Many wise people have shared words of wisdom these past few months regarding how to best deal with teaching and living in our current situation. I have always been a person who listens and takes it all in before speaking. I am not quick to state my opinion, especially if it is something I feel I need to be more knowledgeable about before I speak. There are so many unknowns right now that it is hard to offer suggestions, but I will try.
First, I want to offer this... try to keep things as normal as possible. As Carol Salva would say, 'you got this'. We are being asked to step up in ways that were unimaginable to us before and you need to know, even though you may doubt yourself, you are doing it well. If you are like me, you are becoming mentally exhausted. It feels like everything is rushed right now and it is cognitively demanding. Right now, many of the things that are going on, we can’t control… and, if we are going to get through this, we must be focusing on the things that we can control.
During this time of interruption, I know you are worried about the children we teach and the education that they may be missing. Listen to me though... that is not the biggest thing we need to worry about. Many of our ELs come to us with already interrupted education. Many have experienced similar situations before, and they know how to survive this. And guess what, the kids that are missing in their instruction right now, they're learning. They're learning other things. They are getting life lessons. What I've always tried to emphasize in my classroom were things you can’t teach out of a textbook. Our students are learning about these in the world right now. They ARE learning and we can help fill any gaps later... if there even are gaps. We need to keep a healthy mindset and move forward.
Right now, we are presented with a reality that is not unlike that of first-generation immigrants. Like them, we are spending more time than ever in our homes with family members. Surprisingly, the first generation often succeeded academically while levels of underachievement and dropout rose with their children. What did that first generation have that the second or third lacked? That first group told rich cultural stories to their children. It was the opportunity to develop strong oral language skills and convey family histories that gave kids a stronger sense of who they are and who they might become.
Please, urge your students and their families to take advantage of this time to convey important family stories orally, and perhaps even sing some songs in their home languages. Sharing storybooks and reading together is time very well spent right now as well. If the books are in English, it’s still worth having discussions about them in the home language as comparisons with family experiences can be made. These rich cultural and linguistic interactions can bolster children’s sense of themselves and their primary language skills. Research supports that it is easier to master a second (or third) language and school learning when your primary language, culture, and sense of identity are stronger.
So, do what you can. Focus on what's within your control, this is the message for ourselves and our students. It all must be a mindset; it all must be in an envelope of Social and emotional learning. So that's where we are right now with your own self-directed professional development and that's what you're doing here today. YOU are directing your own learning. So, here it is …
I want to talk to you for just a few minutes about supporting your ELs during this time of distance learning. For your Els who have internet access, we've been overwhelmed with so many resources, educational websites offering free use for the next few months. It's been incredible, but for your ELs who don't have internet access, the struggle is real. I've heard from teachers all over our state reaching out asking what they can do for those packets the teachers are having to send home.
Let's talk about those take-home packets. So, let's remember the process of creating a lesson. That process shouldn’t change. We still have the same responsibility to our ELs. We still need to accommodate. Accommodation levels the playing field. It makes language less of a factor when measuring performance. For academic achievement, linguistic accommodations are critical for our ELs.
A model lesson for an EL has Three parts. The first is that the topic or content is the same as for everyone. You're teaching those Missouri Learning Standards. For all your Els the second part fluctuates. That's where we differentiate. That's the language function. So, we might expect someone at a level 5 or 6 to be able to explain... but a student at level one or two might be able to label or match. They're talking about the same content, but they have different language functions; different expectations for what language they can receive and express. The third part of a model lesson for ELs is that they're given support. So, I want to talk about those and how we can provide a model language packet for your Els. Let's talk about the tools we're going to use. Our can-do descriptors and our language functions. We must remember to use our supports because even though we're not meeting face-to-face there are still lots of supports we can provide. We still need to differentiate. So, don't look at the overall access score look at each domain score. What's their reading score? Is it three and the writing score is only one? That means when you send home the reading passage you don't have to do as much differentiation as when you send home a writing expectation. So, looking at those individual domain scores is going to be key.
What might be a great assignment to send home to most of your native English speakers and to those English learners who are at levels five or six will be overwhelming for a level 1 or 2 EL. We must remember that even though we may need to be covering the same content that addresses the same standards for all students it is okay to shorten the text and remove extra information that is not necessary to get the idea to students. We are charged with providing comprehensible and accessible lessons to our Els.
For lower proficiency students, the text should be presented in short bursts and there should be images to support
Comprehension. For Level 2-3 proficiency levels, the text gets to be more significant with short paragraphs and images to support comprehension. For levels five and six go ahead and give them the assignment that you're giving the rest of the class. But remember, they may still need some supports. This would be a terrific way to think about differentiating your reading passages.
Let's talk about the part of the take-home packet that requires students to write. A worksheet that has a question and asks students to answer incomplete sentences and asks the student to build sentences themselves is overwhelming for many ELs. It is especially difficult for Els at levels one, two, three, and sometimes even four. Again, the questions need to be asked in diverse ways. The language must be differentiated-- not the content -- the rigor is still high, but the language is lowered as needed. Looking at levels 1 & 2, we know they can label, they can use short phrases or one or two words. We should not ask them to build their own sentences. ELs at levels 3 & 4 can handle more questions and the questions can be a little wordier or you can have them read complete sentences and they choose multiple-choice answers. They can build their own sentences as well, but it takes a longer time. Providing sentence frames at levels 3 & 4 will help them not to be overwhelmed. At levels 5 & 6 the students can have the same questions that you're giving the rest of your class. We might add some supports, especially if you have a student you think might struggle with this particular assignment. A great way to get writing from your students who are learning at home with learning packets is to ask them to make journal entries. With a journal, they're able to write at their own level. Students who are at levels 1 & 2 might write short phrases about what they learned. Students at levels 3 & 4 will write shorter sentences and they'll be more developing. Your students at levels 5 & 6 would have journal entries similar to their peers. So, if you have a choice when you're creating your next packet, choose an assignment where the content level is high, but the language level is low. That's going to support those Els.
Let's talk about those packets you've already got ready to send out. How can you differentiate those on the fly for your Els before you send them home? Take a highlighter and quickly go over the key phrases when you're faced with a paper that's in a language that is not your first language the first thing you want to know is which words are most important here. That way you can look them up. Block off the less important parts of the message make the passage shorter and highlight the key phrases within. For questions, we want to support those students with a couple of things. If all your questions are open-ended, I would reduce the number of questions that the students must do because it's going to take them a long time to do it. I would also give them the sentence frame and a word bank. That's something you can sketch at the top quickly before you print it and before you make your copies for your Els.
And remember that the students still need the supports they used at school while working at home. Remember to send home dictionaries in the student’s first language that can translate words into English or your phone number if you allow them to text you. You can use Google Voice to get a phone number that will not give the families your actual phone number.
I hope this has been helpful to you as you prepare packets to send home to your English learners, I know this is not the most efficient way to teach to someone who speaks a different language, but I know those families and students are grateful for all the work that you're putting in. If you need any support as you plan, let me know. I'm glad to help.
