LLED 360

What if the school itself is the driving force between me and my language curriculum? In Himmel’s article “Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners,” it really did provide me with view that truly sees the benefits to implementing academic language in the classrooms for not only ELL learners but also other students. Exercising students speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension is of course beneficial into every class, but what if it seems to difficult to implement in a “manageable elective”. This term “manageable elective” has been coined at my practicum school. It stands to represent courses such as drama, physical education, and art, which are, to quote “programs designed to allow students an opportunity to succeed”. This idea of success in a classroom, has been watered-down to pretty much mean, an non academically challenging class. I also understand why this stigma exists. In my school there is a very high percent of at risk youth. One of the greatest challenges my school faces is attendance. Some of the students at my school have some of the highest suspensions in the whole of BC. So of course, my school wants to provide opportunities for those kids to succeed by offering them classes that are encouraging in the chance that they could thrive in a specific interest. So my predicament lies in the fact that i do want to create an environment where my students can thrive and succeed, but I also want them to feel challenged and learn something. If i start implementing readings, and writing into my class i will not only be met with heavy opposition from the class but also from the school itself. How can i build my students language when these ideas are met with much animosity?

During my practicum I did not notice a large number of English Language Learners in my school… well that was simply because there wasn’t. Out of my whole school there were only two girls on a Japanese exchange program. They were the only 2 Japanese students in the entire school of about forty percent white, thirty percent brown, and another thirty percent aboriginal student population. It was no shock that these girls often went overlooked. Their english comprehension was fairly good but their communication skills were sufficiently lacking between them and their peers, and them and their teachers. Just because these girls understood what we were saying to them, did not necessarily mean that they were fully immerse in the language. What needed to be done? If comprehension skills were there, is that not successful language building? of course not. To communicate in a foreign language does not only take a great deal of learning and comprehension, but it takes a great deal of confidence also. Unfortunately I believe that sometimes we, as teachers, tend to overlook building our students confidence in order to communicate. Not only do we have to concentrate on the scaffolding, and the academic language our students are using, but we also have to be aware of the confidence building it takes to truly communicate. Im hoping when I return to my school I can spend some time with these two girls and encourage focusing on their confidence levels in order to build language and communicate.

Week 9 Reading: Zwiers Chapter 8

Key Points: Language for Academic Writing

1) Writing requires deeper thinking skills that challenge students to use language in order to organize facts, concepts, and opinions in strategic ways. By practising academic writing, it helps prepare students cognitively for later grades and post-secondary schooling.

2) Academic writing requires students to expand their vocabulary, vary their sentence structure, and learn how to use dependent clauses.

3) The students need writing guidance to avoid incorporating colloquial styles in their assignments because the norm fixates them down this path that may include redundancy factors.

4)  Benefits of reading can increase linguistic capital that helps demotivate students to rely on oral language to complete their sentences.

5) Writing expository genres: The writing of nonfiction/non-narrative texts. This is the form of academic writing most schools look for (biographies, lab reports, responses to literature, essays, articles, and persuasive letters). Expository genres often associate themselves with a trend that starts with a main point and then support that argument with evidence.

6) Some assignments require the art of persuasion within academic writing. In order to do so, students need to be able to break down the pros and cons of the issue, take a side, and express clear understanding to support their argument while providing reasons to refute the opposing side.

7) A list of writing activities that can help promote academic writing include dialogue journals, written recap, written dialogues, and perspective papers.

Reflection: After reading and presenting on this chapter, I understand more how one develops academic writing. Personally, I loved reading as a child and my parents encouraged reading by asking me to go to the library and borrow over 50+ books on a monthly basis. Since I’ve developed an enormous amount of linguistic capita at a young age I’ve neglected to learn the process on how academic writing is supposed to be–because I’ve been performing at standard/above standard without having to worry how detrimental it might be if I didn’t know how to write academically. This chapter really broke down the steps of acquiring academic writing and helped me understand how to notice where a problem may lie if a student fails to meet a certain standard.

