Sunday, January 4, 2009
4. Sheltering Instruction
After today's activity, what are your thoughts on sheltering content for the ELLs in your class? Do you feel that your curriculum can accommodate language goals as well as content goals? Can you shelter instruction for your ELLs while meeting the needs of your native-English-speaking students?
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I do think that biology curriculum can accommodate language goals as well as content goals. Science is unique in some ways because students all students are learning tier three vocabulary at the same time; e.g. mitosis, meiosis, population vs. community in the ecology context. In addition, biology standards documents recommend that concepts be taught before vocabulary. So I will be planning some stations labs and demonstrations to explain concepts that we will later connect to vocabulary. In my last post, I said that my mentor and I introduced vocab the week before we planned to introduce them, but there was no evidence that that tactic worked. It seems from lecture that it is more important to provide opportunity for students to practice new vocabulary than to look up the definitions. In my practice this semester, my goal will be to provide comprehensible input. I worry about the words that I use in daily lectures that ELL students may not understand. I will use the AWL website: http://www.uefap.com/vocab/select/selfram.htm as a resource to identify words that may need clarification in class. I will annotate some readings and ask students to highlight words that they don’t know when I assign readings for homework.
ReplyDeleteAs Ben said during class, lesson objectives in English classes are often aimed at both content and language goals. One difficulty I had in today's in-class exercise was picking a goal that would help ELL's access the text, skill wise, and somehow put forth a concept that would further their reading in the text. I think part of my difficulty stemmed from not being familiar with the text myself. I didn't know how to situate myself in reading, or hypothetically teaching, the first two pages of David Copperfield.
ReplyDeleteThat said, if I were to convey a clear content and language goal, to students, building a need to know and modeling a process of how to go about knowing, I think ELL's could access the text.
Another key for ELA, is being mindful of giving students multiple inputs that are organized clearly in a meaningful way. Too often, I am not attentive to making whatever it is we are discussing available both visually or orally.
I'm also wondering about Alex's point above, of teaching the concept before the vocab in science, and how that may be paralleled in ELA.
One thing I noticed that was missing in ELA share-outs of our sheltered content lesson plans was the visual aspect of instruction (which Aaron alluded to in his post), perhaps because ELA is so much reading, writing, and discussing. I feel that sheltering and meeting the needs of native speakers are definitely not mutually exclusive endeavors, and ELA particularly lends itself to the incorporation of language goals, but that I need to work more on how to incorporate visuals into the classroom, even if it's something as simple as writing down key discussion points on the board, especially when resources (like access to powerpoint or lcd projectors, etc.) may be limited. I have lots of ideas for incorporating visuals, but I often use the difficulty of access to resources as an excuse not to use them versus figuring out ways to increase my access or to mitigate problems. I need to not make excuses!
ReplyDeleteI have trouble figuring out ways I can meet the need of both ELL math students and native-language math students since the classes I teach are honors classes. Unfortunately, there are barely any ELLs in my honors Algebra class, so I have not come across this situation. I feel it becomes especially difficult to shelter instruction in higher tracked classes. How do people in other content areas feel about this? Does anyone have ELLs in higher tracked classes currently?
ReplyDeleteSince the pace of the curriculum is much faster in an honors or AP class, I feel it depends on the individual student whether sheltered instruction is effective. However, regardless of tracked classes, I do feel the curriculum accommodates for sheltered instruction. Many math textbooks come with supplemental material (for both teachers and students to use) specifically for ELLs to help them become familiar with the math vocabulary in their L2.
Today's activity was problematic for math folk in that the content was graphic not vocabulary heavy. The concepts could be taught with quite simple vocabulary and terminology defined from there. Words used in the math context are polysemous but clarity could be achieved for all students by defining them as the graphic math was taught.
