LLED 360

LLED 360 Project

 Building Academic Language: Essential practices for content classrooms

Zwiers, J. (2008). Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Framework

 Essential questions:

1. How can educators help students build the language capacity that they need to succeed in schools?
2. How can educators best support English language learners [ELLs] in diverse school contexts?

Presentation format:

–       Small three-ring binder with dividers (Parts 1-5);

AND

–       electronic version for feedback – memory stick or shared DropBox folder

Assignments

PART 1     Reflecting on your own language learning experiences

PART 2     Exploring key concepts

PART 3     Lesson planning

PART 4     Deepening understanding

PART 5     Reflecting and Setting goals

Due: Dec 9^th ***

*** With the exception of the first lesson plan.

Part 1: Reflecting on your own language learning and language use experiences

In this assignment you are asked to consider your own multilingualism and multiculturalism and to explain how it relates to the linguistic/cultural realities of Canadian society today. A narrative writing style is suggested. While your focus is on language, you are encouraged to make links to how culture is/is not a factor in what are describing. At minimum, include the following:

• the languages and dialects that you speak
• how well you speak them
• in which domains/situations you use these languages
• give examples of how your speech style changes when speaking about different topics in varying contexts (for example, at home vs. at school), and with different speakers (for example, with peers vs. with teachers).
• how your home, schooling experiences and community helped shape your language acquisition.

This project may be written or may be done multimodally. A multimodal project might be an art installation or series of poems, a video or stop motion animation, a song you write and record, a 3-d art project— please discuss your idea with the instructor prior to taking it on to make sure it is appropriate.

Length: Approximately 1 ½ – 2 pages (double-spaced), discuss multimodal projects with the instructor.

Part 2: Exploring key concepts and understanding

In this section you are asked to identify your key understandings (8-10) based on reading and discussing the text as well as discussion and learning in class. You are asked to share them through social media with your peers, on our course blog, in order to engage with your peers about the broad questions of this course. The intent is to ‘ink your thinking’ in order to help ensure that you have key ideas and concepts handy for future reference. It is strongly suggested that you consider these key understandings with respect to specifics in your chosen subject specialization. So rather than outlining why key vocabulary for a new concept or topic is important, offer examples of some such vocabulary for a topic or two in your subject area.

Your document and all digital information must be saved on a USB flash drive labeled with your name. This will be submitted together with your binder.

These key concepts and reading reflections should be included in your LLED 360 project and posted to our course blog. You may post your own concept/reflection, or you may respond to or build on the ideas in others’ posts.

Your key points/reading reflections can be made multimodally, and should include at least two original blog posts, and at least two of your blog posts should be in response to a peer. You can link to their post from yours. You are encouraged to engage with each others’ work, debate, show another side, and build on others’ ideas. This is a space for idea sharing, exploring, and building.

Posts: Each blog post should be 200-500 words. Posts about particular readings should be made the week the reading was assigned so we can discuss them in class. Blog posts can be printed out and included in your Course Project. Blog posts can have links, images, videos, etc., embedded in them

Part 3: Lesson Planning

 In this assignment you will first prepare a single lesson task as outlined below, submit it for feedback and then create two more lessons in the sequence by the end of the course. This can be done as a group [max. 4], especially if you have colleagues who will be teaching/are interested in teaching similar content. While working with colleagues in the same specializations would be ideal in many ways, there is a great deal of learning potential when you can collaborate across disciplines. [FYI: It is not unknown for an English major to end up teaching Socials or even junior Math.]

Purposes:

–       stimulate thinking about the details of classroom communication, especially your role in fostering and enhancing academic language acquisition

–       learn/practice the basic components of lesson planning

–       plan lessons with the academic discourse/ the language of specific disciplines in mind to help you:

• determine the language demands facing secondary students in their content  classrooms, i.e. make the implicit, explicit for learners
• consider ways to enhance academic discourse in oral and written work in the classroom.

Tasks: Please follow the guidelines below to complete the assignment.

