Author: Chelsey Hauge

…. Will be available in LLED Ponderosa E, top floor, as of the end of the week.

Hope that your winter breaks are getting off to a great start!

Please check out the play, here: http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/3/279

In groups of 4 or 5, you would share/be responsible for 2 or so scenes of the play in a multimodal way– ie, giving students copies of your section, performing your section, making a short video of your section, etc.. We could use one class period to prepare. Anything you would need to do beyond that one period you would need to do on your own time.

On Monday, we will make a class decision if we’d like to swap out the article reading/response (Section 4 of the portfolio) for this activity.

To get you started, if you need a bit of help…

1. What reading strategies do you remember helping you when you were in school?

2. What sorts of texts will your students be reading in your subject-area? What might some of the challenges be? What creative reading strategies might you employ in your own classroom?

3. What sorts of reading support can you build into your own classroom, and how/when will students be able to use these supports? Will you make a word wall? How can these kinds of spaces/resources be interactive?

What kinds of group discussions do you thrive in in your own learning? Why?

How might you scaffold group conversation in your own classroom?

When is group work effective, and when is group work a challenge?

What are some of the challenges related to group work for ELLs?

What is one way you can design an academic group work situation in your own discipline?

Please join us on Weds, 10/16, from 12-2, in the DLC (Ponderosa F103) for a talk by Dr. Hetty Roessingh, University of Calgary.

Dr. Roessingh research program focuses on the instructional needs of learners (K – 12) for whom English is a second language (ESL). Her published works have included tracking studies for ESL high school dropout and achievement outcomes in grade 12; rates of English language acquisition; ESL curriculum and program and materials design. Her current interest includes funded program development and research on the transitional supports from high school to university that can produce better academic outcomes for English language learners (ELLs).

We’ll have more information shortly about the specifics of the talk she will give soon, but for now, save the date!

A light lunch will be served.

Their website: http://make-it-count.ca/

An Article: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1234837/immigrant-youth-want-english-courses-to-count-toward-high-school-graduation

Below are a few questions to get your blog post started for this week, if you need some help thinking about what to write:

1. What kinds of questions are helpful to you in your own learning, and why? When are they not helpful? What about in your discipline? What kinds of questions will you ask, and why?

2. What questions do you still have about leading effective discussions in your class?

3. Pick a suggested activity from this chapter and consider how you might adapt it, and in what context it would be most useful?

Here is a link to a story about high school English language learners in BC trying to get their ELL courses to count for credit toward graduation.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1234837/immigrant-youth-want-english-courses-to-count-toward-high-school-graduation

The report the story references can be found here: http://make-it-count.ca/report/

There is also an online petition if you are interested in showing your support: http://make-it-count.ca/

How would you mark this?

These questions are meant to get you started. You need not follow them, for your brief post about this chapter, but if you need a place to begin, here are some ideas….

1.. On page 87, Zwiers provides an excellent chart, with the steps of scientific inquiry and the related language for each step. What are some of the “steps” in your own discipline, and what is the language you might use?

2. What subregisters of academic language did you excel in in your own education, and why? Where did you struggle, and what strategies would have supported your learning?

3. What are some general academic terms and phrases used across content areas? Does your discipline share meaning with another discipline for particular academic terms and phrases? Where, in your discipline, is there language that might mean something else outside of <home ec> or <algebra> or <theatre>?