ReplyDeleteWord problems act to disguise necessary math operations in dense vocabulary. Native English speakers often have great difficulty in decoding the math hidden in the language; ELL students have the additional burdens of unknown vocabulary and unfamiliar context. Sheltered content would greatly assist ELLs with word problems and the vocabulary and comprehension skills acquired would be useful in other subject areas. Importantly,it would permit ELLs to demonstrate competence in math that may already exist but which is hidden by language difficulties. The curriculum can therefore certainly accommodate language as well as content goals.
My only concern on sheltering instruction for ELLs while meeting needs of native English-speaking students is pacing and echoes Ashley's above. To the extent that sheltered instruction techniques increase the comprehension of all students, it is preferable to use them. I wonder what the effect might be on students who have no difficulty if they are in a majority and the pace and therefore depth of content of classes is curtailed by sheltering instruction. Would that be fair, and might it cause class management issues?
The key points I took away were to explicitly deal with the tier 2 words and to provide a more rich language environment rather than a less rich one. These points, along with the rest of the checklist, can benefit all of my students. The "point" example is particularly interesting to me because I know that students have trouble with it but I haven't been able to fully understand why. The exercise forced me to articulate a list of problems:
ReplyDelete- point is both a noun and a verb
- point is used in common idioms (point out, score points, main point)
- a point is at times considered a singularity (an infinitesimally small location) but geometric points are often divided into components (x,y) and half-points are often given when grading
Understanding these distinctions consciously is useful to EOs as well as ELLs as it will better prepare them to shift between different domains of abstraction, something that is required in algebra and beyond. Drawing another example from last night, students need to understand that while an instantiation of an equation is a point on the graph, an instantiation of the point slope form is an equation. This can be confusing because in both cases one is substituting values for variables. If the student understands that equations, like points can be thought of in distinctly different ways understanding the form will be easier.
My initial thoughts are that this goal (because it is a goal of mine) will be a difficult one to incorporate now that my CC/UP has already been completed. However, I plan to incorporate some of the activities we discussed in class into my lesson plans because I know that it will help my ELLs and other students who may be victims of vocabulary insufficiency.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that my curriculum can accommodate language and content goals because it is flexible to some extent. CPSD's pacing guide isn't as strict as guides in other districts so there is room to give in take in order to accommodate ELLs or students with other difficulties/disabilities.
It is very possible to meet the needs of both ELLs and native speakers. It will take time, patience, and much scaffolding nonetheless it is possible. Those who say it isn't are making excuses : >
Love you guys!
I strongly believe that having a sophisticated vocabulary is crucial in order to succeed in life. Vocabulary is a tool of power that students, particularly struggling students and ELLs, should have the opportunity to acquire. History certainly lends itself well to the teaching of tier two vocabulary, which is needed in order to understand text, assignments and write essays. The charter school that I worked at for the past two years took on an all school vocabulary initiative to boost student language skills. Many of the strategies discussed yesterday were employed in the classroom, such as emphasis on teacher talk and frequency, and packets were created much like the one Jen gave us. In addition, at the end of the packet I would have student write a dialogue using the vocabulary words in order to show a deeper understanding of the words in a creative way.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that some students were using the vocab in their casual conversations and writing without teacher prompting after awhile. Therefore I do believe in the effectiveness of vocab interventions. I still am struggling with giving up 15 minutes of each class to work on vocab when students are struggling to understand history specific content. I do plan on covering vocabulary in some way, as mentioned in my previous post, but I am not sure how routinized it will be.
I really liked what the other science group came up with. Our group struggled with what to do, but they very eloquently came up with language objectives that would further the understanding of all student (not just ELLs). By tying the language objectives to content (generate, nuclear, power, etc), they describe the language in the context of the course. I think this would help any student understand the vocab in a deeper way.
ReplyDeleteIn this particular case, understanding the vocab help students understand the content (nuclear reactions). The content helps students understand the context of science in the real world (generating electricity). I love it!
One other note... our group found a lesson plan that included having the student make a comic about the life of a hydrogen atom on the surface of the sun. With resources like this, I feel more confident in my ability to teach ELLs. I hope to continue to think about their needs as I'm lesson planning, but I also think the language objectives are great for my class that doesn't have ELLs!
