In Monday's class you reviewed chapters 2 and 5 from Differentiated Early Literacy for English Language Learners: Practical Strategies by Paul Boyd-Batstone. From what you and others presented and/or what you have read so far, how would you use this material to design a workshop for your school? Use the following prompts to guide your response.
- What most impressed you from the literacy based activities presented and/or what you have read in Beers and Boyd-Batestone?
- How would you structure the material to meet the needs of your colleagues?
- What challenges do you think you might encounter? How would you address them?
What most impressed me from the chapters we read in class, was the chapter on teaching vocabulary, Chapter 5. It was structured in a way that presented the author's rationale, experiences, and then concrete examples of how it might look when teaching it to second language learners. The Beers book also has such concrete examples of how to teach the different aspects of reading. This is very useful for teachers because they can try and apply ideas almost immediately and writing the "How?" is at times the most difficult part of writing because it requires extra thought to things one may be doing automatically just because he / she is a talented teacher!
ReplyDeleteTo meet the needs of my colleagues, I would choose to present the material from Chapter 2. Just as the author organized the chapter with research, rationale, and examples, I would do the same. There is usually very limited time and attention spans in presentations. Therefore I feel it would be most useful for the staff to sit with mixed grade groups to begin and the groups would be given a guiding question related to teaching vocabulary and the challenges of what to do with ELLs if they do not understand what they decode even if they can read to decode unfamiliar words. The groups would put their ideas / answers on chart paper and present. After, the teachers will be told to get into grade level groups. They will be asked to list the content related vocabulary words that will be coming up in their next units. Ahead of time they would be told to bring the material to the session so they have what to work with. After they get the list, some relevant aspects of the article will be taught and addressed. Then the staff will be given time to work on applying what they have been introduced to by planning how they may address teaching the vocabulary in their upcoming unit. After an agreed upon amount of time, the grades will present. If time permits the whole staff can look for similarities among grade topics to see if there is vertical alignment. The presentation will end with an evaluation sheet that asks for what was valuable, what was learned, and questions they still have. This will be used for planning follow up sessions. Also I will tell them that hopefully they found some aspects useful and they can now feel they have a better idea of how to plan for and include vocabulary development in their lesson planning.
It is hard to anticipate challenges. I usually just pay attention to the crowd and adjust on the spot. Morale is low and the teachers feel there is no follow up or continuity with any of the p.d. at the school so I would let them know that this will be the first of a series related to trends we noticed teachers were interested in and there will be opportunities for follow up. One challenge I have is getting the Literacy Coach to allot me any time, enough time, or follow-up time. So I would discuss the necessity before presenting to make sure I can deliver what I promise! I always strive to give the staff a feeling that they have benefited from their time in the workshop and they have practical strategies they are excited to try. Hopefully that will occur!
I have to say that what impressed me the most was the chapter on Vocabulary Development, Chapter 5. I found the division in these three categories, concrete, symbolic/representational and abstract, absolutely rational. Maybe because I don’t teach language, I don’t often think of vocabulary this way. I teach pretty sophisticated vocabulary (I use the term Tier III words) without much planned strategies. I didn’t think of this the day I read the chapter but, now that I think about it, I already use most of these strategies but in a very spontaneous way.
ReplyDeleteTo meet the needs of my colleagues, I would choose to present the material from the Chapter 5 on vocabulary; honestly, the Chapter on Identifying Proficiency Levels should be left to experts on the field (all of you language teachers). I also think that it would be most useful to make a presentation for content area teachers since they are the ones who are daily introducing content through vocabulary to students with all levels of literacy. The presentation would follow very much the way it is structured in the Chapter. The author's rationale, experiences, as well as the concrete examples of how to teach it to second language learners is easy to explain and understand; it is my experience that these types of PD’s must be very efficient and to the point.
I think that if the information were presented clear and straight forward, using a few and area specific examples, teachers of content areas would find it very useful. One of the biggest problems for teachers when dealing with new vocabulary is to put it work and so develop understanding and fluency, this is absolutely crucial when teaching content and an area in which all teachers (even experienced veterans) struggle and surely welcome suggestions. As for the success of the presentation, there will always be a percentage of teachers dissatisfied for hundreds of different reasons but that is in their (our) nature.
