwheels, etc! Teachers may play music, direct the class to clap, etc!

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1. Students number off 1-2.2. ONES make a line, shoulder-to-shoulder.3. TWOS make a line facing the ones.4. At the signal, ONES step forward. Students share.*5. When finished sharing, ONES step back.6. TWOS step to the left for a new partner.7. One student at the end moves down the line to their new partner.**8.

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Author: John Seidlitz & Bill Perryman

7 Steps to a Language-Rich, Interactive Classroom, 2nd Edition, provides a seven step process that creates a language-rich, interactive classroom environment, one in which all students can thrive and succeed. Topics include differentiating instruction for students at a variety of language proficiencies, keeping all students absolutely engaged, and creating powerful learning supports

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7 Steps to a Language-Rich, Interactive Classroom (2nd Edition) - Seidlitz Education

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This book provides a seven step process that creates a language-rich, interactive classroom environment, one in which all students can thrive and succeed. Topics include differentiating instruction for students at a variety of language...

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Google Translate: App, web-based, chrome extension

Google Docs: Translate documents

Read&Write for Google: Chrome add on with multiple EL supports

Microsoft Translator for Education

Communication: TalkingPts, Remind, Bloomz, Google Voice

Tutorial: Google Translate (web and app): Real time conversations, instant camera translations, translation of document & texts

Use TalkingPts, Remind, Bloomz, Seesaw and Google Translate to send important health, district and classroom specific to families.

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Description: Favorite animal

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Online teaching can be Culturally Responsive

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Online teaching can be Culturally Responsive

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When COVID-19 hit our society, a wave of teachers was thrown into distance learning with little preparation. Many educators whose districts had the infrastructure to support e-learning jumped right in, navigating the abundance of free resources that peppered the internet overnight. I, too, sought out tasks online, excited for my students to drive their own learning.

But one critical piece was missing: the personal connection with me, their teacher. For the students in our class to whom their teacher is everything, even the most engaging worksheets, videos, projects and animated websites are nothing.

As Maribel Gonzales pointed out in A Healthy Reminder to Educators During School Closings, now is the time to focus on student well-being, not to prioritize academic compliance. Since I work in a district that provides one-to-one technology for our second through 12th graders, I knew I was lucky enough to be able to use the turn to online courses as a way to connect with my students and support them through this crisis.

When I logged on to my first Zoom meeting, seeing the joy on my students' faces and hearing 17 voices simultaneously sharing all that had happened in the few days since we'd all been together was priceless. We spent the first 20 minutes of our meeting just chatting, reconnecting and discussing our needs. I read aloud, and we discussed the reading. We ended with more questions from students about our new learning environment. I attempted to answer as truthfully as I could. I hope I put to bed some of their fears and anxieties in the process.

After our Zoom, I realized that our meeting included several of the hallmarks of culturally responsive teaching: building trusting learning relationships, creating opportunities for student-centered discourse and meeting the cognitive needs of communal learners. At the heart of culturally responsive teaching is the idea of being responsive to students' academic and social emotional needs. With care and planning, any educator teaching online can create a culturally responsive virtual classroom, one that can provide a space where every day, students feel welcomed and valued.

Here's how I'm building on what I learned to ensure I'm meeting the needs of marginalized students even as we shift to a new learning environment.

Building Learning Partnerships Online

Building trusting learning relationships is a cornerstone of culturally responsive instruction. Researchers including Geneva Gay, Sonia Nieto and Gloria Ladson-Billings all stress its importance. In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond explains that high-trust, low-stress environments can help marginalized students effectively process and retain learned information. When students feel safe and trust that we have true learning partnerships with them, they will be more likely to take the necessary risks needed to learn.

Online, these relationships looked different than they did in the classroom. Conducting school from our homes, we were all more vulnerable in our learning environment. In effect, taking 20 minutes to talk to students about their lives at the beginning of our meeting built deeper connections with my students, helping us to strengthen our relationships. The fact that they were seeing me in my home helped show them I was willing to share and trust them, too. This reciprocity helped to create a high-trust environment.

Each day since that initial meeting, I changed the location in my home where I met online with students. These reveals entertained my students while also letting them get to know me better. But there are many ways educators can use online spaces to build trusting relationships. One day we did a show and tell by sharing and discussing items from our homes. The next day we tried a scavenger hunt, where I named things: a pet, a sibling or a roll of toilet paper, for example, and students brought them to the camera to show off. We close each Zoom classroom meeting with a sharing or team building activity giving us an additional opportunity to connect with one another.

Centering Students Online

As in traditional classroom settings, culturally responsive teaching online depends on empowering students through learner-centered lessons. Zaretta Hammond maintains that culturally responsive teaching is about creating trusting learning partnerships with students. When teachers act more as facilitators than lecturers, Gloria Ladson-Billings explains, students from marginalized groups are more likely to participate and succeed. Learner-centered lessons are collaborative and allow students to redirect learning to topics that are culturally and socially relevant to them. Students can become more self-confident through the learning process.

During our initial class meeting, I began by presenting all of the topics that we were planning to cover and asking students what they were motivated to learn about first. We talked about which topics are important to them. And I asked for feedback on the types of learning they enjoyed most: projects, games, flip grids or others. That way, when I redesigned my plans to suit distance learning, I could design lessons around my students' interests. Now, I use our interactive classroom time to let students share questions, comments and concerns and to connect with and motivate them.

Supporting Communal Learners

Hammond clarifies a distinction between individual learners and communal learners: Our cultural values, she says, can shape whether we learn best by exploring on our own or collaborating with others to build understanding. Current practices of assigning distance learning packets and independent online projects skew toward independent learners. But students who are communal learners can struggle with traditional distance learning.

To better engage communal learners in the classroom, Hammond suggests making lessons more social and utilizing gamified teaching. By adding a live streaming classroom component to my e-learning plan, I added a social layer that helped engage communal learners. While reading a selected text, I asked students questions and had them respond with some of the features on Zoom: thumbs up, "raise your hand" or emojis. Assigning different values to these elements gamified the learning by making it interactive. For example, if the students heard a simile or metaphor, I asked them to give me a thumbs up, but if they heard me read a personification, I asked them to give me a thumbs down.

After our initial e-learning sessions, I realized the importance of the social aspect of students checking in with their teacher and their friends. Now I am looking for more ways to incorporate collaborative work time into our e-learning environment, including using Zoom's break outs feature for smaller groups. I am also exploring new engaging gamified options like the use of annotation and whiteboard features to have students draw their responses in real time. I plan to use the polling feature to collect student responses, and I have also been trying to implement the chat function as a relay race where students take turns answering questions.

Time for Responsiveness

At the heart of culturally responsive teaching is the idea of being responsive to students' academic and social emotional needs. As teachers, we provide so much more than the lessons we share. For many of our students, we provide a guided path to successfully navigating those lessons, to security and to reassurance.

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Online Teaching Can Be Culturally Responsive

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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The new question-of-the-week is:
How do you handle grading for English-language learners in mainstream content classes?
Grading can be one of the banes of a teacher's existence. An added complication can be when an English-language learner is in a "mainstream" content-subject class-what are the best ways a teacher can handle this situation in an equitable way?

Today, Margo Gottlieb, Kristin Spears, Becky Corr, Pamela Mesta, and Olga Reber offer their responses to this question. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Margo, Kristin, and Becky on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.
Grading shouldn't be "formulaic"
Co-founder and lead developer of WIDA, Margo Gottlieb is an expert in curriculum, instruction, and assessment of language-learners, having started her career as a teacher and currently working with teachers and school leaders across the United States and internationally. Margo is author/co-author of more than a half dozen professional books, including Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners' Success (Corwin, 2019):

Grading is an institutional tradition, yet how do you describe it? Is it a metric, as in a number or letter? If so, how much better is a B than a C, or how much more has been learned if your students score 81 (a B) versus 79 (a C)? Does grading represent standards-referenced performance? If so, what is the difference in the designations "making progress" v. "approaching" in representing students' knowledge of grade-level content?

In either instance, what does "grading" mean for English-language learners (ELLs) whose knowledge base is in a language other than the one in which instruction and assessment are imparted? What does it mean for ELLs participating in dual-language programs where teachers must conform to reporting achievement only in English? How can we maximize equity of grading practices for the heterogeneous mix of ELLs and ELLs with Individualized Education Programs in mainstream content classrooms?

Grading for ELLs, as for all students, should not be formulaic, it shouldn't be rigid, it shouldn't be a mystery or a surprise. Grading shouldn't be a norm-referenced event where students are ranked or compared with their peers. In essence, grading should be part of ongoing assessment as and for learning-based on student self-assessment and negotiation between teachers and students-that is integral to teaching and learning. As an outgrowth of conversations between multilingual learners and their teachers, grading should stem from mutually agreed upon decisions about students' demonstration of learning.

Admittedly, the linguistic, cultural, and personal histories of ELLs are unique; these distinct qualities should provide the context for teachers to begin their discussion with the students. Content teachers across disciplines have the responsibility of maximizing ELLs' opportunities to learn; to do so, they must: 1) provide a variety of scaffolds for ELLs to make meaning from oral and written text, 2) be strategic in inviting ELLs to interact with peers in one or more languages, 3) give ELLs choices in how to demonstrate learning through multimodalities (such as visually, orally, digitally, or in writing), and 4) listen to and invite student voice.

So, what can mainstream content teachers do when negotiating grades with their ELLs? Here are some practical ideas:

While language and content are often indistinguishable during instruction, when it comes time for grading, mainstream content teachers must consider ELLs' oral language and literacy in relation to their conceptual understanding. Through ongoing discussion between teachers and students, grading should become a transparent negotiated process in which ELLs are vested to do their best.
Formative assessments Kristin Spears is an ESOL coach and teacher in Spartanburg, S.C., District 6 where she helps plan and conduct ESOL professional development and collaborates with elementary teachers on how to best serve the ELs in their classrooms. In her teaching career, she has worked in various upstate S.C. schools with students in grades K-8:
Like so many other issues in education, grading ELLs is a tricky topic. There is no easy, one-size fits all answer. Why? Because like our native English speakers, each ELL is unique. So often, teachers ask, "How can I give him/her a grade? He/She just moved here! They can't even speak." They want their students to be exempt from this seemly unfair situation. Often, teachers aren't trained in how to proceed with these students, so they want to be exempt from their heart and head dilemmas of how to reach, teach, and grade their students.

