Newcomer / Recent Arriver Classroom Reminders
We’re into the thick of the year. It’s a great place to pause and reflect on our practice so far this school year and how we will grow our students in the remainder of our time together. It’s a great time for Newcomer/Recent Arriver classroom reminders! Here, we’ll look at the non-negotiables.
What would you add? Be sure to share your thoughts below.
FOUNDATION
Classroom culture drives learning. Newcomer students thrive in classrooms that are safe, structured and predictable. In fact, predictability is a cornerstone of positive school engagement. Predictability breeds trust, trust lends itself to safety, and safety opens students up to entertain curiosity, absorb content and practice positive risk-taking in the classroom.
DIRECTION
It is important to lead with a plan and to ensure that the plan supports equitable participation for all students, including students who are new to the English language. Content–Language Objectives (CLOs) are an effective tool for creating a specific language focus (with the purpose of enhancing content accessibility for ELLs). They are widely flexible and can be implemented across all grades/subjects and for any number of ELs in a class. Content–Language Objectives guide lesson planning and ground student understanding throughout the lesson.
PLANNING
In preparing for English Language instruction, there is a tendency to over plan. When it comes to lesson planning, aim for relevance and quality, not quantity. Return to the Content-Language Objectives. Ask: 1. What one strategy will be most useful to my learners in making the key content more digestible? 2. What one strategy will my students use to demonstrate the language objective within the target language domain (reading, writing, speaking, listening)?
Can more than one strategy be implemented? Of course! Just be sure to aim for clarity. If things start feeling jumbled or unclear, return to your one original focus for each question. Our students will always perform better when they know exactly what is expected of them.
COMMUNICATION
It’s important to keep in mind the amount of fo language that students encounter in a given school day. Beyond the conversational language that must be learned to navigate the bus, playground or lunchroom, learners encounter languages within the language throughout the entire school day.
Let me explain. If conversational English (with its slang, reduced speech and media influences) is a tongue, so is the Language of Mathematics. Isosceles, divisor, and equation are not words students are likely to pick up in their informal conversations. This type of (academic) vocabulary must be explicitly taught. And if Math is a tongue, then so is the Language of Social Studies, the Language of Music, the Language of English Literature, and so on.
Our students encounter thousands of words in a day. For ELLs, this can be especially overwhelming. To reduce the language load, we can be intentional about listening to ourselves. How might we describe the rate and complexity of our speech? How can it be modified for clarity?
In short, here’s what we’re aiming for: Speech should be clear, deliberate and unrushed. (Side note: Louder or painfully elongated speech is not helpful.)
EXPRESSION
Language encompasses so much more than just vocabulary. Tone, register, slang, cultural cues, humor, sarcasm, reduced speech, body language, facial expressions, and gestures must all be negotiated in the context of learning a new spoken language. Gestures, or the motions and movements Gestures can be used to enforce an idea but should become less exaggerated with time, as understanding grows. Where possible, normalized conversational gestures are optimal.
PACING
ELLs often require a longer “wait-time” to produce a response. After questioning, allow up to two minutes of unprompted thinking time. If a student is not yet ready, offer cooperative opportunities for production. Partner-Pair-Share, Numbered Heads, or Rally Table are great approaches; and sentence starters can be embedded into any of these strategies. Just be sure that the student who was originally asked does, ultimately, have the opportunity to share his or her response with the class.
APPROACH
Labeling, visuals, realia, manipulatives, graphic organizers, sentence frames and hands-on exploration are essential to the ELL classroom experience. Each is a language-building path toward content accessibility. Additionally, we can be especially mindful that our curriculum and class reading materials reflect the diverse nature of our classrooms. Where do our students recognize themselves in the school day? How are students invited to express themselves using the four language domains?
PROCESS
Students, including English learners, should have guided agency over their own learning. Work with students to set goals, create viable paths toward these aims, and to monitor their success along the way. Cooperative structures are an important part of this process, as they encourage language development, enhance positive classroom culture and put students in the drivers’ seats of their own learning. Yes, our ELLs CAN meaningfully participate in student-led instruction and Project-Based Learning (PBL). Learn to establish supports… and then get out of the way!
CONSIDERATIONS
Newcomer students may be working through trauma, shock or other stressors. Monitor external stimuli to help mitigate significant stress. Learn to recognize symptoms and know when to ask for help. Work to recognize, celebrate and practice Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills throughout the school day and school year. To build background on newcomer Trauma start HERE. For more tips on trauma-informed care for ELLs (and all students) take a peek at an RC article for Edutopia, found HERE.
INVITATION
You may be a child’s first teacher of their school career, their first teacher in America, or the first teacher to breakthrough. Smile. Show welcoming. Be an example of the possibility that exists for them.
