Author: Melanie Reich

In relation to https://blogs.ubc.ca/lled360/2013/11/17/chapter-9-lesson-plans-and-assessments/

Though the chapter and overall book has some flaws, I found this text to be incredibly helpful. The information it provided about teaching and understanding ELLs has opened my eyes to new perspectives and new techniques that I had never considered previously. I have found that, out of the numerous texts I have read so far in this program, this text is the most applicable to the everyday classroom situation and has the most practical advice, which translates directly to the management of a classroom and the planning of lessons. The activities and techniques described in this text are applicable to effectively teaching our content areas as well as to the teaching of academic language and I believe that I will use many of the techniques in this book numerous times, as I plan lessons for my practicum and further teaching.

I agree that this chapter (Chapter 9) is particularly helpful because it integrates much of the information from the other chapters into more fully developed lesson plans, which gives readers a clearer idea of how to use these activities and strategies in a broader context.

One of the elements of the chapter that I thought was most interesting was the use of rubrics. I have always viewed rubrics as a method of assessment that defined the criteria for grading. However, this chapter broadened my understanding of what rubrics can be used for and how they can enhance, not just evaluate, learning. Having the students create their own rubrics is an excellent way to discuss expectations for what the students should know about their content area. This helps the students to focus on the most important information when doing research and creating their products. It also works to give the students a sense of autonomy and create a more democratic classroom environment. I also like the idea of having the students assess their own and other students’ works using rubrics. This helps the students to fully comprehend what good quality products are and how to create them. It is especially helpful if the students are able to edit and rework their product before the final assessment of the teacher. These methods of using rubrics will undoubtedly improve students’ learning as well as the quality of their final products.

Melanie Reich

This week we discussed multiple readings and explored many topics in class. There were a number of parts that stood out for me.

In chapter seven of our text (Zwiers, 2008), we learned about language for academic reading. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter, which is reiterated in other chapters, is the need for a delicate balance between simplifying and/or translating language for students and challenging students to do the deciphering themselves. There is a fine line between challenging and frustrating a student. However, I found that the strategies that Zwiers presents are encouraging and have been well crafted in a careful and balanced way. The key concept to help create challenging, and yet not frustrating, situations is to help students learn how to deconstruct and unpack the meaning of texts before getting them to attempt it on their own. This way the students learn how to do it along with the teacher and therefore, possess the tools to do it themselves. This mitigates the frustration, as students are more equipped to do the work.

The optional reading (Duff, 2002) presented an interesting point of view on the use of pop culture as a teaching tool. We have been encouraged a great deal to utilize pop culture to make our lessons more relevant, yet this cautionary perspective was not provided and I think that it should be noted by all teachers. The presentation on the reading reminded me of instances when I was alienated and left out by pop culture references in school. For instance, I was not allowed to watch The Simpsons as a child and, because it was very popular, there were numerous times when my teachers would refer to it in class, in relation to what we were learning. I knew vaguely what it was about but I did not understand how it related to the material because I did not know the “inside jokes” and specifics of the show. It definitely made me feel excluded from the discussion and like there was something wrong with me for not watching the show. It was an uncomfortable feeling and it was counterproductive to my learning. It would have been more helpful for my teachers to give more information on the show, so that I could more easily follow and participate in the instruction. In this technological age, I think that it is easier than even to use pop culture in the classroom and it is also easier to use it more inclusively. Teachers can use projectors to show clips of scenes or You Tube videos before discussing the ideas involved. This way, the students have a shared experience of the media being discussed so that all students can participate. Some students will always have more background knowledge of the media than others but it is a step towards a more equitable discussion.

Melanie Reich

References:

Duff, P. (2002). Pop culture and ESL students: Intertextuality, identity, and participation in classroom

discussions. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45, 482-487.

Zwiers, J. (2008). Language for academic reading. In Building academic language: Essential practices for

content classrooms (Ch. 7, pp. 163-194). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

I found this chapter to be a very practical guide to facilitating small group activities. It provides a strong, yet flexible, foundation that teachers can build upon and reshape to fit the needs of their specific content areas. I have no doubt that many of these methods provide rich language and content learning environments because I have experienced many of them as a student (mostly in the B.Ed. program) and have benefited from these techniques.