But grading is not the underlying issue; it is giving the appropriate assessment to grade. How a teacher approaches assessing a nonspeaking newcomer in the 3rd grade is completely different from assessing an ELL that was born here. Assessing a newcomer with a strong foundation in their native language is different from assessing a newcomer with limited education.

High-stakes testing is unavoidable; therefore, ELLs should be exposed to the same format as these tests. However, they should not be the primary form of classroom assessments. When using these multiple-choice tests to prepare students, consider including these scaffolds based on each ELL's proficiency level: picture references, oral administration, and eliminating answer choices.

Formative assessments are more appropriate for ELL students, especially newcomers, and more informative for the teacher. In their book, New Frontiers in Formative Assessment, Noyce and Hickey define the use of formative assessments as "the process of monitoring student knowledge and understanding during instruction in order to give useful feedback and make timely changes in instruction to ensure maximal student growth." The key word in that definition is during. While summative assessments take time out of the instructional day, formative assessments are built into the daily or weekly routines of the classroom.

Some examples of formative assessments are: labeling and drawing models, completing graphic organizers, keeping a content journal or reading log, conducting an interview, rating scales, and ticket out the door. The amount of scaffolding needed on each assessment depends on a student's language-proficiency level. A newcomer may need to label a premade picture with a word bank or match pictures while intermediate students should draw and label their own diagram. A limited-English-proficient student might need sentence frames for their journal, while an intermediate student might just need a sentence starter. We want students to continue to move forward in their zone of proximal development. This is also known as productive struggle, pushing students to reach their fullest potential. Once a child has reached mastery with a particular scaffold, that scaffold is removed.
Assessing content apart from language proficiency
Another benefit of formative assessments is the immediate feedback teachers and students gain. Gottlieb, in her book Assessing English Language Learners: Bridges to Educational Equity, refers to this as assessment for learning. Assessment for learning gives teachers the data they need to make informed instructional decisions about how to proceed with content instruction. Does content need to be retaught? Are more language supports needed? Can a picture or diagram be used to help explain the content? Teachers use their expertise to continually monitor and adjust and then assess again. Over time, these formative assessments create a portfolio of student work that can be used for grades but, more importantly, can be used to document student gains and successes.

Becky Corr is the president of EdSpark Consulting, which is dedicated to igniting partnerships for diverse learners through professional development, technical writing, and systems analysis. In her role as the English-language development team lead in the Douglas County school district in Colorado, she coaches, mentors, and supports teachers and facilitates family-engagement opportunities:

"English is a language, not a measure of intelligence."

- Unknown

Grades are a measure of a student's growth toward and mastery of intended outcomes and content standards. They are a form of feedback to students, parents, and other educators about a student's grasp of the content and standards. Students and parents take that feedback to heart. For students who are learning English, grades are an important source of feedback and pride.

When the classroom instruction and assessments align to what students can do according to their English proficiency, then grading becomes much easier. In the absence of instructional and assessment strategies for English-learners, students really struggle with learning the content, and grades can sometimes reflect that. Students and parents can really take that feedback to heart. Take, for instance, a student who made excellent grades when they were learning in their first language before they arrived in the United States. If they come to the U.S. and receive poor grades because the instruction they are receiving is not comprehensible or the assessment is a measure of their language rather than their content knowledge, they can start to question their identity as a good student as well as their intelligence.

English-learners have the dual challenge of learning language and content at the same time. They have to work at least twice as hard. When students are held to high expectations and receive the appropriate support for language, then mastering the content standards becomes possible. It is important to expect English-learners to master the content and communicate this expectation along with the assurance that they will be provided with language support.

When assessing English-learners, it is important to assess their growth toward and mastery of the content standards separate from language. In other words, the assessments must match what a student is able to do at their current proficiency level. Collaboration with the ESL teacher is helpful when it comes to assessment and throughout the teaching and learning cycle. If the instruction throughout the unit is not comprehensible to the student, then modifying an assessment or providing an alternative method of assessment will not be helpful. On the other hand, if collaboration between the ESL teacher and content teacher has been strong and students have benefited from comprehensible input, then providing an assessment that matches the proficiency level of the students is beneficial. Most states have a document similar to the WIDA Can-Do Descriptors or the NYSESLAT Performance Level Descriptions. If unsure of a student's English-proficiency level, collaborating with your ESL teacher will be helpful for putting into context what a student is able to do.
"Four essential considerations" Pamela Mesta's experience includes administration, ESOL, bilingual, elementary, early childhood, educational technology, professional development, and interpretation/translation. She currently works as an ESOL supervisor in a Maryland public school district and is also an adjunct college professor. Mesta has her B.A. in communications, her M.A. in education, and has done postgraduate work in ESOL, educational technology, and school administration. Her certifications include ESOL Pre-K-12, Elem/MS 1-6, Administrator I/II, and national-board certification in early childhood.
Students' identities-how they see themselves within the academic world-are influenced by the feedback they receive from teachers. When the content knowledge of English-learners is validly assessed separate from language proficiency, the result is powerfully affirming.

Olga Reber's experience includes ESOL, EFL, professional development, and interpretation/translation. She currently works as an ESOL resource teacher in a Maryland public school district and is also an adjunct college professor. Reber has her B.S. in secondary education/foreign language instruction, her M.A. in linguistics, and has done postgraduate work in educational technology. Her teacher certification is ESOL Pre-K-12.

Pamela Mesta and Olga Reber are also the authors of the book: The Classroom Teacher's Guide to Supporting English Language Learners:

1. Connect with your ELL specialist! This person will be your best point of contact for where to begin with each of your ELLs. Remember, you are the master of your content, and he/she is the master of language development. Together, you can decide what linguistic and content modifications to the curriculum must be made, how language and content goals will be interconnected, and what expectations you both have for student progress.

2. Get to know your learners! Take some time to get to know information about your ELLs. This includes details about their prior schooling experiences, cultural backgrounds, values, and interests. It is also important to research grading systems from their previous schools/countries and discuss these differences with your students. This will help to establish a clear understanding of your expectations. Do some research on the stages of language learning and find out what ELL levels your students are, based on recent language assessments conducted by your ELL specialist. Knowing what levels they are will help you to set reasonable, yet achievable expectations for learning. When an ELL is below grade level in content knowledge, establish a baseline of where they are performing and "grow" their content knowledge from there. If separate objectives have been set for the student, their achievement should be measured with alternate assessments based on those objectives.

3. Match instruction to assessment! Teach students how to be learners first before teaching and assessing content. Modify assessments the same way you modify instruction based on your students' cultural backgrounds and linguistic levels. These modifications should be woven into all formative and summative assessments. The most important thing to remember is that grades should never be a direct reflection of language level, meaning that students should have the opportunity to do well regardless if they are newcomers or advanced ELLs. Oftentimes, this involves creating individualized, differentiated assessments. Provide clear rubrics for assessments and projects along with exemplars that can serve as models.

4. Formatting is not universal! It is best not to assume ELLs are familiar with the assessment format you are using (multiple-choice tests, constructed-response items, etc.). It is best to have study guides (with answers) and review handouts that match not only the contents of the test but also the format so ELLs can practice both. These supports will also help your ELL specialist, as he/she may not be familiar with the content. Allow ample time for students to study the information once they have experienced it in the same format the test is going to be administered. In some cases, allow the use of notes. Visuals used in assessments should be also be the same ones used in notes, instructions, and handouts.

Grading English-language learners (ELLs) can be a bit tricky if you haven't had much experience in this area. No worries! Here are four essential considerations to guide your practice:

Thanks to Margo, Kristin, Becky, Pamela, and Olga 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 eight 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.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

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Strategies for Grading ELLs in Content Classes (Opinion)

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Five educators share suggestions for grading English-language learners in "mainstream" content classes, including emphasizing formative assessments and separating language proficiency from content knowledge.

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I know there are a ton of resources out there for using Google Jamboards in distance learning.

However, I wanted to specifically being a list of resources for teachers working with English Language Learners (obviously, some Jamboard activities are good for ELLs and for everybody else).

Please suggest additions either in the comments here, or on Twitter or Facebook.

Here's what I have so far:

5 ways to use Google Jamboard for online classes is from Breakout English.

5 creative Google Jamboard TEFL activities! is from Level Up Teaching.
How Could I Have Not Known How Easy It Is To Use Graphic Organizers In Jamboard?
ELT Planning has ideas on using Google Jamboard with ELLs.

6 Google Jamboard activities your students willl love! is from The TEFL Zone.

How to use the Interactive WhiteBoard "Jamboard" for an Online Vocabulary Bingo is from Blog de Cristina.

3 Jamboard Activities for the WL Classroom is from Profesora Delgadillo.

6 Ways to Jam on Jamboard: Using the Digital Whiteboard in a Hybrid Classroom is from Edutopia.

How to Use Jamboard in Google Classroom is from Richard Byrne.

✨@GoogleForEdu's Jamboard is excellent for collaboration. @michelleshory & I hope that you & your ELs will enjoy this resource. It includes numerous ways you can use Jamboard for distance learning 💻
📌 https://t.co/0gfAM707aO@Larryferlazzo @KYTESOL @LouisvilleWP @TaraLIsaacs pic.twitter.com/R8KqfOx9O3

- Irina McGrath, Ph.D. (@irina_mcgrath) August 25, 2020

Here's a mini-PD I made for those of you who want to explore Google Jamboard

It's great for
🧩collaboration
🧠class brainstorm
🔤formative assessment
➕math

Slides➡️ https://t.co/PY3noj3mJ6
Tutorial➡️ https://t.co/0Ni8AKWkoN

Templates by amazing @KSzajner @RobertsLearns pic.twitter.com/aGnykJXE9w

- Esther Park (@MrsParkShine) August 18, 2020

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A Beginning List Of The Best Resources For Using Google Jamboards With English Language Learners - Please Add Your Own!

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I know there are a ton of resources out there for using Google Jamboards in distance learning. However, I wanted to specifically being a list of resources for teachers working with English Language Learners (obviously, some Jamboard activities are good for ELLs and for everybody else).