Personally speaking, I have never encountered any problem of speaking Chinese in school. It could be because I only enrolled in universities where people are more open-minded and mature, or Vancouver is more acceptive of another language, or we live in the year of 2013 now and the events in the play took place in 1996. Regardless, when I rehearsed the play with my group members as Sam, I tried to step into his shoes and let his emotions take over. Then I suddenly remembered our Dean’s words at the start of this semester. He said something about people eating different kinds of food in the building. Instead of saying “oh that’s gross man. I would never eat that”, one may say “hmm, that looks interesting. Can I take a bite?” Language is not exactly the same as food, but the principle does apply here. Of course, my personal belief is no one should ever feel being left out, so if someone else who can’t understand Chinese is present during a conversation between me and another person who can speak Chinese, I think it’s better to speak English so everyone can be included in the conversation. However, if an acquaintance walks by when my friends and I are speaking Chinese, he or she would be welcomed to ask “Hey what are u guys talking about?” and who knows, that person may even add some other interesting spice to the conversation and we may even teach him or her a few Chinese words. Be acceptive, be curious, be ready to better oneself with every tiny bit of knowledge – I think that’s the greatest part of this place. Don’t limit yourself, because you can always learn as long as you are willing to.

“What do general education classroom teachers need to do in order to support the academic English development of language learners, especially when English learners are one of many types of students they serve?” (Himmel, 2012)

In her article “Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners,” Jennifer Himmel provides a helpful step-by-step breakdown of what strategies general education classroom teachers can use to create Language Objectives that will support the learning of ELL students in their classes. I found her basic guideline that these objectives “should involve the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing),” a particularly useful concept for use in my own classroom.

As a future drama teacher, I’ve struggled throughout this course with the idea of including more academic language in my lesson plans, because in many cases students who are drawn to drama and theatre courses are seeking refuge from the more academic subjects. Now I realize that there are students who need as much exposure as possible to the academic English language in a variety of contexts. And it’s not as if I have to redo my entire curriculum to incorporate ways to support this need. It can be as simple as creating and posting frames (for a start), to help my students access language objectives with more clarity. Which is useful for all my students – not just my ELLs.

Although, as a general rule, drama teachers try to avoid too many writing assignments (to prevent turning our classes into English courses) – there are opportunities for small writing prompts that could help reinforce the process of using academic English in a low risk environment. By providing handouts as a part of informal performance feedback activities, I can ask students to “list, retell, summarize in writing, record” their observations and analyses about a performance. Or as a part of a game, I could ask students to “define and use” key theatre vocabulary or “demonstrate” key concepts to illustrate their understanding. When I really stop and reflect, there are a lot of ways I can turn my drama classroom into another space where all my students can practice their academic English skills. I just have to open my eyes to new possibilities.

Something interesting that I’ve learnt surrounding the subject of our course is BICS and CALS.  These BICS and CALS very from student to student and from language learner to language learner.  But there are some overall understandings that can help us as teachers.

BICS are a students Basic interpersonal communication skills.  To form these skills students need to interact with others in social situations.  The language transfer will be in day to day language that one needs to interact with others.  On average, these language skills develop after 6 months to two years.  Students pick up these skills on the play ground, in the lunch room, while talking on the phone, etc.  BICS is just on of the many reasons why, as teachers, we need to push out students to talk to people they would not normally talk to.  And we need to assign groups where every student will feel comfortable speaking in English.

CAPS, on the other hand, is a students Cognitive academic language proficiency.  This is the formal language that students learn.  This comes from listening, reading, writing, and speaking about content based material.  For a ELL it usually takes 5 to 7 years to fully develop these skills.  5 to 7 years!!  Is is clear that this is a lot longer then it take to acquire BICs.  As a result teachers need to find ways of enforcing CAPs in their classrooms and try to find methods that will help their ELLs understand this language more easily.

Are you tired yet?

Over the past three months we hear nothing more than the ZPD.  Lev Vygotsky’s theory about the Zone of proximal development.  We’ve talking about what the ZPD is.  This theory explains that there is a perfect amount of challenge in each activity for every student.  More specifically, it Vygotsky says that if you teach students something they already know then they will be bored.  If you teach them something that is way beyond their present capability than they will give up, get frustrated, and then be bored.  The ZPD is the place in which students are challenged enough and where they can engage in the material and understand what is going on.

This formula can also be used for language acquisition.  If a teacher is teaching students words that they already know, they will not be learning anything new, and they will get bored.  If a teacher is teaching students language that is way beyond their reach it will go right over their head and they will not be able to understand what the class is about.  However if the language being taught is in the students zone of proximal development then these students will be able to grasp what is being taught and they will be able to better understand the language.