However, as I reflect on my high school experiences with small group work, I find that there was a much greater emphasis on “product” focused groups in the majority of my classes and much less on “process” focused group work. In retrospect, it is clear to me that this “product” orientation was a barrier to the communal sharing of knowledge and use of academic language. Zwiers suggested that “process” focused groups are developing their “academic collaboration skills” (139) and that they find ways of “thinking together” (139) and consequently,” students construct new knowledge and new academic skills” (139). Conversely, in my experience a “product” focused activity produces anxiety and this causes student to abandon collaboration for quick fixes and higher grades and welcomes many negative elements into the group work.

Often, members who are doing well in the course and are contentious students worry that the group work will bring down their grades. Therefore, these students will often opt to do the majority of the work themselves and exclude others from the process of creating the product and the learning that comes with it. Subsequently, the students who are not receiving high grades and who may be less interested in the course have the perfect opportunity to disengage and leave all of the creation, and the learning, for the other students to do. This means that many students learn and develop less during group work than if they were assigned an individual project.

I think that teachers often miss the key components of what differentiates the effective small group work from the ineffective small group work and “product” orientation is one of the main issues. Therefore, I feel that it is necessary that teachers explicitly emphasize “process” oriented group work in myriad ways. For example, teachers should not ask students to produce something that will be marked on its own merit. I believe that product creation can aid learning but only if the creating is emphasized and the product deemphasized. By only grading the process or heavily weighting the grade towards the process part of the project, it helps to put students into a better mindset for collaborating, sharing, being patient and being open with one another. With their evaluation, the teacher is making a statement about what they value most about the group work and a “process” focus helps all of the students become more at ease to create, explore, take risks, challenge each other and acquire new knowledge. Furthermore, teachers must make the importance of the “process” clear, by making the grading criteria transparent and by providing guiding questions, prompts and reminders that keep the students in this mindset. My experiences of “process” oriented small group work were exponentially more educational that “product” oriented group work and sadly the latter was, and may still be, the much more common experience for students in typical high schools.

Melanie Reich

Works Cited:

Zwiers, J. (2008). Academic speaking and listening in small groups. In Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms (Ch.6, pp. 135-162). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

I have always viewed classroom discussion as beneficial, yet after reading chapter five I realize that the depth and breadth of learning that occurs during discussions is far greater than I imagined. According to Zwiers, there is something to be gained from all types of discussions, even those that revolve around “display questions”, which he finds to be one of the least effective types of questioning. I have found that “display questions” are often the most common form of questions that are used during a typical classroom lesson, as they serve the purpose of assessing previous knowledge and newly acquired knowledge. Therefore, it is tempting for teachers to use these questions frequently as they seem to be the most direct and efficient form of furthering learning.

Yet, Zwiers asserts that this belief is not correct. He asserts that “open-ended” question actually further learning in a fuller and more profound way and that they lead to richer and more academic responses. This was a very interesting discovery for me, as I often find myself leaning towards “display types” or questions when trying to find the most efficient forms of class talk. However, open-ended questions allow for the students to cultivate important thinking skills such as, “(1) Personalizing…(2) justifying, (3) clarifying, and (4) elaborating” (106) and “these types of open questions show students that we teachers still ask good questions and that experts in a content area still seek deeper knowledge about a subject” (107). I thought that the later was an especially important point. Display questions influence students to think that there can only be one particular answer to a question, and that the teacher has the ultimate power to define what that answer. However, open question create a less intimidating and more inviting atmosphere for students to experiment with possible answers and attempt to build knowledge in cooperation with the teacher. I plan on acting on these discoveries as I formulate my lesson plans and take note as to what types of class talk result from discussions that do not use the “IRF” (110) model, but instead ask questions in which students believe that I don’t definitively “know” the answer.

However, even though all questions can be beneficial to a degree, Zwiers believes that the act of teachers posing questions is much too frequent in the classroom setting and that it is not necessary for the facilitation of meaningful discussions. He provides many excellent examples of how to structure such discussion, many of which I will test during my practicum.

Finally, the development of students “academic listening” skills and note taking is very important. I still am shocked by the number of my classmates in college level courses that are not able to take effective notes. Fostering students learning of this incredibly important skill will benefit them for their entire lives, inside and outside of classroom settings. Zwiers gives a number of good examples of how to do this (ie. “Three-Column Notes”) (120) and provides insights into the thought processes that inform such practices (ie. “Chunking information into levels of importance”) (p.119). I think that the importance of academic listening and note taking cannot be underestimated and I know that such skills can define students’ future success in academic classrooms and in life.

Melanie Reich

Zwiers, J. (2008). Academic classroom discussions. In Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms (Ch. 5, pp. 101-133). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

As I read chapter four of the text, I was constantly trying to relate the information to my content area—theatre. I was trying to analyze which of the “thinking skills” that were deemed as necessary for other subjects also pertained to my own.

