My week was broken up a bit by a short stint in the jury pool for my county. I was not selected, so I only missed a day.

In addition to my prep duties, I also cover a class for the first half hour of the day while teachers meet in grade-levels to do what’s called common planning. It’s part of our implementation of Data Wise. This is the time our intermediate classes have their ELD block, so I get to cover that in one of the classrooms. I am anticipating using the lab for this, but for right now, I’m teaching “nekkid” in the classroom. It’s a good feeling, because there are some participation and discussion techniques that work better at desks than at computers. It’s nice to see I can manage without the technology, even as I look forward to adding a bit of it to their routine. I’m mostly doing the regular morning routine in other classes which is okay, but not worth writing here about.

First Grade

The students are continuing work on their VoiceThread on sounds and letters by adding sound describing the letters, words and sounds. I’m trying to figure out how to proceed after we finish the short vowels. Do I want to take a sound approach, or go to the alphabet hitting the consonants? I’m leaning towards sounds, which would mean long vowels, digraphs, blends, etc. Any suggestions from primary  or early reading types is appreciated! I’ll check in with my first grade team too.

Second Grade

Storytelling moved on to fables, another “lesson-based” genre. This week doesn’t have much to share, so I’ll say I’m more excited about next week, when we’ll do folk tales. I’m doing Ananzi (another story on Discovery Streaming) which is a “trickster” story from Africa. I will then read “Piecing Earth and Sky Together” which is Mien (Laos) folk tale. The document camera makes read-alouds from books much more do-able in the lab. I love both of these stories, and they are really culturally appropriate for our school.

Third Grade

This week’s theme was about having friends of different ages, and I started with a video of “Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge”, a very sweet story of a little boy and his older friend who is “losing her memory”. I then showed another video “Crow Boy” that was a Japanese story about a poor boy from the outskirts of a rural village and how he didn’t fit in at school, until a teacher recognized his worth and intelligence.

Most of the kids watched and seem to take in the story. One class though displayed some really inappropriate behavior (rather, a handful of students did), laughing at the character in the video.  For a variety of reasons (some environmental, some organic) a small number of students in any school (like say, Rutgers?) have problems with empathy. My first reaction when this happens is like any normal person, I’m horrified, but it’s what you do next that can either get the kids on the right path, or simply marginalize them more. I notified their teacher and we’re going to look at the video and talk to the students about why it’s not appropriate to laugh in those situations. You can’t just tell them, what you did is awful, you have to show and explain WHY. I’ve also worked with older students who have this problem. I tell them to look around, and when they see other classmates aren’t laughing, that’s a clue that it’s not appropriate. This teaches them a skill. I talk to support staff, so they can intervene and provide extra support to the students in developing social skills. It’s easy to write these students off as budding psycho-paths/bullies, but I’ve found that most of these kids have some empathy and caring, which suggests they be brought to more appropriate behaviors.

Fourth Grade

We didn’t do any writing, sorry, but I did show them scenes from the climax of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. We discussed the various risks the characters take, and how they work together as a team, using the skills that each of them excel at to reach their goal. This worked really well. Considering how old the movie is, I was surprised at how many kids said they had seen it, but perhaps they meant more recent installments. I think having kids look at “success” but to break down what makes it work so they can see and learn is really important. When showing a popular movie like this it’s important not to just let the film run, but ask questions to clarify and check for understanding. For more on this, I’ll point to Mathew Needleman post on  The Right Way to Show Movies in Class.

Fifth Grade

I’m not kidding, I changed this lesson about three times over last weekend. I was reviewing my reader, and kept coming across great picture based Web 2.0 activities. I finally settled on PicLits. Below is a really great example of thinking (although the grammar is not perfect).

Here are the rest.

Sixth Grade

This week I had students working on coming up with a tag line for their soon-to-be Motivator posters. They did a good job. I find it really helpful, to have the students doing independent work, and calling them back one at a time to work on their writing. Since most of what I have them do is short, I can get this done pretty easily in a period. I only have half the comments up now, but the rest will be there soon. I’ll be happy to finish this up with them!

Ebonics, Ebonics, Ebonics! So much controversy and so little rational discussion surrounded the attempts by the Oakland School District to address the gap in African American achievement. Rather than go through history, I’m going to explain why using both specific ELD methods and a culturally positive approach are a good idea, and share some examples of how to do this.

