ENG2P - Grade 10 English Applied, Reading and Literature Strand
Class Task: Graphic Novel Literature Circles. Students will preview 4 graphic novels and choose 3 graphic novels to read during the unit. They will use a Literature Circle guide to record their thoughts and participate in discussion with peers reading the same book each week (ELLs will have added visual scaffolds to support the connection between reading, writing, and thinking about the texts). Each week, the student will take on a different role in the discussion and provide a simple check-box peer-review for group participation for the oral component of the task. The learning goals (generated from the ESLBO Reading strand) and success criteria (generated from the ENG2D Reading and Literature strand) will provide accommodations for the learning goals of ELL students. As most ELL students are not given course modifications but are held to the same curriculum expectations as non-ELL students, creating accommodation in the learning goals allows ELLs to work towards specifically targeted goals that can be evaluated under the same curricular expectations as non-ELLs. Success Criteria: Knowledge and Understanding
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Student voice is the inherent agency students have in their learning. For education professionals, it connotes students' ability and desire to contribute authentically to school improvement and issues that matter to their learning (Student Voice, 2013). "Student voice is not something that we grant to students, but rather something we tap into. By broadening the definition of how children can and do express voice, educators are taking diverse approaches to 'hearing' student voice" (Student Voice, 2013, p. 2). This notion of inherent student agency and ability is at odds with our traditional, industrialized/standardized understandings of education which became commonplace in the 19th century. For the past century, since Dewey published his educational philosophies in the West, more and more educators are understanding students are capable of deeper learning than previously thought possible. Understanding and incorporating student voice is not only transformative to the classroom environment, curriculum, expectations, and learning experiences, but it also transforms the inherent conditioning of passive learning students experience in traditional education.
In a traditional education setting, ELLs are positioned as deficient receivers of learning in that they do not have the language skills necessary to 'keep up' with mainstream course work. Students are incredibly perceptive and observant, and even if this idea is not expressed explicitly they will understand it in the body language, social structures, and educational programming around them. Incorporating student voice allows students to actively participate in and change their educational environment so it suits their needs, and incorporating ELL student voice ensures they are treated equitably and shown they are valued in the community. It gives students a chance to express their own needs. Teachers use observational data to develop a professional judgment about student needs, but combining that with what the student perceives their needs to be will make interventions more targeted and effective. For example, a teacher might observe an ELL struggling with oral communication in small group settings. They might make the professional judgment that the student lacks adequate BICS to communicate confidently with their peers. By incorporating authentic, and perhaps anonymous, channels for student feedback on their learning environments the teacher may learn the ELL feels isolated from social groups and doesn't know how to navigate social norms. Now, the teacher can provide learning activities that target these skills so the student can develop them in a safe learning environment and in conjunction with their language and academic development. The example above is a local, perhaps isolated issue of student voice. At the other end of the scale, programs like 'Speak Up' allow students to systematically participate in the creation of their education. Student representatives have taken their peers' ideas from across the province and created "student voice indicators" that help school boards and teachers align their instruction with student need. Unlike the needs identified as teachers, these indicators come from students' perspectives. The difference is important for teachers to recognize because often we feel we are meeting their needs but we are not the ones experience school as a student, and our own schooling experiences are different from theirs. Overall, teachers who acknowledge and promote student voice alter the established educational power dynamics and authentically promote student ownership over their learning. Math is one of my weakest subjects (only after having a terrible teacher in grade 9 who made me resent it). From speaking with colleagues who speak math, I've come to understand that making word problems and abstract concepts accessible to ELLs is often challenging. Using manipulatives and demonstrations is a way to make concepts less about the language and more about the concepts themselves.
