We

1
Were All Language and Content TeachersPrinciple
s and Practices in Integrating Language and
Content Instruction

• Dr. JoAnn (Jodi) Crandall
• University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC)
• crandall_at_umbc.edu

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Whos Responsible for English Language Learners
(ELLs)?

• I cant teach science or mathematics or social
  studies Im an English teacher.
• Send them to me after theyve learned English
  Im not an English teacher.

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The Dilemma

• Students cannot develop academic knowledge and
  skills without access to the language in which
  that knowledge is embedded, discussed,
  constructed, or evaluated.
• Nor can they acquire academic language skills in
  a context devoid of academic content.
• (Crandall 1994256)

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The AnswerLanguage and Content Teachers
Collaboration Cooperation

• Content Teachers Role
• content related to language skills
• curriculum materials for content learning
• methods of teaching assessing content learning
• Language Teachers Role
• language related to academic content
• curriculum materials for language learning
• methods of teaching assessing L learning
• Together An Integrated, Content-Based Approach

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Rationale for Integrated Instruction

• Language is acquired most effectively in
  meaningful contexts
• Content provides that meaningful base
• Integrated instruction helps bring together
  linguistic, cognitive, social development
• Integrated instruction focuses on needed school
  genres/discourse
• (Adapted from Genesse, F. 1995)

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Understanding the ELL

• Who?
• What problems?
• What strengths?

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Understanding the ELL

• Language acquisition issues
• Issues of prior education and literacy
• Cross-cultural issues
• Other issues
• poverty, war, family

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What Makes Content Areas Difficult for ELLs?

• Your experiences?

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What Makes Content Areas (Texts and Discussions)
Difficult for ELLs?

• Complex concepts
• Unfamiliar (academic) language
• Unfamiliar discourse structure
• Lack of/different background knowledge
• Unclear directions
• Other

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Two Types of Language Proficiency

• Social Language (BICS)
• (Basic, Interpersonal Communicative Skills)
• Everyday (primarily oral) communication
• Informal, contextualized, interactive, clues
  outside of language, cognitively easy
• Academic Language (CALP)
• (Cognitive, Academic Language Proficiency)
• Restricted (primarily written) communication
• formal, decontextualized, little interaction,
  few cues, cognitively complex
• (Adapted from J. Cummins, 1981)

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Levels of Language Proficiency(and appropriate
questions to ask)

• Level 1 Pre Production
• minimal comprehension
• no speech
• listen, point, act out, draw.
• clap, show me
• Level 2 Early Production
• Limited comprehension
• One/two word responses
• name, list, either-or,
• yes-no, some Wh-H Qs

• Level 3 Speech Emergence
• increased comprehension
• speak in phrases/short
• sentences with errors
• tell, describe, role play, Wh-Qs
• Level 4 Intermediate Fluency
• Good comprehension
• Converse socially
• Begin to develop academic L
• analyze, support, evaluate
• What do you think?
• What would happen if.?

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What Can We Do to Adapt Instruction for ELLs?

• What has worked for you?

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Jim Cummins Model

• Cognitively undemanding
• 1 3
• Context- Context-
• Embedded Reduced
• 2 4
• Cognitively demanding

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Less-Demanding More Demanding

• Developing simple vocabulary
• Following demonstrated
• directions
• Repeating
• Answering simple Qs
• Simple reading writing
• Engaging in routine conversations
• Writing answers to simple Qs

• Developing academic vocabulary
• Participating in academic
• discussions
• Writing simple science
• reports
• Understanding academic presentations w/out
• visuals/demonstrations
• Oral presentations
• Taking standardized tests

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What Can We Do to Adapt Instruction for
ELLs?Three Guidelines

• Increase sources of information (context)
• Decrease complexity
• (of concept, text or task)
• Increase interaction

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Increase Sources of InformationReduce Reliance
on Academic Text