Chapter 5 was full of wonderful ideas. These strategies can be easily applied in any classroom setting. Many of my colleagues would be interested in learning about all these strategies. Many of our second language learners come to us with a rich resource of information. We just have to know how to elicit that information from them. This chapter gave several examples as to how to go about it. I have found that the use of pictures, videos, TPR, role playing and familiarity of cognates to be quite useful with second language learners.I would present this material by first posing a question to my colleagues. I would ask them to share the challenges they have faced in teaching content vocabulary to their students. I would share my own challenges and how the use of the strateggies mentioned in this chapter has made a difference with my students. I would then give out copies of the chapter and provide them with the opportunity to read and reflect on it. For those colleagues who refuse to even try it, I would invite them to visit my classroom to observe these strategies being put into practice. I wouldn't change the organization of the chapter. I would present it just as it is.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, my group's focus was on chapter 2, what popped out in my mind when listening to the other groups present "Vocabulary Developmemt" was the rule of thumb, "show first and tell second!" For any ELL to form meaning and understand another language, descriptive words with sensoritory (touch, smell, taste) aids should be used whenever possible as the individual moves through different stages of language aquitition. Language is understood with concrete representaion and/or symbolic representation. Conceptual understanding is then geared towards more abstract ideas. Yet, try to keep the abstract as concrete as possible.
ReplyDeleteAs for chapter 2 "Identifying Proficency Levels" Using a checklist and a rubrics is a practical tool to have for a quick and informal assessment. When an ELL student or any studnent with languge challanges enters a classroom it's beneficial for teacher and student to have a starting point by identifying language proficiency in order to move towards the next steps without wasting time.
Would I share what I learned with colleagues? As much as I can! As long as I have applied what I learned first. "I would have to experience the actual assessment process before sharing how it works. Only then would I feel comfortable sharing my knowledge. My fourth grade colleagues and I do share many teaching practices. We also give each other feedback. Sharing with my two colleagues is easy. Therefore, I could definitely share vocabulary developmemt strategies with them during a common prep or during a working lunch which we sometimes have.
What most impressed me from the literacy based activities presented was the different strategies presented for vocabulary development. These strategies are very important in the development of ELL's vocabulary. Vocabulary development is something that many of us take for granted and something that its so important for our ELLs. The simplest things that we take for granted are things that may determine if a lesson goes well or goes down the drain. Even with students that come from the same country, that speak the same language sometimes vocabulary may be an issue. I have students that come from different parts of Central and South America where they speak the same language(Spanish)and even then they might have different names for the same thing, and that's when these strategies have so much benefits in the acquisition of vocabulary. I always try to acknowledge different words from different parts in order to include most as many students as I can. I was also impressed with the way that the levels of proficiency were described. i think that the proficiency levels were easy to follow and it is a quick way to place the students to begin to give them the services that they need.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lucy I would also present this material to my colleagues in question form. I would like to know how they teach vocabulary to their students and how the strategies that they use have been working for them. I would then present the material and conduct other workshops in order to get feedback from them. I would collect data and then present how these strategies have helped their students. I think that by allowing the teachers at my school share their practices before introducing new strategies will help me eliminate some of the challenges that may arise. Sharing my success with these strategies, giving them examples of how these have helped my students and making myself available to help out with the implementation of some of these strategies may also help eliminate some of the challenges that may arise.
Rob said...
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t say I was impressed by the content I read in Boyd-Batstone’s article on vocabulary. None of the information was new. What I was impressed by was his thoroughness and organization. It has been many years since I reevaluated my practice on this level. When I was in graduate school I read all about TPR, word cards, semantic maps, etc. but I did not feel that I actually got it at that time. Everything was all so new to me; in other words, it was all still pretty much theory. When I first got in the classroom, I’m positive I used many of these strategies when teaching vocabulary. But, over time, I let these ideas go by the wayside. Reading Boyd-Batstone brought it all back home. Even more important, he pulled together all different types of strategies for teaching vocabulary (concrete, symbolic/representational, and abstract) and explained how we can teach words across all levels of proficiency. I think his basic summary of these strategies is an excellent complement to Beers’ work. She takes the same ideas and walks us through them step by step. She also was quite correct in saying that we need to teach our students, and ourselves, the value of rereading. (Or would that be the reevaluation of reading?) On second read, six years later, her book is making a whole ‘lot more sense.
