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Ingrid HeidrickKeymaster
So glad you found the lecture informative Alisa. And I agree, TC is definitely not designed for emergent bilingual students. I think for the little ones learning English, while they definitely need stories, it has to be something that attracts their interest. Bilingual books would be so wonderful for these students; research shows dual language programs are really best. For those students who can’t be in a dual language program, books with lots of pictures and a teacher who can scaffold for comprehension and vocabulary is key.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome Alisa! It’s wonderful to have you! I’m always particularly interested in early childhood educators because you lay the foundation for our students’ future success.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterVictor, phonological awareness in your math classroom will consist of having students (or you) read word problems aloud, then take them apart for comprehension and vocabulary. Also, students should be connecting important vocabulary to the Home Language, especially Spanish cognates. Students can actually practice translating English word problems into the Home Language, or write their own word problems using the vocabulary.
August 31, 2021 at 10:56 am in reply to: Reflecting on vocabulary instruction in model lesson and chapter #2258Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes Victor! I think it’s very important in math for students to use the vocabulary orally when they have to explain how to solve the problem.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterLet’s look at this word problem for 10th grade math:
Robin leaves $ 1,245,500 behind. According to his wish, the money is to be divided between his son and daughter in the ratio 3 : 2. Find the sum received by his son.
How are we going to “Close Read” for math? Students need to understand that “leave behind” means that Robin died and left money to his children. Next, students need to understand “According to”. There are 2 passive constructions here: the money is to be divided (meaning, someone will divide the money) and “the sum received by his son” (his son received the sum”.
Students need to understand the prepositions ‘between’ – between who? The money will be divided between 2 people. And ‘by’ – who received the money? The son.
The students need to understand that most importantly – the money WILL NOT be divided equally!! Finally, students need to identify the command “find” – that is the word that is telling them what to do.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterI like where you’re going with this Savannah, especially when having to work with the TC curriculum. With your young learners, I would use sentence deconstruction (Who/what is/is doing what?) to build comprehension and vocabulary. Start with having students identify the subject and predicate. THEN they can work on additional clauses/phrases (when? where? how?).
Start orally, then create short worksheet for them to begin writing simple sentences. Those students ready to expand into where? when?, etc. can, while those who are still grasping simple sentences can stick to that for the time being. For your grade level, I’m a big believer in shared writing. You prompt them, they tell you what to write. Together you go through sentence for grammaticality, capitalization, punctuation, spelling. This process of shared writing is very powerful, especially for young learners.August 17, 2021 at 12:43 pm in reply to: Session 6 Developing Analysis Skills in Close Reading #2214Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterThanks for this Koren. The big take away is: students need to read the same text multiple times. That means we may have to reduce the amount of text and/or make important decisions as to which excerpts we’re going to focus on. I absolutely believe MLLs should have exposure to important novels – but at a beginning/intermediate level of language proficiency, we need to expose them to a limited amount of complex language when asking them to do a specific skills (e.g., main idea and details). If they can read more text independently, great. But during your explicit modeling and guided practice, work with one appropriate excerpt, and give them multiple exposures to it.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterVictor, you hit on so many important points. As a 10th grade math teacher, your job is a bit different than in the ELA or ENL classroom. Math IS a universal language that doesn’t require English – HOWEVER that when we are talking symbols. When students need to learn concepts, talk through problem solving and solve word problems, then language can become a major barrier.
Let’s think of ways to transfer the ideas I present in the lectures into your math classroom – pre-teaching vocabulary with bilingual supports; having students review familiar concepts, then build on background knowledge; explicit modeling, followed by guided and independent practice; read alouds for word problems while annotating text; multiple read alouds of a problem for fluency and comprehension; students in the 10th grade can be TRANSLATING word problems from English into Spanish, both in writing or orally. Most importantly, students should be using their math vocabulary and, with the help of sentence frames or starters, ORALLY explaining to you and their classmates how to solve the problems. You give them the modeling and vocab, they have to use their language to go with you through the guided practice. Then, they have to show you that they can do it by themselves.
One thing I also want to mention: many of your students may not have foundational math skills like addition, subtraction or multiplication – how can you infuse your instruction with regular practice in these basic skills as they are working on their 10th grade skills, I know it’s asking a lot, but let’s think.