I really liked Andy’s second take-away point: to provide a richer language environment rather than a less rich one. It reminds me of something we touched upon in our English methods class while studying writing and how to teach grammar. So often we fall haphazardly into a deficit-model, adding up what isn’t there, subtracting and taking away; we end up working against the very thing we are trying to do, which is building bridges of both meaning and sense. With ELLs, the same trap seems to apply. There is a tendency to not want to confuse struggling learners too much, and so less or simpler language is employed in the effort to make it easier for them, and not too overwhelming, when in fact what ELLs need is more language. Though they need more language in an appropriate way that takes into consideration their proficiency levels. For me, that’s where it gets really tricky and where I’m really going to have to work on walking the hairline between “rich” and merely “more.” There has to be a maintenance of quality in addition to quantity, and I feel that I’m not trained to monitor my language use as well as I need to be in order to adjust my words and presentation to all learners in my classroom.
ReplyDeleteI do think that, especially in English class, language goals and content goals can be accommodated. We are lucky because they essentially are the same. Because content requires language to express itself and to be discussed, language goals are always implicitly and intimately tied to them. I think, like Jean said regarding her use of visuals, I just need to stop making excuses and start figuring out what I can do to shelter content. It’s definitely possible, thought I do worry about the large diversity of ability and needs contained in my class at a detracked and inclusive high school. What worries me is not so much that I won’t be meeting “the needs” of my native-English speakers, in an academic sense, but that I won’t meet the social and group dynamic needs of my entire class. If I’m able to craft this utopian classroom culture I keep envisioning, where part of the reason we are all there is to also figure out (in addition to how we will live our lives) how we will live our lives together, then sheltering content will not sacrifice the needs of some students for others. Part of our work will be recognizing how different (yet similar!) we all are, and in this way, it will be not only myself sheltering content, but us a class understanding that we each have different needs, and trying to help each other out.
I appreciate lesson plan templates that prompt me to think about my students in terms of their needs. Because teachers have a lot demanded of them and because time is a very precious commodity, in order to plan well to meet student needs, teachers must adapt pre-made lesson templates to suit their teaching style and perhaps more pragmatically, to facilitate good planning in a short amount of time (especially if you have more than one class for which to prep!). To that end, because it is so important to explicitly keep in mind the needs of ELL students (not to mention high need students with other dis/abilities) if we are to serve them well, I plan on developing a hybrid lesson plan template that prompts me to consider the needs of my students in a number of areas. As Claire said in class, there are many teachers who don't use class time well, but for the teachers who do, having planning tools that are not unwieldy is of the utmost importance. Having a simple language objective in addition to content objectives seems to me the most fundamental way of always ensuring that you are including the needs of ELL students in your planning.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Suzannah that good lesson plan templates really force a teacher to consider ways to help a variety of students access material; even you have a space to write the ways that each activity is differentiated, it stays in the front of your mind.
ReplyDeleteTo reiterate what has been said by others, time seems to be a big issue. I think that it is fairly easy to shelter content in history by using visuals, changing up or cutting down a difficult text, having students look at a variety of resources about the same topic; unfortunately (as I figured out while completing my methods final) this takes A LOT of work. On the other hand, I think that this is what many of us expected that we would be doing...
Spending a lot of time supplementing materials and the textbook so students engage with different perspectives (especially in history classes), is a definite a way to help ELLs access material...for example, approaching David Copperfield as a Marxist. I like it!
Alyssa, I'm glad you liked our Marxist approach to Copperfield. It sort of came out of a state of desperation when my group and I grappled with how to make the text accessible.
ReplyDeleteI like Jean and Holly's sentiment of NO EXCUSES! I believe that it is absolutely possible for my ELA curriculum to accommodate both language and content goals. I shouldn't always try to have my students accomodate my goals - instead, I should have my goals accomodate my students.
