Creating an Environment Where Language Flourishes
- A Resource for Elementary Classroom Teachers
Higher Thinking Skills
How can you develop your students' abilities to effectively take part in cognitively demanding tasks that meet standards?
WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY?
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Developing the Language of Thinking Jeff Zwiers
If we want our students to be skilled thinkers, we must give them the linguistic tools of the trade.
"[...] the cognitive demands of school increase after 3rd grade, students who are less skillful at using the academic language that permeates textbooks and instruction begin an uphill struggle (Scarcella, 2003).That uphill climb is often steepest for English language learners and students from families that speak nonstandard dialects of English. But teachers must deliberately cultivate in all students a familiarity with the kind of language that teachers, authors, and assessment designers use—what I call cognitive language."
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QUESTIONS
Teacher questions can either stimulate or inhibit student talk.[...]questions that have right/wrong answers or yes/no answers do not lend themselves to discussions.[...] Thoughtful planning of key questions to ask during a lesson can ensure the discussion is elevated to the level of meaningful academic discourse.
Content-Area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-Based Lessons for Diverse Language Learners. Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Carol Rothenberg. (p.50)
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THINK ALOUDS are "a powerful tool for making thinking transparent to a group of learners. However, the real goal of thinking aloud is to prepare students to surface their own thinking processes as they learn and understand a new concept.
Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility, 2nd Edition. Douglas Fisher & Nancy Frey.(p.53)
What kind of tasks do you plan for your class?
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RELEVANCE AND CHALLENGE
A challenge for all learners, and especially for those learning English, is that the talk of school is decontextualized and requires students to discuss events, objects, and people that are not present.
Content-Area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-Based Lessons for Diverse Language Learners. Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Carol Rothenberg. (p.44)
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
Bloom's taxonomy provides a guide to assure that we ask questions at all levels of cognitive processing.
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The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom
Posing a question to the class, allowing for think time, and then calling on a student is one simple strategy for engaging students in better academic discourse.
This blog post discussing effective questioning techniques.
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Keep the cognitive challenge high when you select tasks for your classroom. Context can be provided through the use of visuals, graphic organizers, and many of the strategies described in our Strategy Page.
Reading Multi-model texts: An example from Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms (p. 74)
As members of the digital age, our students spend a great deal of time sending, receiving, and comprehending visual and text messages as well as listening to music, playing games, and using the internet. As teachers, we can leverage those different genres to help students build skills for forming clear academic meanings and messages. Multimodal activities can also deepen students' critical thinking abilities as they engage with the multiple sign systems used for constructing meaning (Jewitt 2008)
What would this task look like in your classroom? What linguistic scaffold(s) would you need to provide so students can perform this task effectively?
TRY IT!: (language functions are underlined)
1. Ask students to look at topic-focused pictures and with a partner discuss the answers to these questions:
a. What information are you able to infer from each picture?
b. What specific items in the pictures led you to each inference?
c. What do you think the people in these pictures have in common and why?
2.Read and Discuss:
a. Students work with a partner to identify and record three important things they have learned about that topic in the written text and prepare to explain why they have chosen each item.
3. Provide a copy of a topic related song or poem. How do they relate to the key ideas from the written text?
4. What have you learned?-Synthesize the ideas collectively