Creating an Environment Where Language Flourishes
- A Resource for Elementary Classroom Teachers
Setting Rigorous Expectations
How do you hold yourself and your students accountable for high-quality language use in your classroom?
WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY?
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Wong Fillmore and Snow state that (as cited by Dutro and Moran, 2014) learning the range of academic skills should not be “left to chance encounters” (p. 231) but needs to be taught systematically and explicitly through various content areas.
Learn more about planning language objectives
It is important to create an environment in which mistakes are seen in a positive light, clear goals and corrective feedback must be a part of the equation to develop academic language skills to an advanced level. Teachers have the responsibility to provide feedback so students can improve their performance and internalize correct usage (Lightbrown &Spada, 1999; Marzano, 1998). Dutro and Moran (2003)
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Zwiers et al. (2014) compare teachers to “coaches” (p. 56) who provides specific feedback to their players. As coaches do, we must increase our feedback and support when students struggle to use a skill and reduce our guidance when they are applying and learning.
They claim that it is tempting for both learners and teachers to default to basic, non-complex language, but we should make the language visible and usable and prompt for its use. They encourage teachers to have students themselves prompt their partners to use the language they are learning.
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Gottlieb and Ernst-Slavit (2014) remind us that when teachers collaborate with the goals of setting and meeting high academic expectations, students benefit. They add that teachers’ reflection should entail examining the evidence for learning, sharing what they discover with students and team members, and making instructional adjustments based on that information.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
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Every chance you have, show or demonstrate to students exactly what they are expected to do.
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Tap into prior knowledge.
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Give time to talk to process new ideas and information.
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Pre-teach vocabulary.
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Use graphic organizers, pictures, and charts as scaffolding tools.
Edutopia Article
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What Are Rubrics and Why Are They Important? Read more..
"Rubrics [..] clarify for students the qualities their work should have."
TRY IT OUT!
Use this script (from Common Core Standards in the Diverse Classroom) to analyze the practices this 2nd-grade teacher uses to fortify students' output (language production) during a math lesson to show learning of language and content, reinforce and expand on it. The script is provided without the author's annotations to support your own analysis and reflection. The annotated version will be available during PD for further discussions.
Peer-to-peer explanations: When students explain what they’ve learned to peers, fading memories are reactivated, strengthened, and consolidated. This strategy not only increases retention but also encourages active learning (Sekeres et al., 2016).
Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It-Edutopia
Our brains are wired to forget, but there are research-backed strategies you can use to make your teaching stick.
In this second-grade math lesson, the teacher wants to solve word problems and use multiple representations to solve them.
Note where she:
-provides language stems to scaffold talk
-remind students that they can use their partner's idea and language to improve their sharing skills (multiple partner sharing)
-monitors understandings and clarity of explanations throughout the lesson.
-intervenes to prompt students to respectfully disagree and justify their ideas
-validate the use of multiple connected sentences to explain math ideas
-models language and thinking