The subject of the first section is language arts and its skills are broken down into “interpretation, persuasion, and figuring out causes and effects” (71). All of these apply to theatre. In analysing the plots, themes and characters in a piece of theatre the skills of interpretation and figuring out cause and effect are paramount. Therefore, I found the examples of academic expressions in relation to these areas to be particularly helpful. For instance, when a student is studying Othello they may say that he was “angry” and that is why he kills Desdemona. I could scaffold this by saying “So Othello was motivated to kill Desdemona by anger? What was he angry about? What other words could we use to replace “anger”…how about jealousy or “he felt betrayed”? What caused Othello to feel betrayed?” etc. Understanding a character’s motivation to act in a certain way is crucial to the art of acting. Therefore, the scaffolding methods addressed in the text will be very helpful, not only in helping to build academic language, but also in helping the actor to specify his objectives in a scene.

The skills of persuasion are also helpful in theatre class, as students often must write reviews or critiques of productions. They must be able to explain why they hold a certain opinion by providing convincing arguments and displaying relevant evidence. Consequently, the advice from the text of how to express opinions in a persuasive way is also important for the study of theatre.

As I continued to read, I found more relationships to other content areas, such as history, that share their set of necessary skills with theatre. Overall, I found that this was a very practical and helpful reading in which I found much that is of worth for the teaching of theatre and the building of academic language.

Melanie Reich

The acquiring of vocabulary comes quite naturally to many people. For these people it can be very difficult to remember the particular moments that solidified ones knowledge and “ownership” of a new vocabulary word.  In fact, it is hard to remember how or when we learned most words at all!

I found this article* helpful because it broke down the learning of vocabulary into its smallest parts. After reading this, I can better identify the ways in which I acquired vocabulary and this helps me to gain insight on the experiences that my students may have.

I learned a great deal of vocabulary through my reading, as I loved to read in my spare time (“incidental word learning through reading”)*. I also learned much of my most sophisticated vocabulary from conversing with my parents and older sister (“oral language experiences at home”)*. They used more complex words and I incidentally and incrementally formed understanding and eventually took ownership of this vocabulary for myself. I also loved watching television shows that showcased lawyers, as well political debates and I loved anything that involved people with British accents (usually in the form of Public Broadcasting programs). This viewing exposed me to many terms and that were academic and were in contextual settings. I had the added resource of my parents (watching with me) to ask questions about vocabulary that I could not quite grasp. My parents also taught me a number of skills to help me decipher vocabulary for myself. They showed how to find the “root” word and also how to use contextual clues to interpret meaning. I also had regular access to the internet and attended thriving public schools, where my teachers used many methods to introduce us to words, from spelling tests to reading novels out loud as a class.

Looking back, I realize that I grew up with the opposite experience of “word poverty”*. I had a wealth of words. I remember sometimes being insulted by peers because I used too many “big words” and I was always surprised by their accusation, as I had acquired them incrementally and incidentally in my word wealthy life, and was shocked that they could not understand me. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was incredibly privileged to be in this kind of vocabulary rich environment. Now as I think about my current and future students, I wonder what kind of language environments they are being exposed to outside of school and how I can use my influence to create the kind of environments that will help them to succeed.

In some ways, the study of theatre makes the language “playing field” a bit more even. This is because many of the theatrical terms are taken from languages from all over the world. For instance, Bertolt Brecht’s word “Verfremdungseffekt ” is of German origins and in clowning (commedia dell’arte) much of the language comes from Italy, such as a comedic “lazzi”. These terms will be a challenge for mainstream English speakers as well as ELLs and this may help to bridge the gap between their language learning experiences and make ELLs more comfortable as they see their English speaking counterparts having to work from a place of less privilege. However, this stresses the importance of the skills around teaching vocabulary for theater teachers, as we will sometimes be working with much less commonly known terms.

