Coaching Teachers Who are Teaching Mathematics to English Language Learners

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Coaching Teachers Who are Teaching Mathematics to
English Language Learners
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Session Summary

• Briefly describe our work with coaches
• Have you experience it and reflect on it, by
• Doing a mathematics problem together
• Discussing language issues
• Sharing lesson planning tools
• Sharing coaching process
• Tools
• Artifacts
• Video
• Close

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Our work
In New York City with teams of middle school
mathematics and ELL teachers and coachesthrough
the NYC Office of English Language Learners
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We

• EDC team
• Lawrence Hall of Science team

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Back Stories

• Or, What is a monolingual Irish guy from Boston
  doing up here?
• History of leadership training
• History of pd designs focused on understanding
  student thinking
• History of equity work

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School Leadership for ELL Mathematics Project
A L C A A N D G E U M A I G C E
Do Math Analyze Student Work Lesson Plan Coach
C O N T E N T
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PD
Do Math Language Activity Lesson
Planning Analysis of Student Work
In-school lesson planning
Initial student work analysis
Coaching Session
COACHING
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Our tenets
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Academic Language Proficiency is developed
through sustained content-based instruction
Meld Literacy and Mathematics
ELD
MELD
English Language Development
Mathematics English Language Development
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Teaching the Language of Mathematics
Two -way and Reciprocal

• Mathematical knowledge is developed through
  language, and language abilities can and should
  be developed through mathematics instruction
• J. Cummins

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Planning lessons with dual goals of developing
mathematics understanding and academic language
will improve ELLs ability to become proficient
in DOING mathematics
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Creating and delivering multimodal lessons where
ELLs are

• Developing mathematics vocabulary
• Learning the mathematics register
• Participating in meaningful mathematical discourse

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading
• Writing
• Viewing

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A bit of mathematics

• Purposes
• Illustrate the kinds of tasks in which we engage
  teachers and which form the basis for the lessons
  they develop
• To build a context for the coaching discussion we
  will have today

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Dilating Figures

• From
• Fostering Geometric Thinking
• By Mark Driscoll et al.
• Published by Heinemann

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Compare and Contrast ?DEF and ?ABC

• How are they alike?
• How are they different?
• What stayed the same?
• What changed?

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Doing Discussing Mathematics

• to increase teachers content understanding
• to increase teachers awareness of the need and
  opportunities to develop students academic
  language

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How do we focus on academic language?
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When doing mathematics

• We push teachers to use academic language and
  experiment with multimodal communication
• Creating an experience from which to reflect on
  the Academic Language development opportunities
  in the investigation and range of ways students
  might communicate their thinking.

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Some Structures Strategies

• group work to increase math talk
• prompting diagramming / drawing
• use of manipulatives (e.g., paper folding,
  cutting paper, applets, stretchers, etc.)
• use of / attention to gestures
• graphic organizers
• model and prompt academic language

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Capturing and Articulating your Process and
Reasoning
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A Tool for TEACHERS to think about the language

• Word Generation Chart

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Word Generation Chart for Dilations Task
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Plan lessons with explicit, concrete dual goals
of developing mathematics understanding and
academic language (which will improve ELLs
ability to become proficient in DOING
mathematics).
Lesson Planning
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Lesson Planning Template

• Purpose to Develop ELL sensitive lesson planning
  habits of mind

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(No Transcript)
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Preparing the Learner

• What concepts / skills / academic language are
  useful and necessary for students to be engaged
  with this task?
• How will you activate students prior experiences
  and knowledge?
• Where might student get stuck?

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Setting up the Task

• How will you introduce the activity so as not to
  reduce the demand of the task?
• What will you hear (language) or see (gestures,
  drawings, etc.) that lets you know students
  understand the task?
• How will student work on and complete the task?
• How will students record and report their work?

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Supporting Students Exploration

• What questions will you ask to uncover, assess,
  focus and advance student understanding of key
  mathematical ideas and use of academic language?
• What will you see or hear that lets you know
  students are thinking about key math ideas?
• What academic language will you listen for
  student to use?
• What academic language will you model? Prompt?
  How and when?
• What activities / resources will promote reading,
  writing, visualizing, listening, and speaking
  about math?

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Extending Understanding

• What math do you want shared and discussed?
• What academic language do you want students
  using?
• What questions will you ask to assess and/or
  advance students understanding? And what is the
  desired student response?
• How will students reflect on what (math and
  language) and how they have learned?

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Consider Sample Lesson Plan

• what is the math focus?
• what is the language focus?
• how are ELLs supported throughout this lesson?

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Coaching

• Cementing an ELL perspective in the mathematics
  classroom

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Coaching Cycle

• Pre-lesson conference
• Lesson Observation notes
• Post-lesson conference

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Analyzing Pre-lesson Conference Video Clip

• What are they talking about?
• Is the focus on the mathematics and / or
  academic language?
• What was the coachs intention/goal?

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Analyzing Lesson Observation Notes

• What did the coach capture?
• How can those notes be helpful to the teacher?
• Any other reactions/comments?

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Analyzing Post-lesson Conference Video Clip

• What was the coach doing?
• What was her intention?
• How did she facilitate discussion of language
  issues?

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ELL Mathematics Production Framework

• Attending to cognitive demand in the mathematical
  work done by all students, but especially ELLs.
• Integrating content and academic language
  development in classroom instruction.
• Creating learning environments that use
  multimodal mathematical communication --
  speaking, presenting, writing, diagramming, etc--
  to reinforce the learning of mathematical
  language.

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Amplify and Enrich-- rather than simplify the
language of the classroom, to give students more
opportunities to learn the concepts involved.

• - Aida Walqui, Teacher Quality Initiative

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Some resources

• Serpinstitute.org
• Language.massey.ac.nz
• Schoolsmovingup.net/events/academicwords
• Mdriscoll_at_edc.org
• Gkelemanik_at_comcast.net
• Ha__at_berkeley.edu

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• Fostering Mathematics Success of English Language
  Learners
• Mark Driscoll, EDC mdriscoll_at_edc.org
• Daniel Heck, Horizon Research, Inc.
  dheck_at_horizon-research.com
• An efficacy study of FGTT among teachers of ELLS

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FMSELL Research Questions

• Does participation in FGTT increase teachers
  geometric content knowledge?
• What effects does teachers participation in FGTT
  have on their attention to students thinking and
  mathematical communication when teachers analyze
  student work?
• What effects does teachers participation in FGTT
  have on instructional practices, especially those
  known to benefit ELLs?
• What impact on ELLs problem-solving strategies
  is evident when teachers participate in FGTT?

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• We need research sites!!!
• Please see me afterwards if you think you can
  convene a group of 6 or more teachers (grades
  5-10) interested in helping us research
  connections between teachers improving their
  understanding of geometric thinking and their
  impact on English learners.