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Ingrid HeidrickKeymaster
Welcome Cristine!
Science teachers have SUCH an important role in teaching vocabulary and content so that our students have a broader range of background knowledge with which to understand texts. Special Ed is especially challenging when the student additionally is an ELL. But you came to the right place – explicit instruction works for ALL students but ESPECIALLY ELLs and students with special needs! I’m thrilled to have you in the course.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Jessica, it’s wonderful that you teach in a private school because you are not subject to the very stressful environment of the NYC DOE. All schools in NY are required to follow the state standards, it’s just that private schools have much more freedom over curriculum and implementation. As a music teacher, your main contribution to literacy instruction is vocabulary, expanding world knowledge, as well as perhaps exposing your students to some short (I would say no more than a paragraph or shorter article) academic texts and perhaps having them respond to a question in writing.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Jen, I agree 100%. As an art teacher of high school students, your contribution to teaching literacy is 1.to teach as much academic vocabulary as you can; 2.to teach as much about art and its role/history as possible and 3. to get your students to think critically about the content and be able to express their thoughts using the vocabulary and perhaps also some sentence starters or frames if necessary.
You could read aloud short paragraphs and have them underline vocabulary and then answer an important question or respond by drawing or creating something. This would he the equivalent of responding to text in ELA.
Finally, their art could contain some sort of written expression if possible. A sentence expressing their thoughts, or the meaning of the piece. They could use vocab/sentence frames here as well, ex. “My collage represents ______ . I created it in order to show _____.”
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome Jen! So glad you are enjoying the course so far. Yes! Linguistics has so much to do with anthropology, and indirectly art itself! I also think it’s amazing that you have so much experience with both older and younger learners – our high school MLs need a lot of foundational skills and it can be hard for HS teachers ti understand.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome Jessica! I respect so much your dedication and concern for the needs of ELLs. I think as long as you have that – you are already one step ahead! I am working on fixing the article link.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterLiza, I am so THRILLED and EXCITED to have a veteran teacher and now an AP in my course!! I would love to chat with you over the phone and get to know more about your school. I have lots of suggestions regarding elementary. I will email you when I get back from my current trip. Welcome!
July 1, 2022 at 9:33 am in reply to: Reflecting on vocabulary instruction in model lesson and chapter #3068Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterJennifer, don’t beat yourself up about this – NYC teachers are doing the best they can under extremely stressful circumstances. The fact that the students are getting art is AMAZING and just that experience alone is enough. Teach them the words they need to know to do the art (sketch, watercolor, background, form, charcoal – I’m just thinking out loud!!)
Since they are high schoolers, they can make some home language connections – and I can add home culture connections. What kind of art exists in their home communities? What connections can be made with the art forms you are teaching? If you can try and cover 5-8 high level words a week I would be happy. And just build throughout the semester on the vocab and world knowledge you’ve taught, so they can continue to increase their skills. Also – I encourage teachers to push back on administration (without getting into conflict of course). YOU are the expert – not them. You can tell them -“My mini lesson needs to be longer because my students need more time on vocabulary and background knowledge than other students. I am differentiating to meet their needs!!!”Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Jennifer,
I LOVE the idea of your “deep dive” and I wish every teacher did this consistently. I would zone is in on 5-10 high level vocabulary words that are essential to understanding your unit. Students can study them during the deep dive, and then you can keep a list and incorporate the words into your activities so that they are also using them when speaking, reading and writing. There is so much vocabulary and world knowledge to be learned around art – just have your vocab objective in mind and do your thing! They will make those words their own eventually.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterJessica, it sounds like you are already doing an amazing job in your music instruction. Music offers students an experiential context for understanding vocabulary, as well as a historical and cultural context. So world knowledge – check!! You can add some quick questions when teaching vocab – How many syllables? How do we sound out this (consonant/vowel/prefix/suffix)? How do you say this in your language? (There will be a lot of cognates between Italian and Spanish, ex. lento/allegro. Your can’t teach everything, but zero in on the big picture and make them use the vocab throughout. Keep doing a great job!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterAlisa, I love how you say “old school grammar”. Even though we don’t want to teach grammar as a set of boring rules, we do need to teach it! It absolutely helps students understand how to read and write sentences. For the younger grades, you want to teach kids the role of nouns by asking “Who or What?” and verbs “is what/does what?” Then you can focus on prepositions (Where? When?) and Adjectives (Which? What kind?), Adverbs (How?) and finally the why?
If students can identify the answers to these questions in their oral listening comprehension, then they have the basis for reading comprehension and written expression.January 13, 2022 at 12:20 pm in reply to: Reflecting on vocabulary instruction in model lesson and chapter #2592Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterI love your insights Alisa! As an early child educator, it should all center around story telling and new vocabulary, Later of course, we want students to take words apart by prefixes, roots/base words, and suffixes. But for ALL students regardless of grade, vocabulary needs to be learned in a CONTEXT. If students don’t understand anything about the story, they won’t be able to learn the vocabulary.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes Raquel! For PreK, phonological awareness is the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do with your students. Singing, rhyming, clapping out syllables, identifying the beginning sounds of words, reciting poetry – do all that with your students! You will give them such wonderful foundational reading skills.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYou make such an important point, Raquel. Teachers are not given space to work FREELY and are under constant pressure. The Common Core is there to set the standards, but they are not instructional strategies!! This is a very frustrating problem.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Raquel, welcome to the course! Paraprofessionals have incredible experience and know their students so well. Those skills will absolutely translate to teaching.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome Alisa! It’s wonderful to have you! We need all the early childhood educators we can get! You have an incredibly important job in setting up our little ones for success!
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