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Teaching online is like traveling to a new country. You're not really sure where anything is, you are afraid to try new things because you might be embarrassed, and you miss the ease of your old daily life and the ability to connect seamlessly with others.

On the other hand, it can be very exciting to see student learning in new and different ways, you can take pride in the growth you experience while learning new instructional strategies, and you will make connections that sometimes can be even more meaningful because you have the opportunity for one-on-one interactions.

This article will give you some ideas on how to navigate this journey as you plan instruction for your English language learners (ELLs) through distance learning.

Needs Assessment

It's important to start your planning by looking more closely at the factors that will impact the success of your students' experiences with distance learning. You can use this downloadable needs assessment for planning ELLs' distance learning, which includes considerations for both offline and online learning.

The tools covers multiple topics; you may wish to read through them all to see which are most relevant to your work or complete the tool as part of a team. The questions can be used by individuals or teams. I also recommend ELL teachers work with grade level and/or content area teams to review these questions so all educators are on the same page when considering how to deliver instruction and what supports should be in place for students and families.

Once the team has reviewed tool, they can determine their priorities and where to put their energy for planning instruction.

District planning examples

Here are some ELL district planning documents that we have used in Roseville, MN:

Distance Learning Strategies

Survey: Distance Learning & ELLs

What does distance learning look like for ELLs in your district? Tell us in this brief survey.

Note: This section refers to some specific platforms by name, although your district may use other approved platforms. It's critical to understand online security risks for children and take measures to protect students' privacy as part of your planning.

1. Get to know your tools.

Take a look at our needs assessment and the section on tools for instruction. Depending on what Learning Management System (LMS) your district uses, there may be tutorials to help you learn how to use these instructional tools.

Keep in mind that:

the focus should be on how the tools can best support teaching and learning goals rather than on the tools themselves

it's best not to introduce too many new tools - otherwise students will spend their time learning the tools rather than learning the content

your district may have a list of approved and vetted platforms for distance learning.

See more in 4 Buckets Manage ALL Our Virtual School Tech by Tan Huynh.

2. Establish a structured learning environment.

This is a lot like arranging your classroom at the beginning of the year - without the inspiring posters! Decide what tools you want students to use regularly (only pick a few) and set up the dashboard or learning activity page. For example, you may want to have a calendar with assignments, announcements, discussion board, and a chat room. Students will know what to do every week because the lesson structure repeats with different content.

For example:

open with a video greeting that you have recorded

do two readings

comment on the discussion board

connect with a partner

write or record (audio or video) a short discussion of your take-aways from the learning, etc.

See more ideas in Five Structures for Virtual School from Tan Huynh's Empowering ELLs blog.

3. Emphasize language production.

Remember to keep the focus on academic learning and to avoid providing only skills-based activities, even if your primary activity is content review. If students are isolated in their homes, they are not likely to have much English language exposure. While this is a valuable time for students to deepen their native language skills with family members, it is critical that teachers build in activities that require students to share their thinking in English.

Look for ways to build interaction, even if you aren't using video. For example, students can post messages via writing, audio, and video and respond to each other. Recordings should be short - three to five minutes in general. If you want to try out sharing your own tips on distance learning for ELs, post to this Flipgrid!

Another strategy is to create videos that students can watch at their convenience and review multiple times for practice. (Some teachers have noted that their ELLs are struggling to keep up with "live" instruction and would benefit from videos they can review multiple times.) You may wish to share greetings, lessons, and important information this way.

See additional ideas in these posts:

4. Scaffold supports.

Differentiate instruction and activities to accommodate different English language proficiency levels. This may mean that you have different sections and tasks for identified students. If you have mainstream students performing closer to grade level, they may interact with the content tasks with minimal support.

For beginning level English learners, however, you will need to analyze the instruction, readings, and activities to provide accommodations such as:

native language or simple English explanations through video

more visuals

native language or leveled English text

an activity completed in a small group rather than independently.

Pairs and groups can be assigned in online learning platforms and it can be helpful for students to collaborate on learning just like in the classroom. Online learning doesn't mean everything has to be done in isolation - many young people are used to connecting with each other through electronic platforms and this is no different.

5. Get those creative juices flowing. (We all have them!)

Many teachers are not going to love online teaching and may grieve the lack of daily interaction with students. It is important to keep a sense of fun and personalization in the online environment. This is an opportunity to reconnect with the creative juices that might be dormant!

Students like it when teachers share little personal stories or pictures. They will also enjoy doing more creative projects and sharing them online. This could be a VoiceThread or Adobe Spark presentation, which allows students to create a slideshow and explain each slide verbally. Their classmates can respond on each slide with a text or verbal response. It's also a good opportunity for a project presentation video or graphic design/artwork assignment.

Give students choices of how to demonstrate their learning - they may surprise you with the creative work they share. My son had a talent for creating music playlists and he created a themed playlist for an assignment explaining how each song related to his insights in a novel. He also dressed up as Arthur Dent for a creative book review and I could not figure out for four months where my ratty green bathrobe had gone...until we cleaned his locker at the end of the year!

6. Look for ways to support social-emotional learning.

Many teachers have shared that their ELLs are valuing the chance to connect with them and their peers as well as continue their education through distance learning. Look for ways to help provide positive encouragement, continue building relationships, and offer support during a time of anxiety and stress. This is especially important for students who may have experienced trauma and a lot of upheaval, like refugees or students with interrupted education - particularly given the abrupt nature of many of the national school shutdowns.

For some great ideas, take a look at:

You can also look for ways to connect content to students' experiences and cultures through culturally relevant instruction.

Online Activities for ELLs

Here are some examples of activities for ELLs, with a focus on oral language development and content development.

1. Students can upload videos of themselves reading their favorite books.

2. Students can write and draw responses to a prompt (for example, "What is one way you can be helpful to your family at home?") and then students can leave questions or comments for each other.

3. Students can film themselves solving a math problem or record themselves explaining how they solved the problem, and the teacher can provide feedback.

4. Students can interview someone in their family that is important to them and create a presentation to share. They can present in both English and native language and include photos or short videos with quotes from their important person. Other students can leave written or verbal comments on slides in English or the students native language.

5. Teacher can create a presentation with slides and voice narration on a platform like VoiceThread. Students can respond orally or in writing to questions posed in the VoiceThread.

6. Teacher can provide a slideshow with visuals on a content topic and resource links for students to learn about the topic. Different students are assigned a few slides to narrate for their classmates to learn about the topic. A variation of this is for students to each get a different topic related to the unit (after learning about it from the teacher) and have them create a group presentation on that topic to share with the class.

Activity: Pass the Paper

Post a short text or image as a prompt to start the discussion.

Round 1: Everyone posts a word, phrase, or short comment about the prompt (depending on age/proficiency levels) via written response, audio, or video.

Round 2: Everyone adds a question related to a classmate's round 1 post.

Round 3: Everyone adds an answer to a classmate's question from round 2.

Round 4: Students review all questions and answers on the grid and use the information to help them write (or record) a reflection that they send to the teacher.

Planning Instruction

Once you have a sense of your goals and what tools you will use for distance learning, you can focus on developing a unit of lessons. A weekly plan as part of a learning unit can help you maintain the same structure and learning activities each week. If students get used to the structure of the online learning course or the materials they receive weekly, they can use their mental energy on language and content learning.

An example of a weekly online instructional schedule might look like this for secondary English learners:

Lesson Launch:

Introduce topic w/ video and essential question

Students interact on a discussion board and share one take-away and one question regarding each reading.

Assign group project to students related to the learning objective. (Students work in Google docs or Padlet) to create a visual to upload and share with the class.

1/2 page written reflection is submitted.

Written reflections are evaluated and feedback comments are shared in writing.

Assign two readings.

Assign 1/2 page written reflection on the essential question using evidence from text to support claims. Due Thursday.

Teacher shares link to recorded video mini-lecture on the topic.

Teacher meets with the students to have a class / small group discussion on the essential question. Teacher can share sentence stems.

Teacher shares snippets of quality written responses to the essential question through messages or class discussions and discusses what makes the response a quality example.

An example online instruction schedule might look like this for elementary English learners:

Lesson Launch:

Introduce topic w/ video and essential question

Students read aloud from books that have been sent home or available online via Epic (free to school closure) or RAZ Kids (fee based).

Assign two independent student learning activities related to the learning objective.

1/2 page written reflection is submitted by returning a packet or taking a photo of response and submitting it.

Written reflections are evaluated and feedback comments are shared in writing.

Assign two student learning activities such as a game or learning app.

Teacher introduces by video the academic language structures needed to share their thinking about essential video.

Students write 1/2 page response to the essential question using sentence frames. For beginning ELs, provide scaffolded support such as a graphic organizer with pictures and key vocabulary.

Teacher meets with the students to have a class / small group discussion on the essential question. Teacher can share sentence stems.

Teacher shares snippets of quality written responses to the essential question through messages or class discussions and discusses what makes the response a quality example.

Sample lesson: An online lesson for ELLs

An online lesson plan takes into account the asynchronous (not in real time) learning environment and need for active learning in different ways. It is unlikely that a teacher and students will be able to meet live every day at the same time, so the lesson will be prepared and shared online for students and families to work with according to their own schedule and access to a device or Wi-Fi. The lesson, which is part of a larger unit, will include certain elements such as student engagement, language production, demonstrating content learning, critical thinking tasks, scaffolded supports and an assessment.

Here is a sample lesson plan for a 3rd grade EL level 2 student group. The lesson will be delivered with SeeSaw. Here is the EL Distance Learning Lesson Plan fillable template.

Standard: 4-ESS2-1

Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation.

Content Objective:

I can observe the impact of erosion.

I can give evidence to support my explanation of my observation.

Language Objective:

I can explain the impact of erosion using observation evidence in a sentence frame, "I observed that when ________ then ___________."

Introduction:

"Today we will learn about erosion. Erosion is when earth or rocks are worn away by water or wind. You will do a home experiment to learn about erosion and explain your observation on SeeSaw."

Modeling:

Show students how to set up the experiment using the materials listed in the lesson. Introduce the sentence frame and any key vocabulary by stating an example sentence for the students. "I observed that erosion happened when I poured a lot of water on the dirt."

