When I start to think about increasing oral language for English Learners online, I must admit that I get a bit discouraged. But the more and more I think about it and research, the more important it becomes. John Hattie gives classroom discussions an effect size of .82, which is well above the .40 hinge point. That is motivation enough to work to solve this problem. The benefit of focusing on oral language is that it will help so much more than just the language skills of students. Yes, we know it will increase literacy skills, but I am also excited about the students feeling valued and being more engaged and having fun. Hattie also talks about having a dialogic classroom, where the discussions promote communication between students and value the students' views. One of the things I have noticed is low confidence and lack of risk taking for ELs, something I hope to rectify with ROBUST oral language skill instruction online. As a teacher, I need to shut my mouth and listen to students to create this envirnoment of effective talk in the classroom.
So, a challenge for me is how to create that environment in a Zoom Classroom. In elementary, I think breakout rooms were not as effective as they could have been. Students were unsupervised and did not have the skills or support to interact in the best way possible. I would like to change that, I was thinking of utilizing helpers, Americorps volunteers, intervention teachers, SPED teachers, or possible parent volunteers. I was also going to try to have multipe devices going in my zoom room so I could monitor. I would start with very easy tasks at the indroduction phase, start the breakout rooms with a high interest level as a way to train students how to use he breakout rooms effectively and report back what they did. For example, some sort of jigsaw of information but start with something easy like go count how many plants are in your house then report to the group, add up your findings and share out. or even easier what is your favorite animal. Another way to assist with teaching and sharing for EL's in distance learning is to utilize tech tools. Of course, I would have my students use Imagine Learning. But they can also utilize other programs or sites to assist with language support, Khan Academy in Spanish, Newsela in a supportive level of reading, language supports on iCivics. I would also like to try the app Read & Write to support text to speech. Specifically for oral language, I can use Digital Storytelling like book creater, shadow puppet Edu and Explain Everything. I have not looked at these tools yet, but am excited to see how we can get kids talking in academic language as much as possible. Adobe Spark could be another tool to utilize. Lastly, Flipgrid seems like an easy way for students to respond to me and to each other about what they are learning or questions they have. This really will be an investigation phase for me and even when we go to hybrid and back to school full time, some of these tools may really help students in the "regular" world.
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Gaming is when the learning comes from the playing of the game. I played iCivics with my daughter today, it is a game that teaches you about government. We played a game where we were lawyers and had to tell clients if they had a case, then we had to match lawyers with certain skills in certain laws and try to do it quickly. We enjoyed that and had a lot of fun. Gamification is when a teacher might bring in game elements to a lesson to motivate students to learn content. We use this in the big ending activity (Process Grid) in a GLAD Unit, the kids are super motivated and have a good time showing what they know. As with all strategies you do have to mix them up. If I did the GLAD strategy everyday they wouldn't have fun with it anymore. That leads me to think about our school programs that we have been using in NVUSD and at Snow. We use STmath, FASTT math, iRead, and imagine learning that the district pays for. Our teachers really like STmath but I am not a huge fan because I think we don't have time for it and it is not used properly so therefore it is ineffective. I feel the same about almost every program we use, we are not using it wisely so it is ineffective. I think the only one that is useful as we are using it is Imagine Learning because it is specificlly used for our upper grade newcomers. Those kiddos are in a unique and unfortunate situation in that they have arrived in the US after the bulk of phonics, vocabulary and literacy is taught. So, they tend to have gaping holes. Imagine Learning can fill that void a bit because our upper grade teachers really struggle to teach these students what they need. I would like to continue using it in the fall, especially with my ELs. I also would like to use Prodigy, Flocabulary, iCivics, and Quizzez and perhaps Class Dojo. I shared with my kids today that I was looking at a bunch of educational games. They were completely uninterested until I just got them and we looked at them. iCivics and The Oregon Trail were popular. I also have gris, Time tek, Addimals, Mt.Multiplis, and Zoombinis on deck for tomorrow. On another note, I watched Jane McGonigal's Ted Talk, which was great but then I watcher her other Ted Talk where she shared her game SuperBetter which she created after suffering from the long term effects of a concussion and was suicidal. She shared the elements of resilience in humans and SuperBetter is a a health and wellness game. It would absolutely be appropriate for High Schoolers to teach them how to pay attention to their wellness. I am not a gamer type person, I don't think the game pigeon app counts but this was phenomenal. I watched the Ted Talk from Eddie Obeng, Smart Failure for a Fast Changing World. The biggest ah ha I had was at the end when he states, "Absolutely and rational decision ,,,does this also make sense in our new work after mignight". It stuck with me because I am always rational. I plan, I evaluate, I make decisions, I follow those plans and decisions through. So, his discussion of turbulance is... a bit unsettling. I tend not to think of myself as creative but what I have come to understand that I am not creative in the artistic sense but I am in the thinking sense. I can look at a problem and come up with different ideas or solutions for said problem. I can do out of the box thinking. I was a bit usure of his discussion of the new world and learning. Because, after 24 years in education, has that much changed? No, it really hasn't. Yes, there were even computers when I started teaching. Haha! I really connected with his discussion of what we in education refer to as a growth mindset, in that we should be rewarded for trying new things, doing something different and yes even failing. That has been one of the biggest difficulties of my tenure as an Academic Specialist, that many teachers are not taking more chances. There are probably a million reasons for this but we HAVE to try new or different things to show our kids that it is ok and encouraged to try something new, we might fail and we might succeed. This risk taking is impareative in education for both teachers and students. Some teachers are telling students it is great to try but aren't showing them that and setting up an environment of failure = success.