Background

Why is this important? Even those who are hostile, or disagree with the idea of Ebonics generally agree that the lack of acquisition of academic English is one of the main reasons that many African Americans are not doing well in school or as well as white peers. For this discussion, I will use the terms African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to discuss the home language of many African Americans, and the more general term, non-standard English to encompass English variants from African Americans, whites, and those from an immigrant background who have non-standard versions of English as a home language.

The assertion that AAVE has its own qualities of language, is not just a political opinion, but supported by linguist and other expert in the field. For instance,  this resolution in the aftermath of the Ebonics debate by the American Linguistics Society was passed unanimously. This post does not argue for teaching Ebonics, but instead, for teaching those who have AAVE and other non-standard English variants as a home language, both standard and academic English explicitly,  with sensitivity to their  home culture.

Cultural Context

Much of the thinking in this area comes from the work of Gloria Ladson Billings, a former president of the AERA (American Educational Research Association). Her worked focuses on seeing childrens’ home culture in a positive, rather than a negative light. If students are lacking some academic or cultural competency, they will need to be taught that skill, but teachers should also seek to create ties to students home culture, and to value the culture competencies they have developed there. This article, Ladson-Billings: But That’s Just Good Teaching, from the Teaching Tolerance site, is a good introduction to this theory in a very accessible form. Why is this important? If you are telling students to largely leave their culture at the classroom door, and only allow mainstream culture in the classroom, you are forcing them to choose between cultures, and some will turn their back on school. This is not an all or nothing proposition. It doesn’t mean that any and all behavior is attributed to their home culture, and allowed. Like most of your teaching, it will involve you making decisions and adjusting instruction based on what is best for your students.

What are some elements of this? One of the trainings I attended over the summer was put on by the Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning (CRTL). My own background on this issues goes back to my early teacher trainings, so this will include some ideas from that organization, and some from my own experiences. For those of you new to this blog, my experience has solely been in high minority, low-income, high language learner population schools, and I’ve been teaching for over 10 years. Here is a list from the Center for CRTL of what a culturally responsive classroom should have, and the Ladson Billings article gives examples from teacher classrooms.

How have I done this in the classroom and computer lab? One thing I try to do is to locate diverse images. To supplement the stock photos from Microsoft, I particularly like the Flickr user CARF, which is from a non-profit in Sao Paulo, Brazil working with children at risk. They have many beautiful and happy photos of kids, not just pictures of children in third world squalor. Because it’s Brazil, they are ethnically diverse. When I have students talk about their culture, I have them dig deeper than just the food they ate, but how and where meals take place. How long does it last? Who is included?  It’s all about digging down into the context and reason for the cultural behavior, so they and you, get the big picture. Most of my classes have had a least three sizable ethnic groups in them. This means that not only are they explaining their culture to you, and to other classmates in that group, but to classmates from other backgrounds. This is really key for building community and understanding of each other in your classroom.

A lot of the methods from Center for CRTL are around participation and discussion. The hows and whys will be very familiar to any good ELD/EFL teacher. They want teachers to eschew calling on raised hands, for methods that will involve more students more actively.

• Call and response (to bring the class back to the teacher or transition to another activity)
• Shout it out (for short answers)
• Think, Pair, Share
• Pick at stick to randomly select students
• Train (students call on other students to respond)
• Put your heads together (table group discussion)
• Circle the sage (a student expert shares)

Most of those are going to sound pretty familiar. The general idea is to get away from hand-raising and picking because it leaves kids out. It also creates opportunities for oral language practice, and an outlet for the kids to express themselves. Even though my fellow Sacramento teacher, Larry Ferlazzo, has never done this particular training, he uses a lot of these participation methods in his high school classes, as I observed when I visited his Theory of Knowledge class last year.

Development of Standard and Academic English

The last section was more about classroom climate, and management so that students are in a better frame of mind and on track for learning.  There are also teaching strategies to help more directly with language development. They are:

• Vocabulary development through the use of students’ personal thesauri and dictionaries;
• Building background knowledge about unfamiliar situations and vocabulary by activating prior experiences and knowledge;
• Explicitly teaching  students to recognize differences in home language English, and standard and academic English, and the rules for both;
• Activities such as games, and readers theater to help students recognize when it is situationally appropriate to use standard English, academic English, and their home language;
• And finally, teaching students how to use this knowledge to “code-switch” and use the correct language for the situation.