Activity/assignment:

For your experiment you will put dirt in a small tub and put the tub at an angle or slope. Make some holes in an empty pop bottle then fill it with water and hold it over the dirt. What happens if you try different things?
1. If the dirt tub is at a higher slope?
2. If the dirt tub is flat?
3. If you have a little water come out?
4. If you have a lot of water come out?

Reflection: After students have seen each other's video explanations of the experiment, they will write an exit ticket on Padlet to state one thing they know about erosion and one thing they liked from the activity.

Teacher reflection: From the exit tickets, I can see that the students understand that more erosion happens when the slope is higher and there is more water. Next time I will think of alternatives to certain materials since not all students had dirt for the experiment.

Scaffolded support for different language proficiencies: (click all that apply in the lesson)

Adapted from Generation Genius: Weathering and Erosion - grades 3 - 5 lesson plan

Online learning tools

Here are three platforms that your district may be using. This is not an endorsement of any one product, but rather a quick guide to some resources teachers have used successfully with ELLs.

You can learn more about the privacy ratings of these and other platforms from the Common Sense Privacy Evaluation program. Please ask for guidance on the most secure ways to use any platform, including those listed below, with a particular eye on protecting personally identifiable information (PII) for ELLs and immigrant students.

Note: Some districts do not permit the use of video or images of students for security reasons. To learn more about protecting student privacy for ELLs and immigrant students, see our related resource section. Keep in mind that some free platforms may sell data to third-party vendors. In addition, Zoom is facing increased scrutiny for security problems.

Seesaw article: Remote Learning for Teachers

Privacy evaluation: Seesaw (Common Sense Media)

Strengths:

1. Focus on oral language production
2. Family connection
3. Ease of use
4. Visual platform
5. Free

Tool: Flipgrid

Flipgrid article: Remote Learning with Flipgrid

Privacy evaluation: Flipgrid (Common Sense Media)

Strengths:
1. Focus on oral language production
2. Student-to-Student connection
3. Ease of use - multiple classes
4. Visual platform
5. Free

Tool: VoiceThread

Website resources: Digital Database of Successful VoiceThread Projects

Privacy evaluation: VoiceThread (Common Sense Media)

1. Content presentation with oral and written language production
2. Student-to-Student connection
3. Ease of use - project based and collaborative
4. Visual platform
5. Free

Assessment and Feedback

Using rubrics

Students need feedback in order to learn. Whatever platform you use, you will need to determine how you will give feedback on their learning. If it is online, students can use rubrics for assignments and receive comments verbally or in writing. Comments can be encouraging and individualized to help them learn how to apply the feedback. In a non-digital system, teachers will need to try other approaches, such as phone calls, to students to review their work and questions.

A clear rubric for content and language production is helpful to guide the students' work. Allow students to revise work because it is about learning, not perfection. It's also highly likely that students will not fully understand what is expected in a task due to the new learning format. Use "second attempts" as an opportunity for them to apply your feedback and demonstrate learning.

The importance of regular feedback

The best feedback will happen frequently in multiple areas of the digital space. It could be on the discussion board, individual assignments or larger projects. Since students can't see you, they need to know you are there through your interaction and encouraging feedback. You may be nervous in this new platform and they are equally (if not more) nervous because they want to do well and they need to hear from you daily so they know they are on the right track.

Remember they do not have the advantage of asking questions in a classroom and getting your feedback as they work, so give them additional opportunities in the digital platform. We are asking learners who rely on a lot of classroom scaffolded supports to be successful to become independent learners overnight. The chart below shows the intersection between language skills and learning - how a student's language abilities impact their independent learning level.
Continuum of Language and Learning

DEPENDENT

INDEPENDENT

READING/ WRITING

Marisa

Tomas

LISTENING/

Tomas

SPEAKING

Marisa

Grading

Keep a grade book online so students know what is due, what grades they received (if grades are being used) and the feedback for assignments. If beginning-level students are attempting assignments in an online platform, teachers may want to advocate for a Pass/No Pass grading system because they will be working very hard in a language they don't fully understand to demonstrate their learning. (Some districts are using Pass/No Pass more broadly.)

Tips for Collaboration

Just as planning instruction for distance learning will take intentional thought and planning, so will collaboration. The good news is that there may be new kinds of opportunities for collaborating as it becomes an even more critical piece of the puzzle during this time of school closures, especially for ELLs. There also may be new kinds of instruction happening, such as project-based learning or more content-specific lessons, that will lend themselves well to collaboration among content-area teachers and EL educators.

Other teachers are also great resources for instructional problem-solving; collaboration between general education and ELL teachers will make lessons engaging and accessible for ELLs.

Here are some ideas on how to collaborate on behalf of ELs at a distance, which can be used among individuals or larger groups. These strategies can also be used for colleagues who have an established partnership, as well as those who are new to collaborating. And remember that it may be much easier to start small - choose just one strategy that fits your schedule and workload, and think about how to use it strategically!

Check in with a colleague to see whether they are in touch with ELLs and their families and if they need suggestions on how to make contact.

Check in with a colleague on whether they need some ideas on how to support EL instruction.

Invite a colleague to co-plan and/or co-teach a lesson.

Ask a colleague to share a question or challenge they would like to address.

Share examples of how you are collaborating more broadly with colleagues (and ask the people who are already partnering with you to do the same).

Send a note to colleagues whom you haven't worked with before introducing yourself, briefly explaining your role, and sharing ideas on how you might work together.

Share examples of student work, successful student activities, or strategies for distance learning/family engagement that seem to working well for ELs in your school or district.

Partner with a team on behalf of a specific student, group of students, or family.

Consider sending out a strategy or resource idea on a regular basis to colleagues.

Final Thoughts

It's okay to feel a range of emotions as you begin this new distance learning adventure. Remember you are making history! Also remember that you are not alone and it's important to develop your own professional learning community around this work. Since the whole world is going through an online teaching revolution due to school closings, there are a myriad (almost too many) of resources available to help with online learning.

To keep from being overwhelmed:

Don't get lost in the weeds of all the choices.

Keep your focus clearly on what you want students to learn.

Think of a creative project.

Use one or two "go to" apps that work for you and your students to adjust to this new learning environment.

Think of e-learning as Emergency Learning - and you are a learner.

Don't forget to take care of yourself.

When the Apollo 13 crew was in danger, great minds got together and solved the seemingly impossible problem of placing a square vent in a round hole. This is our opportunity to bring our great minds together and do what seems impossible - teach all students through distance learning. With creativity, a good team and some extra pots of coffee, you will succeed!

Recommended Resources

For additional resources, see:

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Distance Learning for ELLs: Planning Instruction

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Teaching online is like traveling to a new country. You're not really sure where anything is, you are afraid to try new things because you might be embarrassed, and you miss the ease of your old daily life and the ability to connect seamlessly with others.

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Tips:
Teach/preview vocabulary in context

Choose 3-5 high leverage vocabulary words to preview and return to; both content and cross content (language of critical thinking)

Use Closed Captioning in online platforms to display vocabulary and sentence frames during lessons.

Involve students: Make vocabulary interactive!

Use vocabulary organizers, vocabulary journals and word walls across content areas.

Have students collect content/ Tier 3 vocabulary words in their native language around a topic.

Have students digitally highlight/annotate/collect vocabulary in NewsELA, raz-kids, commonlit, Google Classroom, etc.

Have students keep digital or non-digital vocabulary journals.

Focus on & repeat a high leverage cross content/Tier 2 vocabulary word that supports critical thinking throughout your day and week (Example: Compare/contrast, analyze, infer) and use throughout the week in a variety of contexts.

Use translation tools and native language support.

Use word to word translation tools: G Translate, Read&Write

Involve bilingual peers, tutors and parents.

Quizlet: 18 languages

Kahoot: Vocabulary quizzes & SEL templates

Flippity: Turn Google Sheets into interactive graphic organizers and flashcards.

The Noun Project: Simple images in all content areas. Search, copy, paste.

Digital, editable PDF graphic organizers: Frayer model, vocabulary cluster, content map, etc.

Digital, editable student notebook ideas and slide template

Hyperdoc Student Digital notebook: Add videos and content; force a copy for individual note taker

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Hello, friends! I'm Kate Messner, a former classroom teacher, forever-educator, and the author of more than three dozen books for kids. These include picture books like Over and Under the Snow, The Brilliant Deep, and The Next President; the Fergus and Zeke easy reader series; the Ranger in Time historical chapter book adventures; nonfiction like Tracking Pythons and Solve This: Forensics; and novels like All the Answers, Breakout, and . I'm happy that you found your way here!

This is a library of resources for kids, families, teachers, and librarians to make sure that reading & learning can happen anywhere this spring. Some of you may be out of school as communities try to prevent the spread of a virus known as COVID-19. Here's a great page from NPR that explains what that's all about, in a kid-friendly comic. National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jason Reynolds shares "How to Fight the New Bad Guy in Town," a PSA for kids, on the StorySeeds podcast here. And this excellent & important post from author Laurie Halse Anderson does a great job explaining why we're seeing closings (and why that's important) for older readers.

Below, you'll find a growing collection of resources that include everything from first-chapter and picture book read-alouds (all shared with permission!) to drawing and writing mini-lessons. Be sure to check back often, as new resources will be added every day. If you'd prefer to browse learning-at-home resources by age group, my daughter Ella has put together the pages below, with even more resources, organized by grade level. (Thanks, Ella!)

Resources for grades PreK-2 (ages 3-7)
Resources for grades 3-5 (ages 8-10)
Resources for grades 6-8 (ages 11-13)
Resources for grades 9-12 (ages 14+)

Many teachers & librarians have also reached out to ask about permission to read books aloud to your students via closed platforms like Google Classroom, Zoom, and unlisted YouTube links. Individual publishers have been sharing their own guidelines for online read-alouds, and you'll find a round-up of those here.

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud of THE NEXT PRESIDENT: THE UNEXPECTED BEGINNINGS AND UNWRITTEN FUTURE OF AMERICA'S PRESIDENTS, illustrated by Adam Rex. Writing challenge: After the read-aloud, write your own presidential platform. What changes would you make to your country if you were in charge?