However, I am still struggling to figure out ways to shelter content for ELL students while trying to meet the needs of students who are able to utilize the English language with much more ease. I see sheltering content as another form of scaffolding, and, as many of us know, scaffolding can be extremely difficult in a class that contains students with diverse learning needs. I would like to learn/read more about how effective teachers with a large group of identified ELL students and proficient native language speakers run their classrooms.
I too was completely exhausted by the ELA activity, but I think most of what was difficult about it will not be the case when I'm actually teaching. As Aaron said, I will be familiar with the text. I will also know what the broader purposes are of my unit and year (not to mention my individual students abilities, needs, and predilections), and thus what language objectives make the most sense at the time.
ReplyDeleteIn my last couple of days of teaching, I have started being conscious of what academic vocabulary I could teach my students. As I'm writing my lesson plan, I notice what words come into my mind for what I'm trying to do--ie, "I need to make this rule more explicit than I did yesterday---and then, rather than simplifying my language, I'll teach the word I thought of and then model it in meaningful context by saying what I was going to say. This really does not take any time away from my lesson; it enhances my ability to communicate my class. I could easily make these words my "language" objectives. Additionally, I observed a teacher at East Boston High who does the same thing but then pastes the words around the walls of his classroom to reinforce them. Jen, I'm not sure if he does this on cashier tape but perhaps we could find out.
I can definitely tailor my lessons to meet the needs of ELLs. Including language objectives into the lesson plan enriches science lessons, as we saw yesterday.
ReplyDeleteAfter grading responses to a science MCAS prompt, I was struck by how "sponge-like" my middle school students were. The prompt showed a picture of two landforms separated by the ocean. The students were asked to identify and explain two pieces of evidence that the landforms were once together. A week beforehand, the students had learned how weathering and erosion by the Colorado River had caused the Grand Canyon to form. Many students used the words weathering and erosion to explain that the ocean had cut through the landmass. Even though they had applied the vocabulary concepts incorrectly, they showed that they were eager to use words that they had newly acquired.
If my students had learned the words "plate tectonics" and "continental drift" by this time (which they had not), I think they would have done better. I believe that stressing vocabulary not only helps ELLs but helps all students retain important content knowledge.
Like Eveleen, I am also convinced that it is possible for ELA curriculum to accommodate both language and content goals--particularly because language is the substance of our content.
ReplyDeleteI also have adopted a strategy similar to Hilary's in that as I plan my lessons, I try to extract all of the words that could be difficult for my students in order to teach them explicitly throughout the course of the lesson. As Hilary said, this strategy helps me communicate with my class and helps to broaden the vocabulary of my students.
I do indeed feel that my curriculum can achieve both content and language goals. (Especially when, as Hilary noted, I am familiar with materials and have a specific purpose for using them.) Even in the absence of ELL students, I believe that outside of ELA classes language goals are rarely pursued. Yesterday's class challenged me to consider how I could integrate language goals into my social studies curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI also gained, through the group activity, a greater appreciation for what genuine ELL instruction might entail. It seems to me that sheltered instruction is necessary given the extent of the modification required to make materials accessible to ELL's. At the same time, however, I am aware that a separate setting will not always be available and that responsible instruction on part would include, in cases in which I had ELL students, significant differentiation of my instructional strategies.
As has been stated by the ELA folks, I definitely believe language and content can be taught in my curriculum. Similar to "Badger", I also believe that providing my students with the opportunity to learn both language and content provides them with the tools and skills necessary to participate in the culture of power. As I've mentioned previously, i am a very visual learner and Jean and Suzannah's points on making sure we plan and prep lessons that will engage all learners is incredibly important (aka Universal Design). I think that a way to engage students who are native English speakers is by having them help those who are not native, which needs to be facilitated by a strong sense of community, and accountability to each others' learning.
ReplyDeleteI feel that yesterday's activity was a good starting point in thinking about how to incorporate both language and content. Although frustrating, it reminded me how important it is to keep constantly reflecting on my practice and if I am meeting the needs of all my students. I do wonder, however, if it will ever be possible to accomplish ALL the things in the checklist for sheltering content. I suppose that's the challenge we as good teachers need to take on.
