Presenting a Lively Professional Development: Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners

In 2016, the percentage of Idaho public school students who were English Language Learners was 5.4, nothing to California's 20.2 (National Center for Education Statistics). Still, teachers in small rural schools in Idaho and elsewhere may feel lost when it comes to supporting ELs in their classes.

Where can teachers get help? What do teachers need to know?

When my tiny school enrolled a Spanish-only student two years ago (see my previous post, Be Unforgettable to English Language Learners), I knew my training was not adequate to meet her learning needs. Happily, my administrator asked me to take a colleague and attend a one-day session on Go-To Strategies for teaching English learners. The training was presented by the Idaho State Dept. of Education's Title III Consortium using a toolkit developed in Missouri by Linda New Levine, Laura Lukens, and Betty Ansin Smallwood.

During the training, participants test-drove dozens of strategies and watched the presenters model the approaches they offered. My favorite strategy had to be Roving Charts, which works like this:

Purpose: To activate prior knowledge; to level the playing field for all learners; to allow learners to teach each other; to promote oral language

Grouping Format: Interactive small groups

Strategy Basics:
1. Divide students into groups
2. Teacher presents a concept, question, or problem
3. Group members brainstorm and write ideas on graphic organizer chart
4. One student “rover” passes chart to next group [Play up-tempo music during passing!]
5. That group brainstorms more ideas on chart
6. Rover returns the chart to original group; group discusses information gained
7. Whole-group discussion

Remember to have students sign their charts and to use for formative assessment as appropriate.

When my colleague and I returned from the training, we built a PD for our staff and presented it, passing on what we learned in a "teach the teacher" opportunity. We got our teachers up and moving (roving charts!) and put strategies in their hands to support all learners, not just ELs. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

This year, I'm presenting a similar session to the staff, which includes some new faces this year. As an added twist, I'm incorporating some of the cognitive science "Power Tools" I've gleaned from the awesome, must-read book Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning, which I just finished reading. That means I'm including opportunities for staff to retrieve prior learning, to receive spaced practice, and to receive elaborative feedback. Their metacognition, or thinking about thinking, will help ensure long-term learning and transfer. Meaning that what we discuss about supporting English learners won't just be a one-hour PD, but will find its way into the classrooms of our school.

Yes, there's only one school in my district. Like I said, small.

To capture attendees' attention and get them started with retrieval practice, I created a retrieval guide focusing on the Five Principles of Instruction for English Learners, developed as part of Project EXCELL, a partnership between the University of Missouri-Kansas City and North Kansas City Schools.

Principle 1. Focus on academic language, literacy, and vocabulary: Teach the language and language skills required for content learning.

Principle 2. Link background knowledge and culture to learning: Explicitly plan and incorporate ways to engage students in thinking about and drawing from their life experiences and prior knowledge.

Principle 3. Increase comprehensible input and language output: Make meaning clear through visuals, demonstrations, and other means and give students multiple opportunities to produce language.

Principle 4. Promote classroom interaction: Engage students in using English to accomplish academic tasks.

Principle 5. Stimulate higher order thinking and the use of learning strategies: Explicitly teach thinking skills and learning strategies to develop English language learners as effective, independent learners.

For each principle, teachers will write (retrieve) one way they already use the principle in the classroom.

Later (after spacing), teachers will add one new strategy to try that will help them support English learners for each principle.

After the initial retrieval, we'll go into a get-up-and-move activity that lets us test drive some strategies. Then it's time to go back to the retrieval guide and decide where to place the strategies we are most likely to try in class.

With boxes filled in, teachers will then turn to a learning partner and tell which strategies they chose and where they placed them. Learning partners will offer elaborative feedback and then do the same. Both learning partners should add to their retrieval guides as desired during pair and share time.

Last, participants will have time to reflect on what they have learned. Powerful Teaching calls this a brain dump or a brain drain, but the box on my retrieval guide just says "reflect." This is a low-stakes or no-stakes learning opportunity for teachers (or students) to retrieve what they know, understand what they still don't know, benefit from spaced practice, put in some powerful metacognition work, and (if you do another pair and share) get elaborative feedback.