I hope this gives you some feedback and ideas. We can talk further if you wish.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome Victor! I am thrilled to have you. Secondary teachers of MLLs have a very unique situation because of the short time frame of your students. I look forward to hearing more about your experiences and thoughts on this forum.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterInteresting insights Koren. Of course, students with more advanced skills will more quickly and accurately comprehend text than others. Those students can and should do more. But for so many, basic comprehension is underdeveloped. When we build a solid foundation for comprehension through the Who, what, why, where, etc., we take them so much closer to being able to do more advanced analysis.
July 27, 2021 at 6:17 pm in reply to: Reflecting on vocabulary instruction in model lesson and chapter #2155Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterKoren, what wonderful insights! Don’t feel bad – teachers are doing so much. Now you have the knowledge and methods to go deeper into vocab instruction. If we consistently integrate it into learning the content, students will begin to use the words authentically. By the way, I’m not against vocabulary tests – but could you use the time to have them identify the meanings of prefixes, roots/base words and suffixes, and then put the words together?
Also, are they responsible for creating/maintaining their word wall? Or are you doing all the work?
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Koren,
For your grade level and student population (Special Ed), I think you could integrate this in a couple of ways: 1. Say words out loud and have students match the word to a picture; 2. clap out syllables and go over any difficult spellings like Vowel Teams; 3. If the word is morphologically complex, take it apart by prefix, root/base word or suffix. For more phonological awareness, you can have students underline or copy target words as you read aloud. Finally, they should be using the words orally, reading the words from a list and in written sentences. As you go through your unit, you can keep words in a word bank to help them retrieve and review words. If you make this a regular vocabulary routine and break it up over the course of the week/unit, you can have a very effective vocabulary instructional method.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Koren! There are so many issues with the Common Core….sigh… It IS important for teachers to have a global understanding of what they are…in the end, students will be able to achieve those skills if they are strong readers and writers. We get them to be strong readers and writers by focusing on foundational skills as I outlined and comprehension….then we get them analyzing more and more. I love your differentiation technique to reduce the amount of paragraphs – yes! It’s more important that students can write a solid intro, body, and concluding paragraph than a 5 paragraph essay that is unfocused.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome to the course Koren! Special Education teachers are so important to our understanding of the needs of emergent bilinguals – so often kids are put in Special Ed when they really just need more time to acquire English, or vice versa, they have special needs, but are not given the services because it’s assumed it’s just a language issue. We need Special Ed teachers to help us design and deliver accommodations that work specifically for these students.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Savannah,
You make so many important points again – and I think this is the most important thing for teachers in the younger grades to understand: Yes, the students are learning to decode. For the English proficient speakers, they will connect the word, once recognized, to its meaning. MLs will also decode the word, but not necessarily know its meaning. That is how we end up with 4th or 5th graders that can decode perfectly fine, but are not accessing comprehension of the text.
Working with a TC curriculum, which is what I believe you currently have, will require some creative time strategizing on your part: I would spend time before introducing the new book on Big Picture concepts, introduce important words and ideas with pictures, possibly videos. If you don’t have time to pre-teach words before reading, then do it while reading but show a picture and practice pronouncing the word. Keep a word bank or pictionary that students can see on a chart, and use to refer back to those words and actively make then use those words when responding to text and writing.
As much autonomous adjustments to your schedule as you can make within the confines of TC try to make; if you have to explain to an administrator what you’re doing, try and advocate by saying they need more vocabulary instruction that other students and you are scaffolding for comprehension.
During phonics instruction, try and use and CVC or CVCe words from the book with pictures, and as much as possible, integrate any sentence or word reading with themes from the book. For example, if the book is about a “skunk”, use that word in phonics to practice the “unk” sound and show a picture.
I love that you’re trying to teach them to read in Spanish! That’s amazing. Use translations of important words liberally, so they can make connections between English and Spanish: for example, “skunk” in Spanish is “zorillo” – it’s also possible that they don’t know what a “zorillo” is, so that is part of the background knowledge work.
In K and 1 we can absolutely teach closed syllable prefixes un, mis, dis, ex and show how the word changes from a base: lock unlock/ take/mistake honest/dishonest Sometimes just making them aware orally is good enough – they don’t necessarily have to read the word.
TC is a very problematic curriculum – try as much as you can to adapt the pace of the lesson and advocate for more consistent vocabulary instruction Monday-Friday.
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