Going along with what most of the math group has been saying, I think there is a lot of difficulty in sheltering content for ELL students in mathematics courses. I particularly agree with what Andy had been saying about the ambiguity of the word point, as it is used as both a noun and a verb. We also had a brief discussion of other popular phrases in mathematics that would be confusing for ELL students such as "plug in."
ReplyDeleteI think word problems would give teachers of ELL students a good opportunity to both language goals and content goals simulatenously, as many problems in mathematics are referred to as "naked math." This is defined as mathematics problems with no context of the overall purpose behind what you are doing. I think these types of problems, although universal in nature should be avoided when teaching ELL students
I have tried to blog several times and this is my last attempt. After yesterday's class, I was thinking about student vocabulary and how teachers design lesson plans based on students' vocabulary knowledge. I observed a lesson that was designed to expose honors level biology students to basic prefixes and suffixes that are not only common in biology but also cross-content.
ReplyDeleteThis lesson was not taught to CP1 level, with a high percentage of ELLs, because they were not at a certain academic level. However, these are the students who would benefit the most from such a lesson. Teachers should have high expectations for all students.
I want to echo what hillary and aaron said about the assignment itself and echo them in the fact that I feel I can 'shelter' content (i have to say I'm not wild about that term) for my students and achieve important language goals on a daily basis. I thing the main thing that needs to happen is for my mentor and I to develop a vocabulary routine of some sort (we are already planning on doing this for our next novel). We have only hit upon random content-vocab, but dailiy-weekly vocab instruction could be achieved and considering my 6th graders level, vocab is really their largest weakness.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts are that sheltering content for ELLs is possible in my math class. It is possible to pay close attention to vocabulary and difficult words that may prohibit successful completion of math problems, in addition to other sheltering techniques.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically focusing on language goals, however, is not my number one priority as a math teacher. I want students to be able to verbally express their strategies and use of mathematical vocabulary and concepts. At the same time, though, that is not the only measure that I will use to determine if students are learning in my class.
It is very possibly to shelter content for ELLs while still effectively teaching math content. In fact, attention to instructions and vocabulary will benefit all learners, including native English speaking students.
One theme that has been touched on here is that of Universal Design. I am increasingly of the mind that once you realize there is no concept that any given student or group of students will automatically "get" you have to start structuring your lessons differently.
ReplyDeleteEverything that we did to account for ELLs would also be useful for struggling EOs, readers unfamiliar with Dickens, and frankly anyone reading the text. Though our word-IDing and translating might be easy for some students, it would still help them gain access to the text -- it would not be detrimental.
The question of pacing does come up, which is to say that moving through every sentence at that pace would infuriate stronger English readers / more advanced students... I guess I'm making an argument for tracking? Not where I thought I was going.
Good UD involves activating background knowledge, finding points of entry, differentiating modes of presentation -- oral and visual are the only realms that I know how to apply practically. Any thoughts on how to appeal to other types of intelligences, in terms of daily class work?
I definitely think that the middle school science curriculum can accommodate language and content goals. As I wrote for my last post, the specific materials that my mentor teacher uses make this easier to do, but after our work in Thursday’s class I have been thinking more and more about the power of visual aids or simply the act of writing down a few notes to summarize the results of a lab or activity. Thursday’s class made clear for me the different dimensions – reading, listening, speaking, and writing -- that I should be considering for ELLs, a list that, as people mentioned in class, also are important for teaching students of all types. Both of the 7th grade classes I’m inheriting have native-English speakers in them who regularly struggle and benefit from writing words and/or drawing a sketch in addition to discussing ideas orally. There are many students who love to just talk, but there are others who really need clearly stated ideas written down. I also want to do a better job of clearly repeating what students mumble or say quietly, maybe paraphrasing to summarize their statement (without distorting or devaluing their contribution).