1.Create a group [ max. 4]

2.Plan and prepare a single lesson on a topic of your group’s choosing. [It must be linked to IRP outcomes] The format is open-ended. However, please refer to the section below for some guidelines and minimum elements to be included.

SUBMIT group names and topic to instructor by SEPTEMBER 25.

3. Submit your lesson for feedback on OCTOBER 16  [one lesson; print copy, including relevant supporting materials]

4. Prepare a sequence of THREE lessons: This must include the lesson previously submitted [with revisions as appropriate] but that lesson does not have to be the first in the sequence.

5. Ensure you have accounted for everything required to teach the lessons, including websites and handouts that may be in electronic format. Copies of materials to be used are helpful visuals for understanding your intent with your lessons but you are not required to create ALL potential materials. Rather, a careful listing of what you would use and when in the lessons, with enough detail that a reader could ‘make their own’ as needed and teach your lessons successfully, meets the expectations for the assignment.

An electronic copy of the lessons [in MS Word] is also required, as feedback will be in writing on the electronic version only.

Essential Elements to include in your Lesson/Lesson Sequence Assignment

[A detailed lesson plan template you can choose to adopt will also be provided]

1. Title  Page (topic, grade /level, etc.; group members, course, date)

2.  Background Information: It is suggested you create a ‘composite’ class based on realistic expectations in urban secondary schools and/or based on what you have learned so far in your own experiences and/or observations):

Describe the class: grade(s); linguistic and cultural diversity; presence of EAL learners (how many, what you know of their educational and language learning background), presence of ‘struggling’ readers/writers and any other relevant information.

Describe the teaching context: e.g. grade level, purposes of the class or program, the number of students, time frame, frequency of meetings, length of term, facilities, texts and materials, physical characteristics of

the classroom, etc.

3. Choose a topic of interest and relevance to the target class.

Ideally you would choose a topic you might actually teach at a later date or you can simply choose something that is of common interest to the group. In either case, consult the appropriate IRPs [and PLOs] and use the relevant specifics from these documents in your overview.

4. Lesson Plans:  [Remember that you will first submit one lesson, then later create two more using the same format and input from your first effort to assist you.]

Create/plan/design three 60-minute lessons in detail. These lessons will address specific PLOs prescribed for the topic and foster student communication skills, develop their learning strategies, and extend their content knowledge of the chosen topic. For each lesson plan, include and clearly label the following components:

–       Lesson Topic

–       Specific PLOs to be addressed [try for a maximum of 3 per lesson: Even then it may well be that one of these will overlap and be a continued focus in a subsequent lesson.]

–       ASSUMED prior knowledge [ what it can be reasonably assued learners already know, have already been taught to help them learn the new content/topic.]

–       Student Objectives: [SWBATs]

Objectives – content, language/vocabulary, strategies/skills: What new concepts, information, facts, subject matter knowledge, or understandings are to be gained concerning the topic. Each SWBAT should in some way connect to the PLOs given above. In addition, specifics in terms of new/necessary vocabulary [and/or structural language needs] may also be of importance to include. Finally, what strategies and skills you will use as your vehicle to help learners engage with the content should also be listed here or clearly noted in the lesson flow. [Please do not assume I know a strategy by a title such as Numbered Heads Together. Instead, specify briefly what the intent is.]

–       List of Resources/Materials:

Visuals: e.g. pictures, graphic organizers, realia, etc. (Where

reasonable submit these with your lesson plan/s or simply list or

account for them.)

Text(s): written and/or oral (Where reasonable submit these or a

photocopy of a text excerpt with your lesson plan or simply list and

account for them.)

Equipment: e.g. OHP, video, audio, LCD, internet, chart paper and

felts, index cards, etc.

–      Assessment Plan:

For each objective noted in your lesson outline you should have specifics in place that note how students will be able to demonstrate their learning/comprehension of that objective. [More than one objective may be met by one assessment task.]