I was thinking how these strategies might be used by the math, science, and history departments. I always hear complaints about how hard it is to teach ELL’s in these disciplines. I often wonder how many of these teachers are working on basic vocabulary and communication skills. Therefore, I would create a PD that would address how to teach vocabulary in math, science, and history. After instructing my colleagues the three different types of vocabulary and some relevant strategies, I would break them up into departmental groups. I would have each group brainstorm a list of ten terms that they are currently using or will use throughout the year. They would put these words on chart paper and report back to the group. Then, using numbered heads, I would rearrange the initial groups and assign each new subgroup a word from one of the vocabulary lists. They would then have to use one of the strategies (concrete, symbolic /representational, or abstract) to teach the term to the other groups. As a variation, I could choose the word and the strategy for the groups. This would add an extra layer of difficulty to their task. At the end we would debrief and set another meeting to see how these strategies were used over the coming month.
Challenges in this case will be many. I would fully expect someone from the math and science departments to chime in and say that this exercise is not relevant to their classrooms. On the surface, I can understand their hesitancy. What does vocabulary have to do with equations and experiments? My answer would be, what if these ELL’s don’t know the terms ‘equation’ and ‘experiment’ in their home language no less English? I would then demonstrate how to use TPR to teach the terms ‘addition’ and ‘cell division’. Math and Science have so many opportunities for learning vocabulary using physical movements it’s mind-boggling. What better way to make abstract terms more relevant and involving? Fear of doing something new should not mean an excuse for not trying!
PS I hope you enjoyed my blog. Please do not share it with my students, their parents, the DOE, or anyone from Pennsylvania. Thank you.
Even though I agree with the importance of experiential learning, one thing Boyd-Batstone did not address is the importance of relevancy. Students will learn the words that are relevant to them first. Going back to first language learning, children will learn words such as bottle before many other words because bottle is relevant to them. Therefore, I believe that part of intelligent vocabulary instruction is to make students active language learners in that vocabulary shouldn't be exclusively teacher directed, but also student directed. Students are eager to make lists of words that they want to learn, words they have heard over and over, or seen on signs. Some of my students, for example, wanted to know what loitering meant. This was relevant to them, they had seen it on signs. At the end of the year they remembered the word loitering. Bark from the birch tree, on the other hand, they didn't remember, even though we had read HATCHED, and I had brought it in, and they had touched it and smelled it, and we had tried to connect it to prior experiences, had shown pictures, etc. When I reviewed vocabulary at the end of the year, they remembered the experience, but did not remember the words birch or bark. I guess both words were irrelevant to them.
ReplyDeleteI was really impressed with chapter 2 from Boyd-Batstone's book. When I saw the title in class, I had an AHA moment because this is such a perfect resource for me and the teachers that I worked with for our ESL push-in program. I saw a related reference on line which I used in our weekly meeting in the past but it did not summarize the way Boyd did. The chapter is a perfect resource because not only it outlines the different characteristics of emergent bilinguals in their varying proficiency levels but also includes various activities that a classroom teacher can do with her students when the ESL person like myself is not present.
ReplyDeleteDuring our discussion in class, some of our colleagues cautioned us in using these guidelines. However, in my opinion, it is still good to have this handy especially when there are teachers who are still struggling in teaching our emergent bilinguals in their classroom. Plus, we know who are our students so we know what activities and strategies they need in order to develop as proficient
Its funny that you asked this second question because as soon as I got home that night, I changed my agenda for our meeting the next day. In my school, we have a weekly meeting with the classroom teachers and the ESL teachers. I usually facilitate the kindergarten and first grade meeting. We generally talked about our challenges, our monthly themes and our modification for our students. During the meeting, I asked the teachers to think about a student in their class that could be a B, I, or A. Next, I asked them to list down the different skills that the student/s can do and right across the weaknesses. After that, I gave them their own copies and I told them to look for the child's level and see if what they wrote were congruent to the chapter. Most of them saw some matching characteristics and one of the teachers said I will use this in planning my lessons. There were also questions why there are certain students that are very good in reading and writing but still scored Beginner in the NYSESLAT. I reminded them that some of the students took the test at the end of Kindergarten last school year so at that time, they did not have the skills that they have now as first graders.