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud of OVER AND UNDER THE POND, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal (shared with permission from Chronicle Books). After the read-aloud, look out your window - or step outside if you can - and see what hidden nature you notice!

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud of THE BRILLIANT DEEP: REBUILDING THE WORLD'S CORAL REEFS illustrated by Matt Forsythe. After the read-aloud, check out the Coral Restoration Foundation website. Learn more about the threats coral reefs are facing from NASA's Climate Kids page, and check out this page about how kids can help our oceans. Challenge: Make a poster or drawing to teach people about how we can all help coral and other sea creatures!

OVER AND UNDER THE RAINFOREST, Kate's book with illustrator Christopher Silas Neal doesn't come out until August, but we got special permission to share an early read-aloud! After the story, check out this page with more information on the wildlife of Costa Rica, where Kate did most of the research for this book. Writing challenge: Write a short article to teach people about your favorite rainforest animal!

Tracey Baptiste, the author of The Jumbies series, shares a mini-lesson on comparative mythology. She talks through how creatures from different mythologies have traits in common and encourages kids to find those similarities in the mythologies they come across. She's also sharing some reading resources such as D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, The Element Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures, and her own Jumbies Field Guide available at her website.

Author Debbi Michiko Florence shares a read-aloud excerpt of her chapter book JASMINE TOGUCHI FLAMINGO KEEPER, along with a writing prompt (and a peek at a real daruma doll)!

Author Leah Henderson shares a first chapter read-aloud of her middle grade novel THE MAGIC IN CHANGING YOUR STARS. Writing Challenge: Find out who Ailey Benjamin Lane is named after. (Hint: His first name comes from an African-American dancer & choreographer with the initials A.A. His middle name comes from an African-American farmer & naturalist who searches out the stars and who created an almanac in 1792. This person's initials are B.B.) Who could they be?

Author-illustrator Jarrett Lerner shares tips and techniques to help you draw ANYTHING and EVERYTHING!

Veera Hiranandani, author of the Newbery Honor winning book The Night Diary, The Whole Story of Half a Girl, and The Phoebe G. Green series offers a diary writing prompt to help you get to know your characters and create an inspired story!

Author Jason Reynolds shares a read-aloud from his MG novel, GHOST. In this chapter, the main character talks about world records, so after the read-aloud, check out this page from the Guiness Book of World Records, with some records you can try to break at home!

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud excerpt from TRACKING PYTHONS: THE QUEST TO CATCH AN INVASIVE PREDATOR AND SAVE AN ECOSYSTEM. After the read-aloud, you can learn more about invasive species from National Geographic and the National Wildlife Foundation. Also check out this article from New York State Conservationist Kids!

Kate also shared this article about the python scientists, with photos and infographics.

Author & illustrator Grace Lin teaches viewers how to draw a Chinese Dragon and shares some tidbits about Chinese culture! You can find more of Grace's reading & drawing videos on her YouTube channel.

Author Carole Lindstrom shares a read-aloud of WE ARE WATER PROTECTORS.

Author Jo Knowles reads from the first chapter of her MG novel WHERE THE HEART IS and offers students a fun writing exercise! For more about Jo and her books, or for teachers/book group guides that go along with her books, visit her website.

Kelley McMorris, who illustrates the RANGER IN TIME chapter book series, shares a video about how she illustrates a book cover. After you watch, try using Kelley's process to design a new cover for one of your favorite books!

Author and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi shares a read-aloud of her picture book WHERE ARE MY BOOKS?, gives a drawing demo and challenges young readers to create their own imaginative squirrels, and shares a crowd-sourced "Where Are My Books?" music video. You can find lots of free, print-ready activities and other fun bonus info at https://www.debbieohi.com/wamb

Author Erin Entrada Kelly gives a peek into the notebooks for several of her novels, including HELLO, UNIVERSE. Writing challenge: What's in your notebook? Take a little time to write in it today, inspired by Erin's ideas!

Author Chris Tebbetts shares a read-aloud of the first chapters of STRANDED. Writing challenge: Choose a wilderness setting of your own - the Arctic, the desert, the rainforest - and imagine you're stranded there. How will you survive? Write an imaginary journal documenting your adventure. Check out these wilderness survival skills from Outdoor Life for ideas!

Author Nikki Grimes shares poetry selections from WORDS WITH WINGS. Writing challenge: Try writing your own poem today, in the style of one of Nikki's read-alouds! For more of Nikki's read-aloud videos and lessons, check out her YouTube Channel here.

Author Ann Braden shares a read-aloud excerpt from THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN OCTOPUS. Note: the octopus is a pretty amazing creature, so after the read-aloud, read up on them at this page from National Geographic Kids!

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud of UP IN THE GARDEN AND DOWN IN THE DIRT, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal. After the read-aloud, read more about helpful insects here and check out these garden activities from KidsGarden!

Author Sarah Albee shares a STEM mystery, "Did the Doctor Do It?" as part of her series exploring the science and intrigue of poison throughout history. Check out more of Sarah's Poison videos here.

Middle grade and Young adult author, Paula Chase offers a mini-writing exercise to help students build stories around their unique traits.

Author Nancy Castaldo reads some of BACK FROM THE BRINK with tips how we can all use our voices through our writing to make a difference. Here's the link to the reader's guide for more activities.

Author Debbi Michiko Florence shares an early read-aloud excerpt of her upcoming MG novel KEEP IT TOGETHER KEIKO CARTER, along with a writing prompt!

Author & illustrator Grace Lin shares the first story from her early reader, "Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same!" You can find more of Grace's reading & drawing videos on her YouTube channel.

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud excerpt from RANGER IN TIME: RESCUE ON THE OREGON TRAIL. Writing challenge: Choose your favorite event in history and imagine how a search and rescue dog might be able to help out. Then so some research about your historical event, and write your own story about Ranger's adventures there!

Christina Soontornvat shares how she came up with the idea for her new middle grade fantasy novel, A WISH IN THE DARK. Writing challenge: Use Christina's model to brainstorm your own list of ideas for stories that might be inspired by a classic tale! And check out more videos from Christina here!

Author KA Holt reads an excerpt from her forthcoming middle grade novel-in-verse, BEN BEE AND THE TEACHER GRIEFER.

Author Mae Respicio reads a few pages from her upcoming middle grade novel, Any Day With You, and shares a quick, fun writing prompt. Writing challenge: Imagine you've been planning a beach day with your best friends. You're so excited to go but when you get there... everything goes wrong and not the way you expected it to! Describe what happens.

Author Elly Swartz shares tips on how to use the emotion in your life to create authentic characters! Writing challenge: Take a few minutes to journal about a day when you felt an especially strong emotion - joy or fear or excitement! How might you use those emotions in a fictional story?

Author Lisa Yee drinks water, reads the first chapter of Millicent Min, Girl Genius, and fumbles when she comes across a couple of lines in Latin. Writing challenge: Try rewriting a scene from this chapter from the point of view of another character!

Award-Winning author Michelle Cusolito shares a writing mini-lesson to help writers add more sensory details to their writing. You can find more resources related to Michelle's book FLYING DEEP: CLIMB INSIDE DEEP-SEA SUBMERSIBLE ALVIN here.

Author-illustrator Lita Judge shares a video about how a sketching trip inspired one of her picture books! After you watch, take your own mini-sketching trip. Go to your kitchen or your bedroom, your porch or your backyard, and sketch what you see. Observe closely!

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud excerpt from CHIRP, a mystery for kids that's set on a cricket farm! After the read aloud, you can learn more about entomophagy (eating insects as food!) from CBS Kids, and check out a real cricket farm's website!

Author Chris Tebbetts shares a video mini-lesson on how to create a good beginning for a story!

And another video writing workshop from Chris, called Four Elements of Character. (This is an 8-minute video where you pause & write sometimes, so the full activity will take about half an hour. Recommended for writers ages 10 and up.)

Author Aisha Saeed shares a read-aloud of her picture book, BILAL COOKS DAAL, along with a related activity!

Author Emily Jenkins shares a read-aloud of A GREYHOUND, A GROUNDHOG.

Author Lisa Schroeder shares a read-aloud excerpt from her MG novel MY SECRET GUIDE TO PARIS, along with a writing exercise!

Author Janet Fox shares a read-aloud of the first chapter of her MG novel THE ARTIFACT HUNTERS. Writing challenge: Try writing a short scene of your own in which something unexpected happens!

Author & illustrator Jess Keating shares some thoughts on where ideas for stories come from! (This is part of a series Jess shares on writing & you can find more on her YouTube channel.)

Author Chris Tebbetts shares a read-aloud of the first chapters of MIDDLE SCHOOL, THE WORST YEARS OF MY LIFE, co-written with James Paterson.

Poet Charles Waters shares poetry from DICTIONARY FOR A BETTER WORLD (by Charles Waters and Irene Latham)

Author Abby Cooper reads the first chapter of her middle grade novel, FRIEND OR FICTION.

Author Lynn Plourde shares some tips on starting an observation notebook!

Author-illustrator James Burks shares a video lesson on how to draw Squirrel from his graphic novel series, Bird and Squirrel!

Author Kristen Larson shares an engineering design activity based on her book WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane.

Author Liz Garton Scanlon shares a video lesson on writing am ETHEREE - a ten line poem in which each line is one syllable longer than the last.

Author-illustrator Karen Romano Young shares a video doodling tutorial. You can also check out Karen's #AntarcticLog comics, a weekly series of comics about Antarctica - as well as the Arctic and anyplace where climate change is being studied.

Author KA Holt reads an excerpt from her novel-in-verse, HOUSE ARREST. Mini-lesson: listen for as many poetic devices as you can find (metaphor, simile, assonance, hyperbole, etc.)

Author Jennifer Roy shares a video read-aloud from her historical novel YELLOW STAR, along with a writing prompt about looking for symbols of hope in tough times, recommended for ages 10 and up.

Author Laurel Snyder shares some thoughts on fiction and making up stories, along with a read-aloud of CHARLIE AND MOUSE OUTDOORS.