Vocabulary Development: The Center for CRTL sees vocabulary development as key because non-standard English speakers usually have a basic level English word for what you’re trying to teach, but they need to learn the higher level vocabulary to move up in knowledge and attainment. For example, students will know the standard English term “money” and may have a home term, like “cheddar”,  but in school they also need to learn “currency”. The thesaurus is the child’s own, and they create their own taxonomy, by choosing which term among the synonyms will be the “guide” word. It could be the home language term, it could be a standard English term, but they choose.

Building Background: Defining academic and technical terms  stresses using students background knowledge as part of the definition. I have also used background knowledge with students to build comprehension in a similar way, and here is an example. Recently, I had a discussion with a co-worker, who is also from an Eastern European Jewish background, which is part of my heritage. We discussed a story in our anthology about a family of Jews escaping from Czarist Russia during the pogroms. She thought is was a great story to teach our kids (who are not Jewish). I thought it could be a great story, but only if taught well because it’s long, and pretty dense. She had made the story work by tying it to her own family’s story of escape at that time. My tactic was to to do that, but take it  one step further, and have my students, many of whom come from either refugee or undocumented immigrant families, think about how it related to their experience. Before reading the story, I asked them to reflect on whether they or family members ever had to leave a country or a home under duress. Here (NightJourney) is an organizer that I used with that story. The questions on the left column are done before reading, and are about the students’ experiences. The right column is done after the story is read, so they can compare their experiences to the story. Even though there were students who did not have that sort of experience in their lives, just having classmates share brings those situations that much closer, and makes the story more meaningful.

Recognizing Home and Academic English: As this is going on, students are taught to recognize the features of their home language, and the rules for standard and academic English. At the lower level, it would emphasize things like the use of  “ain’t” and other non-standard vocabulary. At the higher end, it would involve  pointing out that double negatives (as in Spanish and many other languages) add emphasis in non-standard English, but in standard English they cancel each other out, and are not used. This works best when done in conjunction with your language arts, or other instruction, but it should not be random, but planned out. As students begin to learn to recognize the differences, they do activities, like Jeopardy games to identify whether a word or statement is standard or non-standard usage and why, or readers theater, where different scenes show different English being used, and you discuss why that is done with students. The best example I’ve seen of the later is an activity where students acted out scenes from the life of Ida B. Wells where she met with President Lincoln, and then went home to discuss it with her husband. The first conversation used academic English, the second AAVE, and students discussed why it was appropriate to use them in each context and not the other way around.

Code Switching: This is the beginning of teaching “code switching” which is an essential skill for entry into professional life in the United States. It may look like you are teaching “Ebonics” but you are simply providing enough structure in their understanding of their home language, to transfer them to standard English usage. The other alternative is to demand standard English from students at all times. In addition to alienating students, this will not be an “efficient” or “effective” way to get them using standard and academic English, which is our goal. They will understand it better in comparison to home language rather than in isolation.

In general, there is not a strict line in the sand about when you demand they switch to standard usage. For example, over the years, I have had a rule that students use standard English in their writing, unless, it is an autobiographical narrative or poetry. Shouldn’t all writing in school be in standard English? Autobiography is personal, and needs to be in the student’s language. If you demand that they write about themselves in a language that is not personal you are killing something. Imagine The Color Purple, or any of Roddy Doyle’s work in standard academic English. By removing their language, you may be killing a literary voice. The student may learn to write great memos, but the world will lose something. On the other hand, if they don’t learn academic English, don’t learn how to write an expository report, and can’t write a memo, that’s not a good either. Ideally, you want them to keep their voice, and learn how to navigate mainstream culture with words.

After the fact addition: I came across this post by Jose Vilson that covers a lot of this issues on a macro-level quite nicely and in a more literary style.

Adina Sullivan

Adina’s presentation was basically about using images to help with language development with vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. Adina’s presentation was great, and I learned about more than a few activities to incorporate into my classroom. My only regrets? Not getting her agreement to let me tape her, so I can share it with co-workers. My other regret is that when I’ve been presenting in the past, I have looked through the program to find related presentations, and then let folks at my session know when and where they were at. This would have been an excellent follow-up session for folks at my presentation on RTI who were looking for ways to improve both whole-class and small group instruction.