I used arithmetic in a card game with my Grade 7 History/Geography class. I used the game 'War' to structure a simulation of the French and English invasion of Canadian Aboriginal lands in the 1600s. I have attached the lesson plan and guided handout. The goal was to use arithmetic to calculate how many resources were won during each "war" between the two groups of people as French/English moved along the St. Lawrence river and into Southern Ontario. FurTradeWarGame copy.docx (663.899 KB) Assessment is when teachers gather data about students’ progress toward meeting course curriculum expectations, use it to inform teaching instruction and strategies with the intent of improving student learning, and evaluate evidence of student achievement based on those expectations (Growing Success). Assessments are formative (Growing Success uses the terms assessment for learning and assessment as learning to further distinguish types of formative tools) and summative (assessment of learning). Assessments are embedded within classroom instruction so that learning tasks directly relate to observable data that teachers can use to evaluate students’ progress at any given time in the course. A variety of the types of assessments should be used, giving students multiple ways to provide evidence for their learning. This is especially important for ELLs, who may be negatively assessed based on inauthentic reading or writing evaluations. The learning goals and success criteria for all assessments (both formative and summative) should also be co-created, or at least shared and explained, with students prior to beginning the learning tasks and instruction. Students are then aware of the important aspects of the tasks, can direct their attention for meaningful engagement, and can ask questions in the context of assessment, all of which will help address misconceptions or misunderstandings before their learning is evaluated. Frequent and authentic formative tasks are essential for supporting ELLs because these help teachers gather reliable and extensive data about student learning and which can be used to move these students along the language continuum and push their ZPD. Lesson planning with assessment in mind ensures that ELLs are explicitly taught the tools they need to succeed in evaluations. Heavily weighted or complex summative assessments can cause stress, anxiety and disengagement if ELLs do not feel they have the proper knowledge and skills required for a high mark. Teachers have the power to use formative and summative assessments to empower all students, especially ELLs. According to Drake and Burns (2004), teachers most often design integrated curriculum from three different starting points: multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. Multidisciplinary education begins with connecting curricular standards from many different disciplines to a unifying or underlying theme. Interdisciplinary education “chunks tougher the common learning embedded in the disciplines to emphasize interdisciplinary skills and concepts” like communication or literacy (Drake & Burns, 2004, p.5). Transdisciplinary education focuses on student questions and integrated life-skills as a way to frame and interpret the curriculum. Students and teachers use real-life problems, local contexts, and inquiry to develop the course curriculum (Drake & Burns, 2004, p.5). All three of these approaches offer time, space, and instructional strategies to ensure that ELLs are fully supported in their language development. Integrated curriculum allows teachers to focus on concepts that students can connect to their prior learning, past experience, their L1, and critical thinking skills. When given appropriate language scaffolds, ELLs will be able to connect English vocabulary to authentic experiences and curricular content. It strengthens their ability for communication because there are more points of access to the conversation. It also is accessible to the wider community because it may not be as content-heavy as traditional teaching, making it easier for parents and others to be involved in the students’ continued learning. The Aboriginal Perspectives Toolkit was designed for accessibility to the curriculum. As an integrated framework, it addresses the issues ignored by mainstream Canada for centuries falls in all areas of education. The Toolkit highlights areas of history, civics, science, environmental studies, family studies, and language where Aboriginal perspectives directly connect to themes and skills outlined in curricula.