The key things students need to make this theory work is social interaction.  Social interaction will help with development and learning.  This will help students move from their actual language levels to their potential language levels.  Reading texts and listening to others speak will help with ELLs learning.

When it comes to English Language Learners, there are two fun things we can do to help them with their language acquisition.  One of these things is expose them to pop culture in English.  The other is to engage them in fun games.

Exposing our ELLs to pop culture in English is a two fold.  First it will help our students acquire everyday language that come up in films, songs, TV shows, etc.  One of the best ways to pick up common expressions and understand their meanings is by watching cartoons where the language and plot are simple enough to understand and is enjoyable.  Secondly, they will be able to relate to other students more frequently.  Many students make pop culture references daily.  Once our ELLs start to understand these references they will begin to feel like they belong.

Fun games are also a great way to engage our ELLs.  In our everyday lives we place a high value on games of all kind.  We use games in office retreats, for team building, trust building, in the news paper, the list goes on.  So why not have games in our classrooms?  Games can help students with writing and spelling (for example scategories), games can help with reading (for example trivia and cross words), games can encourage speaking (such as taboo), games help with listening skills (such as two truths and a lie), the list goes on.

Since these two things are fun and engaging and can really help our ELLS it is important that we try to incorporate them into our lesson plans.

How can I use drama texts like “Hong Kong, Canada” as a tool to engage ELL students in my classroom?

Now that I’ve recovered from my initial rant regarding “Hong Kong, Canada:” (https://blogs.ubc.ca/lled360/2013/11/27/mixed-messages/) – I’m able to reflect on what a valuable tool a text like this can be in my drama classroom. Many of the plays that are celebrated in Western theatre education could be viewed as a “white boys club.” There are considerably less plays that celebrate female voices, and even fewer that feature positive representations of racial minorities. As a drama teacher, I feel that it is my responsibility to make texts available to my students that represent the same levels of diversity that exist in our classroom community.

A text such as “Hong Kong, Canada” would be a good place to start. It is the ideal length for a scene study project – or could even be put up as a class play. But I now understand that it isn’t enough to just touch on the issues that are presented in “Hong Kong, Canada” with one project. Diversity needs to be represented in the classroom on a more regular basis.

It’s my goal to discover other plays that explore a variety of cultures without stereotyping them. I’m also keen to explore types of theatre from outside of the Western influence. Once I (hopefully) have my own classroom, I might be able to bring in theatre experts from different regions to do workshops with my students. I realize that I can’t expect my students to grasp the complexities of a type of theatre they’ve never been exposed to before with one workshop – but at least I would be able to introduce them to a more authentic experience than I would be able to provide myself.

I also plan to give my students the opportunity to present work in their home languages. I witnessed a monologue exercise that was performed by one of my classmates during the UBC BFA in his home language of Spanish – and it was incredible how the entire class was able to understand the nuances of his emotions without knowing what the monologue was about. It was profoundly moving, and I hope that such an exercise in my own classroom would not only benefit the performers, but also my English-speaking students as well.

This is merely a starting point – but I plan to go further from here.

I think the answer would have to be a ‘yes’. There has to be some way of quantitatively evaluating knowledge for logistical purposes. Do I think we may put too much of an emphasis on grades or we may be using them incorrectly? I think the answer to that would also be a ‘yes’. This is not the first class I’ve been in that had discussions on the implementation of grades, and I’ve heard convincing arguments from students, teachers, administrators, etc. for both the pro and anti grade sides.

The purpose of grades is rather clear: provide an efficient and objective way to summarize a student’s knowledge of material. Unfortunately, getting good grades and understanding class material is not a one to one correspondence. Many tests are designed for fact and formula regurgitation and do not allow for students to truly demonstrate their understanding of the concepts presented in class. Students recognize this divide, as many of the ‘anti-grade’ students have claimed that they would focus more on learning if they were not worried about getting good grades, as if the two were mutually exclusive.

Thus the problem lies with assessment I think; we must be designing assessments around giving opportunities  for students to actually demonstrate their knowledge. Now this is easier said than done, which is why such assessments are not common, but I think it’s something that must be done if we want to pursue a better correlation between grade and understanding.