Features of Adina’s Presentation:

1. She shows how images are used for teaching about homophones with multiple meanings.
2. How she is using images to teach background vocabulary for study units.
3. How she is using images to activate knowledge for writing. Using images for pre-writing organizers with students.
4. How she has students use images to explain what they have learned.
5. How she has students using animation to tell stories or explain things and oral language development.

My school/district is using Write Tools, and Adina’s has moved to the next step, GLAD strategies, so I was most impressed with the examples in number two, and will be sharing them with my staff.

Mathew Needleman on RTI with Apple Workflow

Mathew’s workshop was on using Macs but he is talking about the general stuff as well. Basically, if you are at a session on using these tools and it doesn’t match your platform, here is a “universal” translator from least to most sophisticated.

I would strongly urge, that if you see a quality presenter like Mathew, and he is doing something that is platform specific, GO anyway because it’s the process not the platform. Highlights:

1. Explains the tiers well, talks about it in term of time/intensity.
2. Starts with using docs for tracking reports (graphs and reports) using Apple Works. You could use Word and Excel too.
3. He is using an iPhone app to keep data on hand to show teachers (me gusta!)
4. Went into using Apple for intervention with students.
5. Showed videos for auditory and visual  support. He put them on ipod/computer for kids to do remote viewing.
6. Used Readers theater photo movies (iMovie) to increase fluency. Windows users, can use Photo Story.
7. He is using Garageband to show kids the visual of their fluency (Audacity would work well).
8. Using stills and iSight (you could use a doc camera/web cam, or even a Flip camera) commentary by students to show concept attainment with camouflage (VoiceThread anyone?)

What’s up with State and Federal Funding?

Well, you can imagine that this, was a big part of the discussion. Here’s how it went:

• ISTE director of government affairs, Hilary Goldman, started out by showing Schoolhouse Rock “I’m just a Bill”.
• Most in the audience were teachers, but there was a lot of variety.
• CUE Advocacy Platform just approved and will be on website. Because CUE has a platform for advocacy, this allows them to respond quickly to situations like the one below, without having to get prior board approval.

Then it moved onto the fun stuff, EETT ARRA money for the state.

• EETT Funding should have been distributed by Nov. There is a disagreement between the Dept. of Finance and CDE (which I blogged about here).
• Letters from districts to the legislature should come from superintendents.
• CUE (through it’s Executive Director Mike Lawrence) is in contact with  CCSESSA, ACSA, and CETPA about this and they will be helping.
• Hilary Goldman’s view from the federal level was there is no movement from feds to take money back, but will make DOE mad and they may become more directive, and more likely to cut funding.

Other State issues included:

• The Digital Literacy Initiative is in progress but is not aligned yet.
• State Senator Torleksson (winner of a CUE Award last year) is running for Superintendent of Public Instruction and is pushing state Ed Tech initiative.
• The State’s RttT proposal was turned down and will be resubmitted in round 2
• There is a new Secretary of Education for the state,  Bonnie Reiss. The outgoing Secretary did a lot of digital textbook, this initiative has now moved to CDE.
• A new bill says districts  can use text money for instructional tech (although in the current budget climate, there are no $s). If funds come back in the next 4 years, this will allow for more flexibility.

On the federal level, eRate is only good news. The money situation is bad due to budget cuts, although not as bad as in California.

• Trying to keep ed tech in ESEA reauthorization, which DOE would like to eliminate. Write a letter here.  The new DOE buzzword is technology infused.
• The fed are doing eRate development as part of a US broadband plan including education.
  Good: Raising the cap, streamlining the process (bi yearly rather than yearly paperwork).
  Not as good because it will dilute the increase in funding: School to home connection would prefer these three don’t come out of erate because not enoght/money to go around includes eBooks, and community college and Head Start.

A whole month without a post about what I’ve seen around the Internet. Actually, it’s been longer than that, but since I wasn’t doing a lot of reading, there wasn’t a lot to write about. I’ve just gotten back into the habit of reading and commenting on blogs, so here it goes…

Lots of talk about school reform continuing, in spite of the huge column inches devoted to health care (where medical care is feeling the pinch of data driven reform), and the economy (making me wonder why if “market based solutions are still the answer for education, why were they so bad in the financial industry). I guess I’m just looking in all the right places to find stories. First, NPR is doing a series on what makes a teacher qualified. It’s interesting, pointing out that the only reason programs like TFA may show promise is because traditional teacher education programs are so bad. OUCH

In More Thoughtful: My Senator Died: What Ted Kennedy Meant to an Educator we go back in time to the era before NCLB to see what made it seem like such a good idea. It is important to remember that for urban school districts serving poor/minority students, there was no magic nirvana before NCLB, and there was a reason that it looked good. As dessert on this topic, Tom Hoffman does a beautiful job of summing up the history of alliances in urban school reform in a nice little post that says a lot in just a few words.