*Lehr, Osbourne & Heibert. A Focus on Vocabulary.http://vineproject.ucsc.edu/resources/A%20Focus%20on%20Vocabulary%20PREL.pdf

Melanie Reich

As a Mainstream English speaker, I often do not take notice of the challenges that face ELLs on a daily basis and particularly in academic language. However, this does not mean that, on reflection, I cannot relate or identify with the experiences of these learners. This was evidenced as I read the Functional Language Analysis article. As I read the various examples of different academic content texts I remembered encountering a period of adjustment when I entered junior high school and had to read and comprehend texts written in content-specific academic language. I remember having to read sections of these texts multiple times in order to deconstruct and reorganize the information — in order to make sense of it. Sometimes this still happens when reading articles and textbooks written by subject experts for areas other than my own. I did not have a specifically laid out method of deconstructing the text, such as Functional Language Analysis, with which to do so, but because of my knowledge base and generally strong comprehension abilities, I managed to make sense of the text by drawing on my current metacognitive and metalinguistic skills. However, for ELLs and others who do not have a very strong base in these ways of processing information, it must be very frustrating and seemingly impossible to unscramble the meaning of such texts. This is why I am very interested in this prescribed formula of language analysis and would like to explore this method of deconstruction in my content classroom.

In the study of theatre, students will encounter a wide variety of ways in which authors present information. They will read plays and scripts in which dialogue and stage directions, character details and setting descriptions are laid out and identified in specific ways. Also, they will engage with textbooks and similar academic texts that discuss the history of theatre through the ages. They will also meet texts that attempt to convey modern styles of acting, set design etc. and instruct students on how to explore and achieve these results themselves. Often in these instructional texts much metaphoric and abstract language is used to help the students engage in sensory explorations. These texts will each provide their own specific challenges to ELLs and I will attempt to use functional analysis in my classroom, as much as possible, to demystify these texts.

Theatrical history textbooks are the most obvious texts with which to use this method. They are written very similarly to conventional history texts, referring to dates, important figures and events. Therefore, these texts have frequent nominalizations, such as the “futurist movement”* which represents many events, people, and plays by the statement of two simple words (Fang and Schleppegrell 589). As with other history texts, judgments and personal opinion are also present in these texts. For example, “From the oppression of the dark ages, theatre was reborn, by the very institution that had decimated it—the church…”* As Fang and Schleppegrell suggest, the choices of words and their position with respect to each other are very important in helping the students understand the point of view of the author and the judgements the author is making about the “actors” (the church, the theatre etc.) (589). The students can analyse the processes of “doing” (decimated), “being”, “sensing” and “saying” and those “participants” (the church) involved to learn the experiential meaning of the text. They can also use the mood (declarative), modality and attitudinal vocabulary of the words (decimated) to find their interpersonal meaning. Through analysis of the pronouns, synonyms, antonyms and conjunctions students can understand the textual meaning of the text as well (Fang and Schleppegrell 592).

Through the exploration of Functional Language Analysis, it is my intention to help my students learn the skills to decipher historical and creative language so that they will be better equipped to extract knowledge from the theatrical texts that they will read.

Works Cited:

Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2010). Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53, 587–597. doi:10.1598/JAAL.53.7.6

*These are my own examples.

Melanie Reich

As a native speaker of mainstream English, I have found these chapters to be very revealing. One of my first revelations was the understanding of the great depth and breadth of the issues involved with the comprehension and use of academic English. I had not taken the time to fully explore all of the many ways in which the English language, especially academic English, can be confusing for English language learners. The uses of qualifying statements, prosody, clauses etc. present so many challenges that I now have an even greater respect for any level of success that ELL’s achieve on a daily basis.  I have also become much more aware of the ways in which I, unintentionally, may be confusing ELLs with my speech. It also helped me to identify the particular mechanisms that are breaking down when individuals who are ELLs seem to be having difficultly being understood and how I may be able to help repair those issues in an efficient way. Also, the first chapter clarified the way in which these seemingly minor difficulties in communication can have social and psychological ramifications that are much deeper than receiving a low grade.

However, the next few chapters have given me much hope. As a theatre teacher, it seemed like an onerous task to try to teach the content of my courses, as well as continually scaffolding the use of academic language. However, the strategies that are given are not unlike some of my current teaching methods. I believe, through some minor changes and deliberate planning, I can effectively teach, both academic language and content. For instance, analysing the way in which a particular character speaks and how this reflects their thinking are essential parts of an actor’s preparation for a role. Therefore, discussing metalinguistic and metacognitive processes can be easily done in relation to course content. Furthermore, theatre emphasises using the whole body and voice to communicate and is not limited to the verbal realm. Therefore, students who are experiencing language difficulties may feel safer and freer to express themselves in these ways. Consequently, I, as well as their fellow students, will be better able to scaffold their language development, as we assist them in finding the right academic language to express the ideas they have presented.

There are many more examples of the many ways I have been inspired to bridge the content of my courses with the acquisition of academic language and I am excited to try them out with students in the field.