• Use pictures, charts, graphs, maps
• Use demonstrations, gestures
• Involve students in discovery experiential
  learning
• Embed in meaningful context thematic teaching
• Provide opportunities to learn from others
• Use multiple media opportunities to learn

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Decrease Complexity of Concept, Text, or Task

• Activate background knowledge
• Focus on vocabulary
• Chunk information
• Provide graphic organizers, outlines
• Paraphrase, repeat, summarize
• Use comprehension checks clarification
  questions
• Consciously teach learning strategies
• Use variety of texts
• Use variety of assessments
• Adapt texts

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Increase Opportunities for Interaction

• Use cooperative activities
• Jigsaw
• Round Robin/Round Table
• Numbered Heads Together
• Encourage peer- , cross-age, cross-proficiency
  tutoring
• Increase interactive writing
• Journals, response logs
• Try content literature circles
• Encourage project work

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Adapting Texts for ELLs

• Reduce text (Less is more!)
• Select most important information
• Use graphic organizers
• Assign different sections to students
• Simplify structure
• Put topic sentences first
• Reduce complex sentences
• Make relationships clear
• Build redundancy
• Repeat key ideas, words, phrases

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Adapting Texts for ELLs

• Simplify vocabulary
• Avoid non-essential vocabulary
• Pre-teach, define difficult words
• Avoid synonyms
• Provide visual support
• Use graphic organizers, outlines
• Relate to students experiences

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Developing Thematic Units to Integrate L C
Instruction

• IDENTIFY THEME OR TOPIC
• IDENTIFY APPROPRIATE TEXTS TO USE OR ADAPT
• IDENTIFY LANGUAGE OBJECTIVES
• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Functions
• IDENTIFY ACADEMIC CONCEPT OBJECTIVES
• IDENTIFY CRITICAL THINKING/STUDY SKILLS/STRATEGY
  OBJECTIVES
• DEVELOP ACTIVITIES
• SEQUENCE ACTIVITIES INTO A UNIT

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Sample Thematic Unit Plan

• Topic Food and Nutrition
• Student Profile Beginning or Intermediate/Element
  ary Grade Students
• Language Skills
• Listening Listen to a story (A Very Hungry
  Caterpillar)
• Speaking Talk about foods (good for you/not
  so good)
• Retell story
• Write dialogue for caterpillar and act out
  story Sing caterpillar song
• Reading Read language experience story
• Read and sequence sentences from story (strip
  story)
• Writing Fill out calendar/graph of
  caterpillars foods
• Fill out own calendar of daily foods
• Make a caterpillar book and label
• Content Understand the value of different foods
• Study skills/Strategies Sequence information
• Make predictions and confirm/disconfirm them
• Language Objectives
• Grammar Like/dont like
• On days of the week
• Past tense

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The Importance of Vocabulary

• Needs to be consciously taught and practiced
• Is responsible for much of comprehension and
  motivation to read
• Should be taught in chunks when possible
• Major resource Academic Word List

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Academic Word Listhttp//language.massey.ac.nz/s
taff/awl/headwords.shtml

• Based on 3,500,000 word academic corpus
• Consists of 570 headwords with related words
  for total of 3,000 words
• Most frequent academic words
• Occurred in Arts, Commerce, Law, Science
• Occurred over 100 times in corpus
• Occurred at least 10 times in each area
• Excluded are the 2000 most frequent words from
  Wests General Service List proper nouns, Latin
  forms
• http//www.jbauman.com/aboutgsl.html
• (Developed by Adrien Coxhead colleagues
  in Wellington, NZ)

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Teaching Vocabulary 25 on each

• Learning from input (L,R)
• Most common 2,000 words (about 80)
• Stored as one unit
• Focused language learning
• 100,000 most infrequent words
• Teach patterns roots affixes
• Learning from output (S,W)
• Use words repetition
• Fluency activities (L,S,R,W)
• Use known words grammar
• (Paul Nation)

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Some Vocabulary Activities

• Word walls
• Matching
• Word analysis
• Webs
• Word games
• Personal dictionaries
• Cloze/fill in blank
• Act out/draw/circle/point to items that match
  definition
• Intensive and extensive reading

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The Importance of Writing

• Writing is
• a form of output
• a means of building fluency
• a way of developing accuracy
• (in grammar, vocabulary, etc.)
• a critical skill for academic success
• a source of input

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Writing and ReadingComplementary Practices

• We learn to read by reading, and
• We learn to write by writing.
• But
• We also learn to read by writing, and
• We learn to write by reading.

