Tag: Emergent Bilinguals

Where Does It All Begin?

By: Dr. Kavin Ming, Winthrop University

For the month of August, our blogs addressed a variety of topics related to the idea of using culturally responsive teaching with English Language Learners. Specifically, we identified strategies to strengthen culture-sensitive instruction; highlighted the importance of allowing students to use their first language, and determined key questions to ask ourselves as we implement culturally sustaining pedagogy. The root of these positive practices starts with cultural competence.

What is Cultural Competence and Why Does It Matter?

Cultural competence is the ability to successfully teach students from cultures other than one’s own. This requires a deep understanding of complex awareness and sensitivity, a wide body of knowledge, and a set of skills that, when taken together, produces effective cross-cultural teaching. One key element is acquiring this capacity is having a keen awareness of one’s own culture and the culture of others. I once read where an author said that you cannot truly teach students if you don’t really know them.

An awareness of one’s own culture and the culture of students impacts the types of books read, the kinds of materials selected, the variety of strategies used, and the evaluation practices implemented. Culturally competent educators use their cultural competence as a guide for action when working with students, parents, and members of the community.

Culture Matters

Student achievement continues to be at the forefront of all educational entities, including district, state, and federal organizations. The poor performance exhibited by large groups of diverse students in many areas around the country leaves many asking what can be done to move these students to higher levels of achievement. As the demographics of schools have changed, teaching and learning has not followed the same evolutionary pace. For a number of educators, traditional methods of instruction have predominated, and these methods do not reflect a genuine consideration for effective instructional methods and the impact of culture on teaching and learning. Thus, one of the most significant implications of professionally developing cultural competence is the basic understanding that culture does impact learning, and by adapting a different stance, based on an understanding of the significance of culture, students from diverse backgrounds can make academic gains.

Knowing Your Students Begins with Introspection

Teachers who look within analyze their own feelings towards those who are culturally different, determine how those feelings relate to the dominant culture, and think about what frame of reference influences these feelings. Key factors in understanding diverse students include learning about each person, and taking a personal interest in establishing positive relationships. It also includes continuously questioning one’s self in order to clarify salient issues. Teachers can engage in introspection as part of the planning or preparation period on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This frequency ensures that it is an ever-present part of their teaching routines.

Coupled with learning about one’s students, and questioning one’s self, teachers can develop cultural competence through personal development. Reading and seeking to understand the profiles and experiences of different cultures introduces teachers to contexts that help them identify similarities and differences within and across groups. A starting point is for teachers to purchase or borrow books that are written by people of color, including history, literature, and education. Some of these books include:

Women of Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child by Francisco Jimenez
I, Too, Am America by Langston Hughes
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

It’s Personal

In order to teach students, teachers must first reach them. Teaching starts with the heart. The best laid lesson plans will not amount to much if teachers don’t really know who are the students sitting in front of them. When students know that teachers care about them, and are interested in them as individuals, they will open themselves up to hearing what the teacher has to say. Culture matters, and effective teachers recognize this importance and strive towards achieving cultural competence.

References

Aceves, T. C., & Orosco, M. J. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching (Document No. IC-2). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform, Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configurations/.

Au, K. (2009). Isn’t culturally responsive instruction just good teaching? Social Education, 73(4), 279-183.

Diller, J. V., & Moule, J. (2005). Cultural competence: A primer for educators. Toronto, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Howard, T.C. (2003). Culturally relevant pedagogy: Ingredients for critical teacher reflection. Theory into Practice, 42(3), 195-202.

Pang, V. O. (2001). Why do we need this class? Phi Delta Kappan, 76(4), 289-292.

About the Author

Dr. Kavin Ming is a Professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. She is currently serving as the Department Chair in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. She teaches undergraduate literacy methods courses and graduate content area literacy and practicum courses. Kavin’s research interests include at-risk student populations, culturally responsive pedagogy, content area literacy instruction, and multisensory teaching of literacy skills. Kavin can be contacted at mingk@winthrop.edu.

Tags Cultural Competence, Culture, Emergent Bilinguals, English Language Learners

Research

Culturally Responsive Instruction to Improve English Learners’ Academic Oral Language Development

Post author By admin
Post date August 21, 2020
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By: Dr. Elke Schneider

What is culturally responsive instruction and why is it important?

Culturally responsive instruction (CRI) refers to teaching any content area in a way that infuses and honors knowledge about learners’ socio-culturally, linguistically, ethnically, racially, religiously, and socio-economically unique backgrounds. It not only makes the purpose of learning about specific content learner-relevant by connecting it to their cultural and linguistic frame of reference but also provides necessary language support and cultural explanations in interactive, authentic and carefully structured learning opportunities. In CRI, cultural, verbal and nonverbal components are made explicit to help diverse learners succeed. Therefore, the strategies below address these aspects.

Non-native speakers of English or English learners (ELs) present the fastest growing group of students in the US and in the Carolinas and are part of an increasingly diverse student population that requires CRI. Such instruction provides ELs with explicit guidance on how to orally communicate effectively in social and academic settings.

Effective CRI is based on a strong rapport with ELs. It unlocks EL’s motivation to overcome challenges based on language and acculturation needs. In collaboration with ESOL teachers, one can find out about ELs’ schooling background, home life, and possibly any key experiences ELs may have had prior to entering a content area teacher’s classroom that may impact learning success such as traumatic experiences coming to this country or any non-academic strengths that could be utilized to motivate learning content.