My challenge is how to apply these strategies in our daily teaching. We definitely do some of them but adding more to our teaching repertoire is something that I grapple.
What I appreciated most in Chapter 5 Vocabulary was learning more strategies. I thought Boyd-Batstone's explanation that "meaning is experiential, sensorial and image driven" is a good reminder when planning vocabulary lessons. The article was well organized and the explanation of the three categories of vocabulary -concrete/symbolic-representational/abstract was clear. Chapter 5 and Beer's Chapter 9 Vocabulary are great for content area teachers with or without ELLs.
ReplyDeleteA few days before presenting the workshop to colleagues, I would ask each content area teacher to give me a list of vocabulary words (5-8) that they would be using in their next unit. In the workshop I would present a summarized Boyd-Batsone's Chapter 5 Vocabulary article as well as Beer's Chapter 9 Vocabulary highlighting vocabulary development and strategies. Then I would have the teachers discuss how they might teach the list of words they gave me using the new strategies. Since they would leave the workshop with real material for their classes, it might be easier for them to teach the vocabulary (if they didn't focus on it before or just with a new strategy). At least, I would be happy that content area teachers might be thinking more about teaching vocabulary. I would have copies of the article available after the workshop and invite anyone to my classroom to see how I incorporate my vocabulary lists that I have up into my lessons.
A first year science teacher in my high school who has a few of my ELLs in her classes asked me for help with her lessons. The first thing I told her was to break down the vocabulary similar to using Boyd-Batstone's explanation of "ganglia". Break down the meaning to their level (concrete)in any creative way you can. Give as many examples as possible (relevancy -thanks Sylvia)and then build on that. I told her with ELLs you have to go back to basics first and build from there. This was not easy for her. She was introducing definitions with other new words. She finally did realize that she was introducing too much information at once and a lot of it was new vocabulary. I will definitely introduce her to the strategies. Her initial complaint was that she didn't have time to go over the vocabulary, but she soon realized that if she didn't it would be worse for the students and for her.
I always point out to my Spanish students that they don't realize the advantage they have when it comes to English vocabulary. Recently, the word benevolent came up in class, and I asked my Spanish students if the prefix -bene meant anything to them. Some said, "Good". Even if they didn't know what the whole word meant, they knew benevolent had to do with something positive. On the same note, I asked them what they thought malevolent might mean. Without skipping a beat, they all said, "Something bad". Knowing roots/prefixes can be very helpful for high school students who are taking the SAT exam which is loaded with vocabulary. Kids who study Latin have an advantage when it comes to vocabulary - so why not teach our students as many Latin/Greek roots? Another strategy I use, actually more of an assessment, is Word Splash. Once all new vocabulary has been explained, I put students into groups where they have to create a story using the new vocabulary words (use chart paper). I always look forward to this activity because students come up with beautifully illustrated (I'm in an arts school!) creative and zany stories. They don't see it as work;it's too much fun. I see who really understands the vocabulary, and if I need to do a follow up lesson on parts of speech, etc. I have Word Splash stories up all over my room. If I have time, the students can do a gallery walk and write comments on post -its or even use a rubric.
I meant to say I would present the material to my staff from Chapter 5. Sorry I accidentally typed Chapter 2 for the second part of the response but I meant Chapter 5. After reading through other people's blogs,it seems that many people agreed that Chapter 5 had some really valuable info to present in a professional development workshop. I am grateful that I was able to get exposure / re-exposure to some valuable reference materials that have put in to writing, what I am doing and also made me think about what I can add to some things I am doing. This is what I really want out of BETLA-research related to second language acquisition, reference articles and best practices for ELLs. Again I reiterate that the "How?" is always what my staff wants to know, and Chapter 5 answered that question very well.
ReplyDelete