–      Progression of Tasks/Activities:

Sequence of tasks: (Aim for coherent development of student tasks from the Introduction to the closure of your lesson. Please include some sample teacher questions to demonstrate your understanding of optimal questioning techniques with diverse learners in mind. Writing down some of the expected responses will also be helpful, especially if you find you have to ‘prompt’ your learners and guide them toward understanding of the concept/topic.

Groupings: e.g. whole class; pairs; small group, etc.

Time Allocations: number of minutes per task/activity

Contingency Plans for Early Finishers: e.g. additional tasks related to the objectives – enhancement of understandings, not ‘busy work’.

Contingency Plans for Struggling Learners: e.g. what are some strategies/tips/suggestions for what you could do to mediate the learning for the struggling readers/writers in the group. This is a form of anticipation – What if ……does not work/they don’t get it, what will I do?

–      Follow-up:

Homework: specify details and purpose; assign if appropriate.

Evaluation for Lesson Sequence Assignment:

• Clear demonstration of the ability to design and detail appropriate activities that support student learning and development of content topics
• Clear demonstration of the ability to articulate tasks/activities appropriate to the target group of learners you have in mind, including the need to also consider the diversity that any urban classroom will include.

From the list of suggest articles below, select one to reflect on. Reflect on the main thesis of the article, and on how power shapes the experiences of the group discussed in the article. Also select one text from popular culture or from popular teacher resources- a newspaper article, a film, a blog, a YouTube video, a song, a curriculum- that discusses the issues from your selected article, OR in which you can identify the concerns from your selected article.

The following questions are meant to guide your work in this section:

• What group is the article about, and what makes them a group?
• What are the political forces that shape this groups’ lives?
• What are the local and global relationships that this group has?
• How is this group represented in curriculum? In mainstream media and in the world? How does this representation shape their experiences in learning?
• What kind of language does this group use, and how- or are- those language particularities integrated into or represented in learning and curriculum?
• How would this group fare in relation to other learners in your 21rst century classroom in the lesson sequence you created?
• What might you do to make the lesson more appropriate for this group of learners?

Article Options (to be expanded):

• Ibrahim, A. 1999. Becoming black: Rap and hip-hop, race, gender, identity, and the politics of ESL learning. TESOL Quarterly. 33(3).
• Datoo, A. 2010. Media and youth identity in Pakistan: Global-local dynamics and disjuncture. Social Sciences 2 (1). 192-215.
• Fleetwood, N. 2005. Mediating youth: Community based video production and the politics of race and authenticity. Social Text. 23(1). 83-109.
• Jimenez, R., Smith, P, Teague, B. Transnational and community literacies for teachers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. (53)1. p16-26.
• Katz, C. 2004. Growing up global: Economic restructuring and children’s everyday lives. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. ***Choose one chapter.
• Macintosh, L., Bryson, M. 2008. Youth, Myspace, and the interstitial spaces of becoming and belonging. Journal of LGBT Youth (5)1.
• Transgender youth (a lack of academic articles leads us to suggest, instead, these article, pick two):
  • http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/09/02/transgender_boy_returns_to_school_in_edmonton_proudly_sharing_his_story.html
  • http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/still-a-struggle-for-transgender/content?oid=11012433
  • http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/transgender-teenage-couple-arin-andrews-katie-hill_n_3639220.html

Multimodal projects should be discussed with the instructor.

 

 

Part 5: Reflection and Goal setting

 In this assignment (can be multimodal or can be written- you pick!) you are asked to reflect on:

a)   What you have learned [choose 2-3 key ideas and explain]

b)   What’s next? [ provide some examples relevant to the course theme – building academic discourse]

c)   Questions you still have [choose 2-3 and articulate why you are posing these questions.]

Here are a few sentence starters that may help you get started:

• In this course I learned that…
• I must remember to….
• I now realize that…
• When I am teaching I will….
• I used to think….but now I think…
• I know…but I’m still not sure about…
• The most important thing to remember is…
• Now I know…
• I discovered…
• I wonder…
• I think…
• It’s interesting how…
• I was surprised that…
• I found out…
• I noticed that…  Now I wonder…

Length: Approximately 1 ½ – 2 pages (double-spaced)