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Some Guiding Principles

• Writing
• is a way to demonstrate proficiency
• helps us discover what we do or do not know
• is a process (not everything needs to be graded)
• is more than a paragraph or essay
• conventions differ cross-culturally
• can be collaborative

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Collaborative Writing

• Writing does NOT need to be a solitary act.
• Any stage in the writing process can be
  collaborative (pre-writing, drafting, reviewing,
  revising, editing, publishing)
• Collaboration
• Provides opportunity for meaningful communication
• Promotes meta-cognition and meta-discussion of
  writing (and language)

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Writing to Build Fluency

• Low-risk way to draw upon implicit knowledge
• Journals or Logs
• Pen or Key Pals
• Free-writing or Quickwrites
• Informal Writing emails, blogs, discussion
  boards

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Fluency or Accuracy Not Both

• Important to focus on EITHER
• Fluency OR Accuracy
• Fluency focus on meaning, use of implicit
  learning, risk-taking
• Accuracy focus on form, use of explicit
  (monitored) learning, care
• Focus on Fluency AND Accuracy
• only after practice with both.

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Some Last Thoughts

• Focus on key concepts language
• Modify your own language
• Provide multiple opportunities to acquire both
  language and concepts
• Let students work together
• Provide time to think, rehearse
• Validate students prior knowledge
• Encourage hands-on learning
• Ask questions at students level of English

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Some More Last ThoughtsThe Changing School
Population

• 1 of 3 children is ethnic or racial minority
• 1 of 5 speaks a L other than English at home
• 1 of 10 was born outside the U.S.
• 1 of 5 has a parent who was born outside the U.S.
• ELLs are fastest-growing population in our schools

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Further Reading

• The following are available at
• http//userpages.umbc.edu/7Ecrandall/index.htm
• Crandall, J. A. (ed.) (1987). ESL through
  content-area instruction Mathematics, science,
  social studies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice
  Hall Regents.
• Crandall, J. A. (1994). Content-centered language
  learning. ERIC Digest ED 367142. Washington, DC
  Center for Applied Linguistics.
• Crandall, J. A. (1998). Collaborate and
  cooperate Teacher education for integrating
  language and content instruction. English
  Teaching Forum, 36(1), 2-9.
• Crandall, J. A. (1998). The expanding world of
  the elementary ESL teacher. ESL Magazine, 1(4),
• Crandall, J. A., Jaramillo, A., Olsen, L.,
  Peyton, J. K. (2002). Using cognitive strategies
  to develop English language and literacy.
  Washington, DC Center for Applied Linguistics.

http//userpages.umbc.edu/7Ecrandall/index.htm
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Additional References

• Crandall, J. A. (1999). Cooperative language
  learning and affective factors. In J. Arnold
  (Ed.), Affective factors in language learning.
  Cambridge, MA Cambridge University Press.
• Crandall, J.A. Kaufman, D. (eds.) (2003).
  Content-based instruction in higher education
  settings. Alexandria, VA TESOL.
•  Kaufman, D. Crandall, J. A. (eds.) (2005).
  Content-based instruction in elementary and
  secondary school settings. Alexandria, VA TESOL.
  
• Crandall, J. A., Nelson, J., and Stein, H.
  (2006). Providing professional development for
  mainstream and novice or experienced ESL and
  bilingual teachers. In Field, R., Hamayan, E.
  (eds.) Educating English language learners A
  handbook for administrators. Philadelphia
  Caslon, Inc.