I taught an interdisciplinary Grade 7 History/Geography course during my practicum placement. To begin the unit on New France, I use art, creation stories, and traditional textbook information to create a multidisciplinary lesson. The lesson question was “How do creation stories shape our understanding of the land/resources we use?” and the learning goals were to determine important symbols to the First Nations and European peoples and to explain the different perspectives of humanity’s relationship with nature. Because we used the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program curriculum, I was able to meet the expectations through my lesson question and objectives. During the Minds On, students made observations of two visual representations of creation stories, based on The Garden of Earthly Delight by Hieronymous Bosch and Anishinaabe-Ojibwe art of Kitche Manitou. Our prompts were: What people, animals, and plants do you see? What do you notice about the colors and composition? How are they similar and different? After the students generated ideas, we formed a circle and read the creation stories. There were two ELL students in the class, and to accommodate them I provided students with the option to pass. One ELL student did and one did not. Reflecting now, I could have chosen a better way to scaffold this part of the lesson for them, but based on their reading and oral proficiency levels the text was within their ZPD had I adjusted some of the vocabulary. I then passed around two bottles – one filled with dirt and a metal objects and another halfway filled with dirt and only a few metal objects. I asked what they heard and why they heard the metal in one more loudly than the other. I used this as an analogy for voice and representation: the few who shout loudly will be heard over the many who speak softly. We then used the textbook to take notes on the First Nations and European people, relationship with nature, and valued material objects. As a consolidation I asked them the question: “What does it mean to walk in another person’s shoes?” Many conflicts arose from how FNMI and European peoples' differing notions of stewardship and dominion, which determined their perspectives on nature. In order to build empathy and understanding, the students worked collaboratively in small groups to determine the most important symbols to each group of people and draw them on large cutouts of shoes. I asked them to pay special attention to how the symbols reflect the values they place on nature. The groups then shared their symbol choices to the class. Grade 9 Applied English Media Studies Strand - Introductory Lesson
Curriculum expectations for each task found on pages 66-69 of the Grades 9 and 10 English Curriculum, 2007 Minds On Task: 1. Understanding Media Texts: Audience Responses: 1.4. identify how different audiences might respond to selected media texts Students are given access to a collection of advertisements, including print, video, audio, and textual media types that have been compiled by the teacher. In pairs, they will pick one advertisement and identify three possible responses the target audience might have. The advertisements will be organized by audience type, offering students at least ten different audience types to chose from (ideas include children, parents of children, teenagers, adults, seniors, families with high incomes, families with low incomes, adventurous people, organized people, messy people, etc.). Each pair will choose a different advertisement. After observing and discussing the advertisement, the pair will describe an emotional response (how the advertisement makes them feel), a cognitive response (what the advertisement makes them think about), and a consumer response (extent to which they want or need something after seeing the advertisement) that the target audience might experience. Each pair will share their chosen advertisement and audience responses with the class. Students will be given a packet that includes all the new terminology and graphic organizers used in this lesson. ELLs in the class will be given a packet that includes additional language supports. Visual representations of the key terminology and definitions in the L1 language, as well as sentence starters inserted into the graphic organizers will provide extra language scaffolds so they can participate in the activities successfully. Action Tasks: 2. Understanding Media Forms, Conventions, and Techniques: Form 2.1. identify general characteristics of a few different media forms and explain how they shape content and create meaning The unit's big idea will be presented to the class: How does media influence our decisions? We will discuss the characteristics that exist in the advertisements shared in the Minds On. These include advertising characteristics such as competition, loyalty, emotional intensity, fear, humor, durability, testing, substitution, etc. A brief glossary will be provided in the packet where students can connect the example advertisements to the characteristics. ELLs will be provided with the terms in their L1s as well, making it easier to connect the visual examples in class with the English concepts that may be hard to understand. Once students understand what types of characteristics are used in advertising, we will generate a chart that lists the characteristics used in different types of media texts: print, video, audio, and text. Through this generation and the discussion, students will begin to understand how the different forms shape content and create meaning. 