Author Caroline Starr Rose reads her picture book, A RACE AROUND THE WORLD: THE TRUE STORY OF NELLIE BLY AND ELIZABETH BISLAND. When you've finished listening, visit the article, How to Pack Like Pioneering Journalist Nellie Bly, Who Circumnavigated the Globe in 1889 with Just a Small Duffle Bag, to see what Nellie brought on her journey. Challenge: Plan your own trip around the world. What would you like to see? Where would you like to visit? Mark these places on a map.

Author Corinne Demas shares a read-aloud of THE DISAPPEARING ISLAND.

Author Lauren Tarshis shares a read-aloud of the first two chapters of I SURVIVED THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC. After the read-aloud, check out this link to read about Robert Ballard, the oceanographer whose team discovered the wreck of the Titanic more than seventy years after it sank.

Author & poet Nikki Grimes shares poems about one of her favorite cakes, Pineapple Upside Down Cake, along with five steps to creating your very own poem about your favorite food! For more of Nikki's read-aloud videos and lessons, check out her YouTube Channel here.

Author Sarah Aronson shares a read-aloud of JUST LIKE RUBE GOLDBERG. And here's a FlipGrip page where kids can share their projects and ask questions.

Author Chelsea Clinton shares an excerpt from her book START NOW: YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Author Bruce Hale shares a read aloud of BIG BAD BABY.

Writing Challenge: Write about the same experience in multiple ways (letters, poems, illustrations, and screenplay).

Bonus challenge: Write positive affirmations for your family members.

Author Sayantani DasGupta shares a read-aloud of the first chapter of THE SERPENT'S SECRET.

Author Deborah Underwood reads INTERSTELLAR CINDERELLA (illustrated by Meg Hunt) and gives kids a mini-lesson on how to write their own fractured fairy tales.

Author Kate Messner shares a read-aloud of UP IN THE GARDEN AND DOWN IN THE DIRT and answers questions from kids in a "Family Book Club" video recorded earlier this year (thanks to Read-Aloud Revival for making this recording publicly available for learning at home this spring!)

Author-illustrator Brian Biggs shares a read-aloud of his EVERYTHING GOES board books.

Author Jessica Young shares a read-aloud of HAGGIS AND TANK (illustrated by James Burks) with a mini-lesson on sound words.

Author-illustrator Brandon Reese shares a read-aloud of his picture book CAVE DADA. And here's a link to download a coloring page, too!

Here's a fun challenge from author Laurel Snyder ... She's written a brand new book, but doesn't have any pictures for it. Will you help? She'll read you the story of The Beastly Collective, and you'll draw your favorite animals, while she teaches you some brand new words!

Author Christine Evans shares a read-aloud of Evelyn the Adventurous Entomologist, illustrated by Yasmin Imamura.

Author and illustrator Grace Lin shares a chapter from her book, The Year of the Dog. You can find more of Grace's reading & drawing videos on her YouTube channel.

Grace Lin teaches families how to draw a dog from the number 5 (just like in The Year of the Dog!)

Amy Guglielmo, co-author of POCKET FULL OF COLORS shares a read-aloud of her picture book biography of Disney artist Mary Blair. Art challenge: Collect a rainbow of colorful objects inside or outside as a fun follow up activity. Take part in the "Rainbow Hunt," and draw a picture of a rainbow to post in your window for neighbors to see on their daily walks.

Author Kerry O'Malley Cerra demonstrates an easy tool students can use to summarize. This tip can also be used for writers as chapter checks!

Japanese American author, Kathleen Burkinshaw reads a chapter from her MG historical fiction, The Last Cherry Blossom based on events in her mom's life as a 12 yr old in Hiroshima during WWII. Also learn a little about her mom's favorite Japanese folk tale. You can find a Discussion Guide on her website www.kathleenburkinshaw.co

Newbery Award winning author Meg Medina shares a writing lesson on Creating Tension.

Kerry Madden shares a read-aloud of ERNESTINE'S MILKY WAY.

Author Buffy Silverman shares On a Snow-Melting Day: Seeking Signs of Spring and a little science show-and-tell.

Author Diane Zahler shares a read-aloud of the first chapter of The Marvelwood Magicians and a writing prompt.

Abigail Rayner shares a read-aloud of The Backup Bunny.

Michelle Cusolito reads aloud her book Flying Deep: Climb Inside Deep-Sea Submersible ALVIN (illustrated by Nicole Wong) while Jeff Angeley of Southcoast Lessons provides live musical accompaniment. You can find more resources related to Flying Deep here.

Author Meg Fleming shares a read-aloud of her picture book, Sometimes Rain.

S.K. Ali, co-author of THE PROUDEST BLUE, shares directions for making a paper boat.

The niece and nephew of Cedella Marley read her book, Get Up, Stand Up, a picture book adaptation of one of Bob Marley's beloved songs that has a timely message for children: To counter injustice, lift others up with kindness and courage.

Author Lisa Yee talks about Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) and reads passages from the book. Writing prompt for today: Do you think boys and girls can be friends?

Would you rather be an #astronaut or #aquanaut? Perhaps you need more info to decide. Check out Jen Swanson's video below. Then make your choice and draw a picture of your suit!

Author Jo Watson Hackl Shows How to Take Your Reading to the Next Level by Exploring the Natural World of Your Characters.

Author Heather L. Montgomery reads-aloud chapters from SOMETHING ROTTEN: A FRESH LOOK AT ROADKILL.

Author Heather Shumaker offers a weekly author chat called Fiction Friday. She shares tips and ideas for writing fiction, reads a short excerpt from her middle grade novel The Griffins of Castle Cary, adds in a mini writing lesson, a few corny jokes, and encouragement to young writers and readers.

Author Christina Diaz Gonzalez talks about finding writing inspiration from your own family history (video is in English and then in Spanish).

Kate Messner shares a read-aloud of HOW TO READ A STORY, illustrated by Mark Siegel & shared with permission from Chronicle Books.

Author Kimberly Derting shares a read-aloud of CECE LOVES SCIENCE with permission from HarperCollins.

Author & science teacher Anne Ruppert shares a try-it-at-home fingerprinting activity from SOLVE THIS: FORENSICS (by Kate Messner & Anne Ruppert, published by National Geographic)

Author Jacqueline West shares a read-aloud from The Shadows, volume one of her bestselling MG fantasy/mystery series The Books of Elsewhere, along with a writing activity for you (and possibly your pet!) that will help you think about character and dialogue. For more info and other videos, visit her website! www.jacquelinewest.com.

Author Carter Higgins shares a read-aloud of BIKES FOR SALE with permission from Chronicle Books.

Author Deborah Underwood reads FINDING KINDNESS, illustrated by Irene Chan (Godwin Books/Macmillan, 2019).

Author Melanie Crowder reads a chapter from her middle grade novel, Three Pennies, and shares a quick and easy craft to go with it. Writing Challenge: Think of one of your favorite books-does an animal make an appearance in the story? In Three Pennies, the author writes several chapters from the point of view of an owl (named Owl). Try to add a chapter to that favorite book you've got in mind, writing from the point of view of an animal in that story.

Author Cynthia Levinson reads The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton. Thanks to Simon & Schuster Kids for permission.

Loree Griffin Burns, author of books like Citizen Scientists and the upcoming picture book You're Invited to a Moth Ball, shares her favorite book of all time: The Flora and Fauna of Hosmer Street. It's not a book she wrote, but rather one she made with her three kids. For one year, Loree, Sam, Ben, and Cat committed themselves to getting to know their animal neighbors; what they found surprised them. In this video, Loree show listeners a few of their best finds (garter snake! walking stick! a skeleton!), what they learned (the more you look, the more you see!) and, of course, how to start creating The Flora and Fauna of Your Place.

Many people have heard of the secret network that helped many enslaved blacks escape to freedom in the North called the Underground Railroad. But how many of you have heard about the Overground Railroad? Author Lesa Cline-Ransome reads from her book, The Overground Railroad, illustrated by her husband, James Ransome.

Author Kathleen Blasi reads HOSEA PLAYS ON, which depicts a day in the life of street musician Hosea Taylor, who made his community better, with his open-hearted giving. After the read-aloud, you can take a look at the newspaper article that inspired Kathleen to learn more about Hosea Taylor and served as the research springboard for HOSEA PLAYS ON.

Author Laya Steinberg reads her picture book THE BEST SUKKOT PUMPKIN EVER and shares a seed planting activity.

Author Jewell Parker Rhodes shares a read-aloud of the first chapter of GHOST BOYS.

Roy Freeman shares a read-aloud of CORDUROY, written and illustrated by his father, Don Freeman.

Author Nancy Tupper Ling shares a read-aloud, along with a lesson on how to make a list poem about your favorite place in the world.

Author Sarah Scheerger reads her picture book, Mitzvah Pizza, and shares a story about the real-life pay-it-forward pizza place that inspired the story. Classroom activities for the story are found here.

Writing Lessons! Many families are using this time at home to work on writing projects that range from stories and poems to special interest research reports and even novels. Here are some craft lessons from authors to help with ideas & strategies!
Author Meg Medina shares a video lesson on creating tension. Author Jennifer Torres shares a mini-workshop on setting with a video and pages to download. Here's a lesson from author Paula Chase on writing dual points of view. Author Josephine Cameron shares creative writing tips about how choosing the perfect setting can help you shape the character, plot, and relationships in your story.
Additional Resources:

Want to see even more author & illustrator videos? Check out the Authors Everywhere YouTube channel, created by Susan Tan!

Check out STEM Tuesday from The Mixed of Files of MG Authors blog for weekly book lists, interviews, and activities.

Want to try writing some poetry today? Joyce Sidman shares an amazing collection of ideas to get you started.

Here's another poetry lesson from Kathryn Apel - writing a didactic cinquain!

If you're stuck at home, it's a great time to start a writer's notebook! Author & Poet Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has a whole collection of posts from different writers, called "Sharing Our Notebooks." Check it out -so many ideas here!

Author Madelyn Rosenberg shares a collection of writing prompts here.

Here's a collection of video mini-lessons from nonfiction author Melissa Stewart - great for teaching informational writing, including research, text features, text structure, rich language, voice, and revision.

Author & poet Laura Shovan shares a collection of poetry mini-lessons on her website!

The folks at Middle Grade at Heart share a list of MG novels with discussions questions & related activities here.

Author Victoria Coe has a playlist of writing lessons for kids with 25 lessons.