ReplyDeleteMy teacher uses short “checks for understanding” often, which are basically exit tickets, to give students an opportunity to individually explain ideas and ask questions on paper. I think the sequence of a lab, discussion, summary written work, and an exit ticket that allows private communication with the teacher about what is clear and what is confusing would be helpful for ELL students as well as a number of the native English speakers.
As some people have written for this day’s post, creating a lesson plan template that includes considerations for ELL students as well as considerations for special education and any other students with different learning needs would help keep all of these ideas in front of me, thereby increasing my chances of including them in lessons. I am guilty of falling into certain modes of thinking and planning, only to suddenly realize one day that I haven’t done “x” in a while and really should be including “x” more often. I think coming up with a template that kept the various ideas and considerations right in front of me, at least until I internalize them much better, is a great idea. The lesson plan checklist that we received as a handout looks like a really helpful summary that I would like to work into whatever lesson plan template I end up using.
For sure it is possible to plan for ELL students in a history class; I feel as though it takes the same extra attention or extra eye as would differentiating instruction in a diverse classroom. While there are certain strategies to remember that are particularly good for ELLs, this kinds of planning is not impossible, it only takes extra time.
ReplyDeleteWhere I run into trouble though, is how to continue to challenge the reading and language skills of students in the class who are very proficient in English. For example, I feel like certain students might get bored reviewing a lot of vocabulary that they already know,even if it would be good for them. I ran into this problem as I tried to modify my lesson plan without losing some elements of mystery and discovery. If we are prepping students for everything, and giving a lot of extra vocab on readings, students who should be using context clues to figure out vocabulary will not have the chance to do this. I am still wondering whether it is ever ok to give different sets of similar work to different students. I am still not sure about this.
Similar to Dave, I do agree that I can shelter the math content for ELL students in math classroom. I believe it will require more time and effort on my part as a teacher but seems essential for students' success. However, I do not believe that I will have to shelter the content too much as it is a very versatile subject. Students either believe they can do math or they can not do whether they are ELL students are not. Therefore, if we help all students learn the language of math they are more likely to think they are good at math.
ReplyDeleteAs far as language goals, I believe the focus needs to be on the math language goals including vocabulary. Sometimes there may be a need for a language goal that is focused more generally but normally only during word problems. Hence, I am still going to focus the majority of my objectives on content and the math language.
In terms of meeting the needs of all my students I believe I can do that. I may have to carefully chose homework when word problems are involved for my ELL students but don't think it will slow the pace of the class down.
Betsy
Along with Alyssa I think it's not a huge challenge to provide sheltered instruction in history and consider it an exercise in differentiation that is perhaps under-practiced as we lesson plan anyway. Focused language objectives and academic skills can be beneficial for all of our students who often don't understand academic language (analyze, evaluate, etc.) even if they are native speakers. Although there are many opportunities in social studies to reinforce information with graphs, visuals, graphic organizers, and multimedia, I do think that there are many more cultural references and assumptions of some shared knowledge that occur in history classrooms on the part of teachers, students, and texts. Often, it becomes difficult to make essential points and draw out the theme of continuity and change (historical concepts) if students have no orientation. I see many opportunities to modify but I remain concerned about how it affects the pace of the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI am really struggling to see how I can meet the needs of my native-English-speaking students and also help my ELL students at the same time. Our in-class activity really helped me see the possibilities of how I could conduct more inclusive lessons. Yet, I somehow feel that sheltered instruction works only to a certain point. For example, when we were lesson planning for David Copperfield, our group really had trouble finding out ways to help ELL access such complicated writing. The sentences were replete with difficult vocabulary, complex and long sentence structures, and an unfamiliar topic. I suppose when the text is extremely challenging, the ELL and regular students will both encounter similar language problems. The problem occurs when the regular students have understood the text, and they are ready to be challenged with more content. If the ELL students are still having difficulty understanding the text and lagging behind, what could a teacher do to overcome this learning disparity?
ReplyDelete