I am so excited to put together a PD that combines strategies for teaching English learners with strategies for increasing learning for all learners, and to model these strategies for my staff. I'm praying for wisdom as I build the session and asking God to bless the outcome. May the result be timely, research-supported, and targeted, and may we all be better-equipped to help our students learn.

Related Resources:

The Go-To Strategies: Scaffolding Options for Teachers of English Language Learners, K-12 (PDF, free resource with dozens of strategies)

The English Learner Program on the Idaho State Department of Education's site

Amy's Retrival Guide for professional development

PowerfulTeaching.org

Used with Permission:

Levine, L. N., Lukens, L., & Smallwood, B. A. (2013). The GO TO strategies: Scaffolding options for teachers of English language learners, K-12. For Project EXCELL, a partnership between the University of Missouri- Kansas City and North Kansas City Schools, funded by the US Department of Education, PR Number T195N070316. Available online at www.cal.org/excell.

Be Unforgettable to English Language Learners

I know if the translation makes sense when I look at Renata’s face. Is she nodding and smiling that radiant, happy willingness to tackle a new assignment I have given her? Or is she giving me this: nada. The lovely statue of a teenage single mother from Mexico who stays in school for the sake of her son, her hijo, Mateo, but who is getting no meaningful words from Google Translate at this moment.

Or maybe it is because of my American accent, and not Google’s fault at all. I used to think I had an ear for accents. Now I follow every attempt to speak her language with a grimace and “That’s really bad Spanish. . . .”

She is the only Spanish-only student I have, which indicates how small my school is. There are under fifty students in the whole high school. I teach them all.

Renata, of course, isn’t the only one who knows Spanish. There’s a bilingual Mexican-American kid, Paulo. He talks to Renata in Spanish to make sure she understands her assignments. She laughs at him and corrects his sloppy Spanish, so sometimes he just shakes his head when I ask him for help. “She’ll make fun of me!” In another class there are caucasian kids taking Spanish as a foreign language. I lean on them to interpret for me, too. In still another English class (I have Renata in three classes, bless our souls), I seat Renata near a Mexican-American girl, Maria, and the new kid, a boy named Jose who contradicts me when I say I would like to visit his native El Salvador. “No, you wouldn’t. You do not want to go there.”

Jose’s English is better than Renata’s, but not as good as Paulo’s or Maria’s. There are pauses as he thinks of a word. Anything beginning with “sp” becomes “esp”—“Espending money,” “Listening to Espotify.” Anything beginning with “st” becomes “est”—“Climbing estairs,” “Esteering the car.” He’s plenty bright, so my lessons on subordinating conjunctions and comma splices help his writing noticeably. Part of me wishes Renata would progress as quickly in learning English. But I remember how long it takes—years—for a language learner to become fluent.

In the meantime, I buy a Spanish/English dictionary with classroom supply funds. I use Google Translate to prepare texts for her. I make her practice English phrases out loud: “May I please use the bathroom?” and (as she holds her water bottle up for a visual), “May I please get water?” Slowly, slowly, she is learning.

I have taken only one professional development class on teaching English as a second language. Over the years as a teacher, I’ve observed in dual-immersion classes, participated in a week-long Summer Spanish Institute, and provided differentiation for all kinds of learners in my high school English classes, no matter their native language. That's my training. But I want to learn more. I want to help kids more.

Sometimes it’s tough caring this much, trying this hard. There are days when I don’t get materials prepared for Renata’s classes before the day begins. There are times when Renata is tired, her brown eyes glazed over because she can’t keep up with the conversation in the classroom, or she’d rather be with her son, or she just doesn’t care today. It’s then that I invite her to join me at the computer as I fire up Google Translate, not to give her a new assignment or to translate a short story for her to read. Just to ask her in her own language, “How are you doing today? How is your son?” She wakes right up, smiles appreciatively, and types her response.

If my Spanish were better, I could ask these important, unimportant questions in a real conversation. Since I’m a beginner, I am glad to live in the digital age, when I can instantly communicate with my English-learner without a human translator.

Of course I want Renata to pass her three English classes. More importantly, I want her to know that I care about her. If not for building relationships with students like her, the teaching life would be bleak for many of us in the trenches. Because of the students, I thank God for the extra labor, for the time lost to translating, for the words lost in translation. For the chance to be unforgettable to an English learner.


Names have been changed.