Digital Game Play for Instruction: The Why of the Practice
I recently wrote an article for Edutopia outlining 5 Free Video Games That Support English Language Learners. In this article, we’ll lay some groundwork in terms of understanding the whys and hows of using serious games to drive meaningful student learning. Our guiding question: What makes gamification so appealing, and how can we apply this to our classrooms to increase student engagement and accelerate content understanding?
The Edutopia article explains: “The concept of gamifying learning has been part of practical instruction, in various forms, for years, and for good reason: Research shows that game-based learning has the capacity to motivate students, activate knowledge and enhance critical thinking capacities.” Additionally, we know that gameplay is a key facet of culturally responsive teaching and is an integral feature of modern ESL curricula. Serious games and simulation games, which invite players to actively solve for real and relevant problems, also expand the ways that learners see and interact with the world.
Trends in games-based learning continue to lean into technological integration- and data backs up its place in the 21st-century classroom. In fact, research indicates that education-focused video and virtual gaming can benefit all students, particularly low-performing students who demonstrate the greatest need.
Video games- including educationally driven programs- follow a predictable structure, resulting in relatively uniform user experience. If we look closely, we see that video game design takes many of its leads from brick-and-mortar classrooms. In fact, a user’s interaction with a gaming interface mirrors the school learning experience, where instructional best practices are in place.
Video games are largely successful at capturing users’ attention and driving players toward mastering the content of the game. In a similar way, it is possible to recognize key features of gaming architecture in our classrooms and to leverage these features to increase student interest and motivation and to drive authentic content learning.
Let’s take a closer look at those components:
· Play: Play is the cornerstone of video game design and appeal. Play itself has several requisites: choice, positive peer interchange, and the opportunity to explore, coach and learn in a safe, non-threatening arena. Schools also recognize the power of play, including the elements of healthy social interaction and cultivated trust, and we cater to it in a variety of ways.
· Central goal: A game is separated from simple play by one defining feature: the presence of a central goal. Well-designed video games direct users toward a clear and attractive end goal. Well-organized classrooms lead students toward specific, achievable end goals, usually through a series of identified mini-goals. We name these standards, student learning outcomes, or Content-Language Objectives (CLOs).
· Rules: Rules are the skeleton of a game. In a video game, rules-design follows the principle that rule followers will advance to the next stage of the game; and for those who misunderstand or abuse the game’s rules, the process will be delayed or ended. This pattern applies to most areas of life and is evidenced in the classroom setting. When expectations are clear, students understand what is expected of them and can respond appropriately.
· Feedback: The feedback loop is central to digital gameplay. The user voluntarily completes an action, which stimulates a system response (feedback). The user interprets the feedback and reacts accordingly. This process continues until the game ends or the user terminates the loop.
As educational practitioners, we are experts in feedback loops. The difference is that technological feedback is direct, instantaneous and wholly interactive. We know that prompt and meaningful feedback has positive implications for intrinsic motivation and accelerated learning. How can we grow in this capacity to benefit our students?
· Voluntary Participation: Virtual gaming is rooted in choice. When personal choice is introduced, productivity, accuracy and motivation increase. Where can we make room for more student choice in our classrooms? Interactive station rotations, student-led inquiry and project-based learning, for example, all promote voice and choice.
· Personalization: Video games are designed to read the user. They must determine the player’s initial level of expertise and projected wants and needs- and then adapt to fit the player. Well-designed games scaffold learning and progressively increase in complexity. This mimics optimal instructional protocol for all learners, including linguistically diverse students.
· Removed Fear of Failure: In game play, users are afforded an infinite number of opportunities to try again. Mistakes become synonymous with new prospects- and ultimately, failure becomes obsolete. The idea of “failing forward” is inherent to the gaming world. Where and how can we work toward removing fear of failure in our schools?
· Community Building: Virtual games lend themselves to collaboration and community. This is enhanced within the backdrop of joy, entertainment, belonging, teamwork… and fun. Positive relationship building is also central to the school organism. It forms the backbone of SEL, culturally responsive teaching, and trauma-informed practice.
· Assessment: Video games are also assessments: they recognize, evaluate and rank participation- and then adjust the experience accordingly. In this context, assessments are also malleable. They adapt to the player’s understanding and expertise and automatically push forward (or fall back to re-teach). Our best site-based assessments look this way, too!
· Debriefing: Debriefing is the process of thoughtful, purposeful reflection on one’s experience. Educational gameplay should include debriefing as a way to complete the circuit of understanding. In the classroom, this process can be guided and modeled and my included speech, writing or other expressive means.
Gaming is not intended as a replacement for quality instruction delivered by an experienced teacher. However, educationally purposeful video games can support students’ learning in a host of ways. And if we take the time to see it, we’ll find that tech-based gaming has more in common with traditional educational structures than we might realize- that the overlap, in fact, is significant.