Author Sarah Darer Littman offers short readings and writing prompts on her website.

On the Kids Ask Authors podcast, you can hear author/illustrator Grace Lin and a guest author answer a kid question! Kids can submit their own book reviews, poems or jokes! https://www.kidsaskauthors.com Subscribe to the podcast here: http://ow.ly/8OPg30qr7WD

Erica S. Perl (@ericaperl) is doing a weekly Instagram live author event called "Winging It with Erica S. Perl" featuring read-alouds, writing prompts, and occasional shakings of a tail feather. Tune in every Tuesday at 2 pm EST and wish her good cluck!

The KidLit TV team, a group of diverse children's book authors and illustrators, has created a virtual library of FREE read aloud, drawing & writing tutorials, podcasts, art activities + reading resources for kids. https://kidlit.tv

Jarrett J. Krosoczka, author & illustrator, shares daily drawing lessons on his YouTube channel.

Author Kathryn Hulick invites you to investigate a ghost story as a scientist, based on her book STRANGE BUT TRUE.

New Books to Check Out!

In case you're missing your weekly trip to the library or bookstore, we also want to let you know about some new books out this spring!

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Read, Wonder, and Learn! Favorite Authors & Illustrators Share Resources for Learning Anywhere - Spring 2020

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Hello, friends! I'm Kate Messner, a former classroom teacher, forever-educator, and the author of more than three dozen books for kids. These include picture books like Over and Under the Snow, The Brilliant Deep, and The Next President ; the Fergus and Zeke easy reader series; the Ranger in Time historical chapter book adventures; nonfiction like Tracking Pythons and Solve This: Forensics ; and novels like All the Answers, Breakout , and .

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Classroom Talk--Sentence Starters Table Tent.pdf

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Topic: Identity - Who am I on the INSIDE? Who am I on the OUTSIDE?

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

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

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Zaretta Hammond

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here. Maybe you ended up here because you were doing a Google search for culturally responsive teaching practices

Or maybe your school is reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain in a book study and you wanted to know more about this Zaretta Hammond chick who wrote it.

It doesn't matter how you got here. What's important is that you and I are now connected.

Since you are an equity-minded educator like me, you are probably waging your own private movement to bust the myths behind student engagement (or the lack of) among low performing students of color, poor students, and English learners.

Well, you are in the right place. This is a blog where we can get answers to our collective and individual questions about how we can help students become confident and competent learners. In this space, I want to highlight what I am learning from being out in schools and classrooms with teachers who are successful with diverse students. I want to focus on how we can take everyday strategies and practices and put them to work in their classrooms to be more culturally responsive.

So, again, welcome!

Just to let you know, on average, I publish a new post every other week - two times per month at the least (sometimes a few more). That gives me time to be in schools and to write. If you don't want to miss updates on what I am seeing and learning, sign up for my newsletter by pushing that button below.

Binge-worthy Posts and Podcasts

Books are good, but sometimes you want your knowledge in bite-sized doses. That's what I like to deliver: consumable, usable, and entertaining food for thought (and action). Here are some of the most popular blog posts and guest podcast interviews to sample.

About Zaretta Hammond

It's funny. These days a lot of folks are calling me "Dr. Hammond" since the book has become required reading in many teacher education programs and school districts. Well, to set the record straight, I am not a PhD. I do have a Master's degree, but I consider myself a "boots on the ground" teacher. I call myself a former writing teacher turned equity freedom fighter. My heart is forever with children and teachers in the classroom, not in an ivory tower, even if these days most of my "students" are new leaders and pre-service teachers. [ A quick note: Not throwing any shade at all the PhDs out there doing the work.]

When I was in the classroom back in the day, I taught composition (expository writing). It was where I started to understand how important literacy was to equity, and how neuroscience and culture should inform our instructional practice.

Since leaving the classroom, I have done work as a curriculum designer and professional developer at organizations such as the National Equity Project and the Annenberg-funded Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in the San Francisco-Bay Area. I am a trained facilitator in anti-bias processes and have facilitated groups focused on learning to talk about issues of racial politics and privilege.

My primary work has been linking instruction, equity, and literacy. I have spent time as an adjunct instructor at Saint Mary's College in Norther California where I taught Adolescent Literacy and trained tutors and parents in reading support strategies for struggling students of color.

As an undergraduate, I attended University of California, Berkley before finishing up my degree at New York University where I majored in English Literature with a minor in Writing. I completed my Masters in Secondary English Education, with a Concentration in Writing Instruction at University of Colorado, Boulder where I simultaneously did my teacher certification program (starting three months after the birth of my son. I do not recommend this).

For the past 25 years, I've maintained a small, independent education consulting practice from which I do my research and writing as well as support schools doing deep instructionally-focused equity work.

Stay in touch

I hope this blog inspires, motivates, and challenges you to try some new practices that move you toward being more culturally responsive. If it does, send me a note. I'd love to hear from you. The best way to keep in touch with me is to sign up for free email updates (where you get all kinds of exclusive goodies).

Other Ways to Connect

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About - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here.

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Note: This article complements one written by one recently posted at Colorin Colorado and written by Diane Staehr Fenner, Jill Kester, and Sydney Snyder. That piece is titled The Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs. Larry will be joining Diane for a free Webinar on Equitably Grading ELs that will take place on March 19th. You can register for it here.
Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski are teachers in the Sacramento City Unified School District and authors of several books on teaching English Language Learners.
Grading English Language Learners - A Perspective From Two Teachers By Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski Our Overall perspective on grading
We must begin by saying that grades have seldom been an issue in our classes - whether they were ELD/ESL, mainstream, intervention, or advanced courses.

Because of that experience, we are often bewildered by the amount of energy, pressure and angst about them that we see among many teachers and administrators.

We view grades as information. They are one of many forms of communication we use with students and their parents, and definitely not the most important kind. As Rick Wormeli says, they are not rewards or punishments.

We view grades as, in many ways, the lowest level of communication between students, parents and ourselves. As its Latin word root suggests, they are "steps toward something." Assessments, however, are an entirely different kettle of fish. Its Latin roots mean to "sit beside" and to assist. Whereas a grade is just a letter, continuous assessments (both teacher and student-initiated) and reflections on their meanings provide directions for a student's journey- assisting them to adjust both their routes and their destinations.

We emphasize building upon our students' assets instead of their deficits. That doesn't mean we ignore or minimize challenges they are facing. It does mean, however, that we focus on leveraging both their academic and non-academic strengths, like perseverance, critical thinking ability, appetite for learning, and success in outside-of-school venues, towards targeting needed areas of academic improvement. As most teachers know, highlighting past examples of student success and the steps that made it happen can go a long way in helping them find the appetite/desire to applying those qualities again and again - especially to further a high-interest goal.

Just to be clear, even though some might consider us "easy" graders because of our perspective, we also feel confident - and proud - of our students' results on "high-stakes" assessments, such as state tests and International Baccalaureate - supervised Oral Presentations and Essays.
Grading For English Language Learners
This portion of our article is divided into two sections:

How we handle grading in our English Language Development classes

How we handle grading ELLs in our mainstream classes

ELD CLASSES:
We base our grading structure in ELD classes (where students are all Beginner or Intermediate ELL students) on a Course Of Study that we helped our district develop a number of years ago.

Our slightly modified version (taken from the work of Thomas Guskey and others) looks like this:
Grading Guidelines 35%- Product Criteria (quality of student work) 35%- Process Criteria (how students do their work)

Collaboration/working with other students and teacher

Daily participation and effort

Daily attendance

30%-Progress Criteria (evidence that students are progressing)

Academic language development

Demonstrated growth in speaking and listening

Demonstrated growth in reading fluency and comprehension

Demonstrated growth in writing proficiency

ELLs IN MAINSTREAM CLASSES
First, we must say that at this time, our own District does not offer grading guidance to mainstream teachers who have ELLs in their classes. We hope that will change in the near future. To our best knowledge, our state of California also does not provide guidance in that area.

In addition, our experience is in middle and secondary schools, and we will focus most of this section in those areas.

However, based on guidance from other states and districts - as well as the federal government - and based on our own experiences, we offer the following thoughts and advice:

Federal guidelines make it clear that it is the responsibility of high schools to create a pathway for a student who enters high school as a Beginner to be able to graduate in four years (which is a particularly challenging timeline since it takes four-to-seven years to gain proficiency in academic English). They must graduate with the prerequisites to enter college. They must be able to attain success in the school's "standard instructional program." We can't see how that is possible without a system of differentiated instruction and differentiated grading for ELLs in our schools.

The federal government also provides clear instructions that accommodations on assessments must be made by states' Departments of Education on any assessments administered to ELLs. Though those guidelines only specify state assessments, it doesn't appear to us much of a stretch to believe that teachers should follow them in their own classes, too. We're not experts, but we wouldn't be surprised if a Civil Rights complaint to the Department of Education would result in the same opinion.

The districts and states that we have found to have specific grading policies for ELLs in mainstream classes appear - in various degrees - to have some key points in common:

It is the responsibility of the teacher to make content and assessments comprehensible to ELLs.

No student should be retained because of English language challenges.

These policies point out the difference between being "equal" and being "fair" and make it clear that treating ELLs "equally" by treating them the same as English-proficient students is not "fair" and could even be unlawful.

Guidance from the state of Indiana offers an example of a "fair" assessment for ELLs:
If a student is struggling with sequential vocabulary, they may not be able to write an essay on the water cycle. However, if given the opportunity to do a hands-on type of assessment through experimentation or pictures, the same student may be able to demonstrate knowledge of that content, confirming for the teacher their knowledge of science, not their limitations in English.
Accommodations during class could include differentiation strategies such as providing more time, allowing access to cellphone translation, providing needed background knowledge though home language materials, offering similar texts at different lexile levels, giving students writing frames and sentence starters, pre-teaching key vocabulary, speaking at a slower rate, and recruiting peer tutors or in-class language "buddies" - just to name a few.

Larry spent nineteen years as a community organizer prior to becoming a teacher. As an organizer, he recognized that "we live in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be." That doesn't mean we have to be cynical, but it does mean that as we continually strive towards how we should treat all ELLs, we also have to recognize that because of time pressures, lack of professional development, and just plain overwork, some mainstream teachers might not be able to provide the differentiated instruction needed by ELLs.