3. Creating Media Texts: Purpose and Audience 3.1. describe the topic, purpose and audience for media texts they plan to create; Form 3.2. select a media form to suit that topic, purpose, and audience for a media text they plan to create, and explain why it is an appropriate choice Students will use this new understanding to create a pitch for a new advertisement. They will use the guided outline provided in the handout to describe the topic, purpose and audience for the type of advertisement they choose. They will use the types of audience responses and characteristics of advertisements previously discussed as a scaffold for thinking through their own advertisement. The outline will guide them through explaining why their choices are appropriate for the media type chosen. This lesson will take more than one class period, so students will be able to think about their advertisement and finish the outline for homework. They will be encouraged to talk about their advertisement with their parents, as they will offer valuable insights as adult consumers (a target audience students may not fully understand). During the next class, they will pitch their ideas in small groups using the outline as a guide and receive feedback on the advertisement's potential success from their peers. Consolidation Task: 4. Reflecting on Skills and Strategies: Metacognition 4.1. describe a few different strategies they used in interpreting and creating media texts and explain how these and other strategies can help them improve as media interpreters and producers Students will provide a short reflection (either written or recorded) on their understanding of the unit question. How did their initial idea change as they thought about the topic, audience, purpose, and form? Did they use advertisements they have seen as inspiration or guides? How well did they need to know their target audience to produce an effective advertisement? What did they learn about their understanding of the audience, topic, purpose, and form from their peers' feedback? The advertisement outline and reflection will be used as a diagnostic tool to plan the unit's following lessons. Thoughts on student inquiry and the tasks: This introduction lesson sets up student inquiry during the whole unit by frontloading the key terminology and structures they can use to analyze, evaluate, and discuss the observations they make when confronted with different types of advertisement. This allows all students to access the higher order thinking skills needed to fully engage with the unit question: How does media influence our decisions? Allowing students to plan their own advertisement and reflect on the decisions they made and their peer's feedback gives them a highly scaffolded inquiry task (based on the research, action, and reflection model of inquiry). Students are exposed to media and advertisements every day, and jumping into the analysis and production of such advertisements will push them to question what they see in their daily lives by giving them ownership over their connection to advertisement. It shows them there is agency for the audience and consumer, but also that their agency is highly curated by the advertiser's decisions. This sets up the nuances they need to understand to answer the unit question and allows for further inquiry. One important method for finding the proper starting point for ELLs is to provide authentic and effective diagnostics for reading, writing, and oral literacies in both their L1 and L2. This is a good way to being understanding students' strengths and needs at the start of the year, but is especially important for ELLs who may have developed their skills since they were first given an assessment (STEP User Guide, 2015). Furthermore, attention to early observation will help teachers understand and plan for supporting students' acculturation processes, creating authentic scaffolded English interactions, and encouraging parental support in student learning (ESL and ELD Curriculum Grades 9 to 12, 2007).
In addition, I would try to begin each class with informal conversations with the students. I usually try to do this as they enter the classroom, saying hello to each individual student by name and asking how they're doing. Oftentimes, students will come in ready to talk about something that happened in the last class or ask your opinion on discussions they were having in the hallway. The informality of discussion that happens before students think the class actually "begins" is a way to make them comfortable and open to oral participation in the learning activities that follow. These are effective methods for finding appropriate starting points for ELLs because they help develop rapport with the students (Many Roots, Many Voices, p.20). We should ask ourselves "What should students know, understand, and be able to do? What is worthy of understanding? What enduring understandings are desired?" (Wiggins & McTinghe, 1998). The big ideas are those that "are applicable to new situations within or beyond the subject" (Wiggins & McTinghe, 1998). They are the ideas that stick with children into adulthood and help them contribute to society. They allow students to access the discipline in an authentic way, engaging them from within rather than treating them as outsiders. The breadth of a big idea will allow students to work through their misconceptions, indicating to them that they can learn from their failures but also that their perspectives and understandings will develop as they continue to question their assumptions.