It is interesting that I don't consider myself a risk taker but yet I really am. I am in education, in my personal life, as a parent, but not quite yet in business or financially. Not a gambler! So, in thinking about my research, I really need to mull over my ideas more and start thinking outside the box. How do I come up with something innovative? That is a bit paralyzing at the moment. Especially when there are tried and true strategies that work for ELs, but many still aren't achieving. Well, back to the drawing board on this. To Be Continued... Digital tools... I explored many digital tools this week to find if any might be useful for me now and in the future with my class. I looked at Audacity, I signed up for it and practiced using it. It was easy to use but when so many other programs can do this and more I didn't really see the point of using it for my purposes. If I was more into vocals and making them wonderful and precise this might be the tool for me. Next, up was Screencasify. I had not used this before or any screencasting program. I also thought this was easy and I really like the option of embedding your video as well. I think that is important for Elementary kids, so I will absolutely use that. I didn't play around witht the editing. I don't see myself using that as much unless catastrophe strikes. I have done many videos and feel it is pretty great to just keep going if I flub up my words or if something isn't perfect. I want my students to try things out even if it is uncomfortabe and it is important for me to model that as well. Plus, I don't think the goal is to have this perfect video. I looked at Classflow and I think I would need more support to understand and use that option but I am really inteested in using that. I am going to keep that tool on the shelf right now. Pear Deck was pretty great. I definitely see myself using this. It is an add-on for Google Classrooms, and can turn your slides into an interactive tool. It will be useful in distance learning but also while just using google slides in the regular classroom. Perhaps I am late to the game but I used Hyper Docs finally. I really enjoyed using this. I love to create lessons and units. It is sometimes hard to organize and I just end up dong like lists and things on a Google Doc and it is not super organized. I created an elaborate lesson on Rosa Parks and it was really fun, especially knowing that all the "extras" would really help students understand the content. I think Pear Deck and Hyper Docs would be easily adapted as an assessment tool. Any program where students interact or produce an be used as an assessment. I recently told a friend who is a middle school ELD teacher about Flipgrid and how we could potentially use it for ELs, She was excited as we know the extra wow factor or the not writing factor can help ALL kids engage is school but also give us information about their learning.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IN55pU1Bpd3fvxn2CGT358haWzEnBSJXKZLujWtCdM4/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IN55pU1Bpd3fvxn2CGT358haWzEnBSJXKZLujWtCdM4/edit# This week I have been reading John Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers and it really has added to my driving question. I want to focus on data driven strategies or programs to really make an impact for long term ELs. So, I have gone off on a tangent reading different articles and interpretations of Hattie's work. I also read some articles by ACSA about changing the course for LTELs. The interesting part of the research I have been doing is that there are a lot of articles about high quality ELD in elementary school and there are articles about LTELs but not about ELD and instruction specifically designed to reclassify students BEFORE they are in Middle School and High School. That is encuraging to me so it seems that I would want to combine some of these strategies or plans that schools have put in place for high school or middle school and adapt for elementary school as well as doing more mini research projects in the fall to narrow my search.
Enter Hattie, so many of the strategies that I am seeing for high quality ELD are also strategies that are good for all students, of course. For example, ACSA article, Changing Course for Long Term English Learners states that students need-
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About the AuthorI teach 3rd grade in Napa Unified. Archives
December 2020
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