In those situations, we believe that it's critical for teachers to at least recognize that ELLs are faced with the sometimes overwhelming task of learning academic content and the English language simultaneously, and show compassion and support when it comes to giving them a letter grade.

We should always strive towards creating the world as we would like it to be. However, that doesn't mean we should act oblivious to how the world is at the present time.

Another option some districts use is to apply Pass/Fail grades to ELLs in content classes or to provide letter grades indicating accommodations were made (though those notations can appear on report cards, they may not be able to be added to formal transcripts).

The lives of many of our English Language Learners, who have been uprooted from their home, culture, and native language through no choice of their own, can be very difficult.

Let's not make it harder. Instead, let's demonstrate good sense, compassion and respect good educational practice. Let's treat them as we would like our own children to be treated if we had been uprooted to a new country, a new culture and a new language.

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Grading English Language Learners - A Perspective From Two Teachers

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Note: This article complements one written by one recently posted at Colorin Colorado and written by Diane Staehr Fenner, Jill Kester, and Sydney Snyder. That piece is titled The Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs. Larry will be joining Diane for a free Webinar on Equitably Grading ELs that will take place on March 19th.

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

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

what a language objective is

steps that teachers can take to create language objectives

how to implement language objectives in a general education classroom

how to align objectives to content and language standards

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

how to use language objectives in distance learning environments.

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

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

Teaching content to ELs: The challenge

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

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

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

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

Teaching content to ELs: The solution

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

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

To this end, language objectives:

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

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

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

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Writing Language Objectives

Interview with Dr. Jennifer Himmel

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

What is a language objective?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aligning Language Objectives and Standards

English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards

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

English Language Arts (ELA) standards

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

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

Getting Started

How can I get started?

Careful lesson planning

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

Collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List

Retell

Summarize in writing

Record

Read

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

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

When should I share language objectives with students?

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

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

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

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

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

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Using language objectives in a distance learning environment

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

Accordingly, teachers will need to think through how to:

Presenting language objectives

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

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

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

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

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

Monitoring student understanding and engagement

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

Using comprehension checks and assessing progress

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

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

tickets out that are submitted digitally

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

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

Next Steps

How can I learn more?

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

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

Practices that focus on explicit academic language teaching include:

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

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Final Thoughts

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

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

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Recommended Resources

Further reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video Clips: Language Objectives

How to Write Language Objectives: Tips for ELL Educators

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

Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains language objectives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In every classroom, there are students who always have their hand raised to participate, and those who are hesitant to engage. Whether they're introverted, tend to think awhile before they contribute, or are just having a bad day, it can be hard to bring kids into discussions who are reluctant to add their voices.

The challenges of getting students to participate have intensified during remote learning, we've heard from many teachers. Digital platforms can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, for example, or how to read subtle but important elements of discourse like a person's body language and facial expressions. Additionally, online discussions are often hindered by variability in students' access to technology and by privacy concerns, and consequently many teachers have had to rely on students' submitting work over isolated channels like email, which can leave back-and-forth between peers (and between students and the teacher) by the wayside.

Getting kids to contribute in virtual classrooms takes some work, it turns out. "We keep calling this generation digital natives as if they are simply whizzes at everything computerized. They aren't," wrote Tim O'Brien on Facebook. "They need personal support, scaffolding, and reassurance that technology does not provide. It is simply a tool, not a teacher."

To find out how to improve student discussions and participation in online learning, we culled through hundreds of comments on social media and followed up with more than 20 educators to see how they tackled the challenge last spring. Teachers offered a range of smart strategies, both synchronous and asynchronous, to integrate the values and the voices of all kids-even the quietest or those with disrupted schedules-into their classes this fall.

Synchronous Strategies

For synchronous learning, some teachers said they translated traditional discussion strategies from the classroom to live video chats, while others found that digital tools helped boost classroom participation.

1. Spider web discussion: During remote learning this spring, students in Shai Klima's high school class led their own discussions over Google Meet. Before the live class, students answered questions independently, and then shared their responses at the start of the meeting as a jumping-off point for a broader class discussion.

While students conversed on video, Klima listened and drew lines on a sheet of paper tracking the flow of the conversation, resulting in a spider web. At the end of the discussion, Klima shared the drawing over video, and then asked students to reflect on the experience and what they learned about who talked, who listened, and who built on the ideas of others.

"It has been successful as a means to get kids to credit their peers with helping them come up with new ideas, which helps build rapport," said Klima, who let students struggling with bandwidth call in to the meetings.

2. Using chat to check for understanding: After giving lessons last spring, Paul France had his third-grade students use the Google Chat feature to ask and answer questions or type in emojis, like a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to show whether they understood a concept. To create structure around the responses, he guided his students in creating norms around using the chat feature-they decided as a group to use only one emoji at a time, for example. France said the practice helped him check for student understanding and pushed students to engage more with the content.

Kindergarten teacher Ruth Calkins, meanwhile, used Zoom chat when holding live lessons with her kindergarten students. She said they enjoyed typing "T" or "F" for true and false questions while answering math problems in the chat box, and some even attempted to write sentences in response to her questions. Typing responses also provided a lot of keyboard practice for her young students.

3. Flip your classroom to stimulate deeper discussion: Forrest Hinton, a high school math teacher, says he found that a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instruction worked well to stimulate student discussion during remote learning.

First, he taught new content asynchronously through recorded videos and online activities. At the start of his live class, students briefly summarized the concepts they had learned together and then divided into breakout rooms to solve related problems in small groups. Flipping his classroom allowed Hinton to spend less class time in direct instruction-and listening to students at the start of class and in small groups helped him identify, and then address, where his students were struggling. "This has allowed me to clarify concepts in a more targeted way and better assist students," said Hinton.

4. Adapting think-pair-share to Zoom: Ryan Tahmaseb, director of library services, says he found that giving more project-based learning activities to his elementary and middle school students-and allowing them more autonomy over assignments-naturally encouraged richer discussions in virtual learning. "If we give students as much freedom as possible to experiment, research, and pursue interests within our content area, then they inevitably have a lot more to say," said Tahmaseb.

When it came to class discussions, Tahmaseb adapted think-pair-share to Zoom. Students were given a prompt, broken into groups, and then placed into breakout rooms to discuss and record their answers on a shared Google doc, which allowed students to share their thinking in writing or read aloud. Since Tahmaseb wasn't in each breakout room to listen to the conversations, the Google doc kept students accountable. Once they returned to the whole class, volunteers from each group shared their answers with everyone.

5. A new twist on show-and-tell: To get students comfortable with online participation, Brittany Collins, the teaching and learning coordinator at Write the World, a global online writing community for middle and high school students, converted the familiar show-and-tell activity into "think, write, share."

In one activity, Collins asked middle and high school students to find a photo, painting, or drawing that represented intergenerational connection and independently respond by writing to the following questions from the Making Thinking Visible Framework before discussing them over video as a class: What are we looking at? What makes you say that? What do you notice (see, feel, know)? What more can we uncover? What do you wonder? "It helps to break the ice in a virtual learning setting where unplanned participation can prove challenging for some students," said Collins.

Asynchronous Strategies

Although some teachers-and students-said that synchronous discussions were more engaging because they resembled a traditional classroom, many educators found that asynchronous discussions were more equitable because they opened up participation to students with low bandwidth, who had schedule limitations, or who were uncomfortable engaging with the full class.

6. Online forums create back-and-forth dialogue: Angelina Murphy, a high school English teacher, said she used Google Classroom's question feature to get her class to respond to readings and discussion prompts during remote learning this past spring. When each student commented, Murphy replied with clarifying questions to create a back-and-forth dialogue and also asked every student to respond to at least two of their peers' comments to create a broader base of discussion.

Fifth-grade teacher Raquel Linares said she used Nearpod Collaborate (Apple, Android), a virtual collaboration board, to get students to share images or write a response to show what they had learned about an article they read. To inspire connection and reflection among classmates, Linares also used Flipgrid (Apple, Android), so that students could hear their peers' voices even though they were remote.

7. Seeing and critiquing peer work through virtual gallery walks: Virtual "gallery walks" give students an opportunity to view their classmates' projects while learning from each other, according to Joe Marangell, a high school social studies teacher. After his students presented their own projects through five-minute screencasts, they were then required to give feedback to at least two other students on theirs.

Using Google Sheets, students provided feedback to their peers by answering the following prompts: What's something new I learned about this topic?; What's something that surprised me about this topic?; What's something I liked about this presentation? The online format gave every student the opportunity to see their peers' work and their assessment on theirs for deeper reflection, Marangell said.

8. Moving station brainstorming online: When carousel or station brainstorming activities are conducted in traditional classroom environments, small groups of students rotate around the room to different stations to answer prompts-and view and add to each groups' responses.

To translate this online, Marangell divided his students into groups online and created shared Google docs-or a series of Google slides-for the prompts/questions. Each group left their thoughts under the questions by the assigned date and then followed up by commenting on the other groups' responses the next day. "The strategy still allows them to maintain a sense of classroom community [in a virtual setting]," said Marangell.

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8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

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Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning.

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Tips: Embed opportunities for social and academic talk.

Encourage rich discussions in any language with peers and family.

Mix it up! Pair students with a variety of language levels, with same language peers, and with native English language peers.

Provide language supports

Use sentence frames & discourse supports.

Build a routine of talk with Table tents.

Provide graphic organizers along with paragraph and essay frames

Allow responses in multiple formats: L1, drawing or writing.

Build in interaction routines or “talk moves” with students. Academic language/interaction routines

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Critically reviewed selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators

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Multicultural and Social Justice Books - Social Justice Books

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Curated Booklists Carefully selected multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators on 90+ topics. Reviews of Children's Literature Critical reviews of children's and young adult books from a variety of vetted sources, consolidated here for easy access. Articles & News Articles about selecting children's literature and news about Kid Lit.

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MagicSchool.ai - AI for teachers - lesson planning and more!

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Join over a million teachers saving hours of time using the #1 AI Platform for Education, MagicSchool, to help lesson plan, differentiate, write assessments, write IEPs, communicate clearly, and more!