The best way to monitor student progress is to have a "a collection of evidence over time instead of an event-a single moment-in-time test at the end of instruction" (Wiggins & McTinghe, 1998). Frequent use of assessment for learning and assessment as learning techniques and strategies makes this manageable. Also focusing on performance tasks that are open-ended, complex, and authentic in these frequent assessments will ensure that students have multiple opportunities to practice cognitive thinking and language skills, building confidence and success over time. Backwards design asks teachers to identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence for assessing those results, and then plan learning experiences and instruction. The criteria for meeting these needs fall under the categories design considerations, filters (design criteria) andfinal design accomplishments. More specifically, teachers need to ensure their planning meets provincial and board standards, uses a continuum of assessment types with a variety of observable behaviours for different facets of understanding, and is grounded in research-based learning and teaching strategies. The design criteria should support authentic, discipline-based work grounded in enduring ideas and inquiry. The evidence for understanding these concepts and applications should be reliable, transparent, equitable, and accessible to the individual students in the class. As these opportunities to demonstrate their learning occur, teachers should record observations and reflect on the appropriateness and effectiveness of the assessments, making important revisions as the unit progresses. All these steps should provided a unit framed by big ideas and enduring questions, which are grounded in reliable and educational evidence of learning, forming coherent and engaging learning experiences for all students (Wiggins & McTinghe, 1998). BICS and CALP are conceptual distinctions in language acquisition. They are important for teachers and students to understand because proficiency in the L2 depends on the daily integration of both everyday and academic vocabulary in students' school environments. Students will learn academic language through everyday conversation, some students will be more proficient in academic vocabulary than in conversational vocabulary, and some students will struggle with gaining academic vocabulary. Each student' learning journey is unique and needs to be honoured and supported. When teachers understand this, they are better able to use their subject curricula to support students' individual language needs. Modeling academic language use, providing opportunities for authentic, higher-order thinking activities and peer dialogue, and teaching language and academic content simultaneously are all ways teachers can use the concept of CALPS to promote ELL development.
In lieu of the assigned video (did it not work for anyone else?), I read a short opinion paper Cummins wrote (accessible here) and watched a short video in which he discusses empowerment. The paper is useful in that he breaks down the three important components of a bilingual program: instruction is cognitively challenging, academic content is taught in tandem with language instruction, and critical language awareness of both L1 and L2 is fostered (p. 6). He summarizes that teachers should focus on message, language, and use in both languages (p. 6). In doing so, teachers are able to authentically build ELL empowerment. He defines empowerment as "the collaborative creation of power" and suggests that relationships in which each individual's identity is affirmed, both individuals will feel a greater sense of "efficacy to create change in their life or social situation" (see video). This is the real effect of social justice education. It tackles the "English-only" colonialist mindset that insidiously attacks students L1 and their cultural capital; it corrects false diagnoses of ELLs as having lower cognitive ability, special learning needs, and/or behavioural issues. There are a number of activities, techniques, and tools teachers can use to support BICS and CALP (Cummins' theories have permeated through teacher resource websites: here is just one example). For me, the most important implementation is explicitly teaching the conception to students - supporting their metacognitive processes, showing them there are different types of language to learn and use, asking them to look for and reflect on the different ways they use language in different contexts - so that they can begin to take ownership of their language acquisition. Literacy has given me the tools to express myself, ignite my curiosity, and learn from others. It has had a profoundly positive impact on my life.
The six principles for improving literacy focus on realigning literacy instruction with current educational research. Literacy has developed into a nuanced concept that reaches from the traditional reading/writing skills to higher-order thinking skills, authentic engagement in real-world issues, and student ownership of learning. The principles suggest that all teachers, in all subject domains, at all grade levels need to make a conscious and ongoing effort to teach literacy in this broader sense. Co-creating learning environments with students in which they are driven to deeper understandings of a subject's content within their developing schemas of the world will promote literacy for all students. I think all six principles need to be used together for ELLs to successfully develop their literacy skills. New research comes out all the time, and teachers who take time to inform themselves of this new research, discuss it with colleagues, try new things, share and discuss what happens, and try them again with new insights will be much more effective in their literacy instruction because they're consciously trying to improve. Research will be targeted at instruction or at assessment, and finding new ways to instruct and new ways to assess