Some interesting reading on the policy front, The School Issue – Preschool – Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control? – NYTimes.com, which shows how the theories of Lev Vygotsky, a favorite in my school of ed, are being used to teach students life and school skills in the early years. I’ve taken Larry’s advice and started to follow some blogs at EdWeek, and inaugurated this by leaving comments at Learning the Language: Resource: Research Brief on RTI for ELLs, and Inside School Research: Making Education Policy: Is Research in the Mix?, where I opine on why many educators don’t have a lot of faith in research studies.

Two different ed bloggers on two very different topics at almost the opposite ends of the political spectrum had me scratching my head. Both used volume to make their point devoting a series of posts, some of them lengthy, to the topic at hand. I’m wondering if it hurt or helped their point.

First, Scott McLeod looked at research from Moe and Cubb on his blog Dangerously Irrelevant about implementing technology in education (pro), and some posts pointing out that teachers unions maybe slowing this process. By the last post, Larry Ferlazzo pointed out that the authors are well known for studies hostile to public education and in favor of vouchers. The conversation became interesting at that point. I understand why Scott did a whole series of posts, he does that when he is trying to feature a particular book, but I thought it was too much space on a topic that I tune out on. If I’m going to read something from someone I disagree with in general, at least make it short, and pithy.

Next, Tom Hoffiman did a whole series of posts on Common Core standards and how they did not compare well to international ones (which they were supposed to be benchmarked to). I get his point, but I’ll admit to skipping through a lot of those posts. I bring it up here, because Tom did solict  feedback on his approach. One of the things I love about reading Tom’s blog is how it goes from topic to topic, like useful tech info,  Tuttle SVC: How To Not Get Your Blog Hacked, to commentary on school reform, Tuttle SVC: The Wacky Broad Prize. This last one was really short and sweet. The length of his pieces also varies quite a bit. I normally love when he digs in on a topic, but this series was just too much for me in total.  I did have my favorites in the series which were the final summation, and a shorter one wickedly titled, Let’s Run this One Through the Deflavorizer.

Another interesting piece on so-called “learning styles” and how they are hogwash came from The Answer Sheet – Willingham: Student “Learning Styles” Theory Is Bunk in the Washington Post (which I got from Learning Styles Theory Is Bunk (Education – Change.org)). The comments were turned off there, but I’ll add my two-cents worth here.

The article is largely about what doesn’t work about “learning styles”, but Willingham’s comments seem to suggest that using what is often referred to as “multiple modalities” still may be a good idea (for a variety of other reasons). Summarizing:

1. There is no one to one correspondence of a student to one learning style, students have a variety of preferences that are influenced by a number of factors, like background, interest, etc.

2. Learning styles are promoted as celebrating differences, but instead attempt to place students into easily dealt with categories.

3. There is benefit to varying delivery of instruction

I think he did a good job in the article in making a potential difficult subject comprehensible to a lay person like myself. But, he got some really rude comments. I think this is because teachers prefer to read about “actionable” research, in other words, how does this work in my classroom. Because he was not clear until the comments section that delivery instruction in a variety of ways is still a good idea (for different reasons), reading the article alone, a teacher is left to ponder, “well, should I just do lecture and written tests then?” I think this is why learning styles became popular. It gave people a concrete approach, and all you needed to do was fit the kids in a pigeon hole. I know of a number of other reasons to use visual and auditory support in my class, over half my students are language learners (the sort of background issue alluded to). I also appreciate that this is a complex process that is not easily reduced to slotting students and going through a check list of activities.

The participation in the June 2009 ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival was great and folks seemed to have a good time (the word “fun” came up a lot in comments). Let me take this opportunity to share that it is never too early to submit for the next carnival in August 2009 hosted by Candace Williams. The ELL Classroom will be doing the same on October 1st. You can use this handy form, to share blog posts on topic related to teaching non-native English speakers English.

All the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival can be found here.

Once again, thanks to all of you who participated!