will certainly help students needing alternative ways of learning and assessing, like ELLs. To me, focusing on literacy means incorporating all six principles into our daily lives. Teachers can support ELLs in developing critical literacy skills by understanding that "decoding and understanding the texts" will get a student to surface level meanings, but that critical literacy requires students to "identify, reflect on and analyze underlying power relationships" present in the texts and in their lives (Roberge, 2013, p. 1). Students learning English will need to be given adequate and appropriate scaffolds for both understanding the language and the underlying concepts. I found a webinar on Youtube by Stanford professor Jeff Zwiers titled "Developing Oral Academic Language with Critical Thinking Skills" which offers three approachable, effective classroom activities for connecting support of oral literacy and critical thinking. He first makes the point to distinguish between "oral output" activities, in which the desired product is a singular response, and "interaction" activities, in which the desired product is developing constructive conversation skills. While the webinar is not targeted at ELL instruction specifically, the three types of activities he describes are perfectly suited for developing ELL confidence in oral language and critical thinking. The activities are highly scaffolded, both procedurally and cognitively, making it easy to insert language scaffolds (he has an interesting opinion on sentence frames in connection to the first activity). The activities focus on developing the clarity and strength of students' ideas in ways that ground that development in speaking with their peers, which is so fantastic for an ELL's oral confidence! At just under 40 minutes (you can skip ahead at some points throughout), Zwiers gives a manageable and informative workshop-type lecture on lesson planning for oral and critical thinking skills. Having used STEP in the context of teaching ESL, I am definitely thankful for the framework's simplicity and thoroughness. As my colleagues have already mentioned, the rubric-style observable language behaviours makes it very easy to assess the oral, reading, and writing progress a student is making. The User Guide also lists a number of strategies teachers can use to support students at the different levels, making it a truly valuable resource to have on had when planning lessons and assessments. Having these strategies available while planning can allow for really affective Universal Design and Differentiated Instruction implementation right from the start. The addition of example continua, which indicate when a student would or wouldn't be moved to the next step, makes it easy to see how we will need to revise our plans to help students meet all the criteria for successful language learning.
If teachers utilize this resource in its entirety, I think the document is a great tool for promoting positive change in classrooms to support ELLs because that is the document's purpose. It incorporates diagnostics, Growing Success assessment structures, and observable behaviours that act as touchstones for student progress in their language development. Using the word 'continua' for the observable behaviours even suggests that teachers should reflect and revise their understanding of a student's progress. Student success is build into the document's language, which I think is a powerful start to changing approaches to ELL support. The OLB and OLLB are specific and scaffolded skills that teachers can observe and record to monitor a student's progress in literacy and language development. Besides being straightforward for teachers to use, they support student growth because the behaviours can be observed in any number of activities. This gives students the ability to demonstrate their learning outside of formal tests or assessments. For example, one of the criteria for Step 3 on the Oral OLB is to "Self-correct or seek confirmation that a word or expression is used correctly" and students can demonstrate this behaviour informally with classmates or as an aside question to the teacher. That is a very specific criteria that demonstrates a certain level of metacognitive activity, but is interestingly separated from a similar one: "Ask follow-up questions to seek additional information". The latter criteria could be a question regarding content, instructions, or curiosity, but is specifically separated from questions about language use. In ways like this, STEP supports students because it recognizes the different contexts students learn language in and the importance of language-specific criteria blended with general learning criteria. I think this helps guide ELL instruction quite seamlessly because, as we have read, learning a second language doesn't happen in isolation but as students learn academic, cultural, and social "content" that makes up a school environment. STEP gives teachers a way to create lessons and a classroom environment that will elicit these behaviours from students, therefore allowing them to observe the behaviours often and help support students moving through the continua. The OLB and OLLB also have very similar criteria. The OLB is divided into six steps but the OLLB is divided into four. The criteria mentioned about about self-correction is a component in Step 3 in both the OLB and the OLLB. However, the criteria in listening for following multi-step instructions is in Step 3 in the OLB but Step 4 in the OLLB. These similarities and differences suggest to me that STEP is trying to reflect the complex and nuanced layers of literacy and language development, and that when students demonstrate an observable behaviour or skill it should be taken in context and observed over time. |
Ms. KompsonI am an enthusiastic and conscientious educator. I use my blog to connect my personal experiences and adventures to my pedagogy. Archives
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