Why is it important to focus explicitly on oral language development?

Oral language skills provide the basis for proper development of all other academic skills including listening, reading, and writing skills. Native speakers develop oral language skills during the first five to six years of their lives before learning to read and write. However, ELs moving into the new culture later in life, must acquire oral, reading and writing skills fast all at the same time and are forced to participate in state testing from the start without any accommodations.

What constitutes oral language skills?

Developing social and academic oral language skills includes culture-specific verbal and nonverbal skills that require years to reach native speaker quality. It takes approximately 2-3 years to develop social oral language skills needed to engage properly in social settings such as recess, or after school experiences. Academic oral language needed to verbalize and reflect on academic content takes at least seven to nine years. Both types of oral language skills require not only proper command of vocabulary and sentence structures but also of culturally specific nonverbal skills like gestures, postures, eye contact, proper pausing, body distance from speakers, and tone and volume of voice to make oral communication effective.

The following selected strategies are specifically geared towards ELs and focus on academic language skills development but can be implemented with all learners.

Strategies for culturally responsive academic oral language instruction

Make the purpose of an oral exchange about a topic clear and relate it to ELs’ world of reference. Ways to do that are: (1) Start a motivating dialog about a picture or short film clip that is relevant to ELs and thus prompts personal connections and opinions about a topic; (2) Ask students to share a personal experience to help them see the purpose of a content area task; (3) Show concrete items or ask students to bring in an item that represents something that helps them relate to a topic in dialog with peers.

Plan for routine pair and group discussions prior to or after listening to teacher presentations, viewing or reading tasks

Routinely infusing oral academic dialog opportunities allows ELs to practice those structures. Generally, infuse 5 minutes of oral processing for every 3 minutes of teacher talk. Cooperative learning dynamics as offered in think-pair-share orally or think-pair-share orally-write, think-write-pair-share orally or view (picture, video clip)- pair- draw information- share orally allow ELs to critically process information with their multicultural and multilingual frames of reference. For more details, see Zwier (2019).

Explicitly teach effective dialog features and allow oral pair or small group practices. On posters and personal handouts for students, flow charts display academic dialog features. Among them are gestures and language structures to: (1) demonstrate active listening skills (2) ask for more details or clarifications, (3) share culturally comparative information, (4) make sure everyone has contributed a comment, (5) keep dialog partners on task, (6) Compare and contrast information, and(7) summarizing what was said. For details, see Zwiers (2019). Also, explicitly discuss how such oral features differ by allowing ELs to share how dialog patterns compare to their cultures. Highlight also how dialog structures change when talking to person of authority versus a peer.

Explicitly teach vocabulary in common phrases and sentence structures along with nonverbal communication features.

After analyzing what key vocabulary and associated phrases are needed for ELs to engage in proper academic dialog about a topic such as the water cycle or facts that led to the Civil War, allow ELs to practice saying these key words before using them in context. For instance, ELs will not participate in dialog about the photosynthesis, if they are not comfortable saying the word. Therefore, repeated syllable-by-syllable practice of the word is important. The entire class can be engaged in doing so chorally. Teachers have students repeat a word like photosynthesis syllable by syllable. In the intonation and speed modeled by teachers, students repeatedly add one syllable to the next until they can say the entire word fluently. Then, it is used in common phrases (successful photosynthesis, failed photosynthesis) and sentences (A photosynthesis requires…, A photosynthesis occurs when….).Such essential vocabulary with common sentence structures are then collected on content specific vocabulary cards that allow ELs to draw mnemonic devices and references to their first language as needed (i.e. photo and foto mean the same in Spanish as in English). Other words with the same component (photograph, photographer) can be added to help expand vocabulary.

Explicitly teach nonverbal communication features

Given that non-verbal communication constitutes about 85% of in person information exchanges, teaching non-verbal communication features explicitly along with the language structures is paramount. Brief role plays in which one student asks questions and the other one answers them can serve as a practice for verbal and nonverbal oral language features. Students can prepare written scripts or work from brief notes on cards. Such performance can to demonstrate gained knowledge while implementing proper eye contact, gestures, postures, tone and volume of voice. Students can role play interviews of experts on science facts, a historic civil rights movement leader or a character in a novel or a writer. For each scenario, proper nonverbal skills such as eye contact, tone of voice, gestures, or body language can be practiced.

The following resource offers many specific suggestions for content area
instruction including evaluation charts:

Zwiers, J. (2019). Next steps with academic conversations. New ideas for improving learning through classroom talk.

Information about different specifics about language characteristics of over 30 language:

Swan, M. & Smith, B. (2001). Learner language: A teacher’s guide to inferences and other problems. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.

About the Author

Elke Schneider (PhD) is professor for Literacy, Special Education, and Second Language Learning at Winthrop University and has worked in this field for 25 years. She has supported regional and statewide efforts in training teachers at all grade levels and content areas in meeting learning needs of English learners with research-evidenced practices.

Tags Culturally Responsive Instruction, Emergent Bilinguals, Oral Language Instruction

Teaching

Listening Beyond the Accent: Valuing the Emergent Bilingual Students in our Schools

Post author By admin
Post date August 14, 2020
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By: Elizabeth McCauley McDonald, South Carolina Elementary School Principal

The Challenge

I still remember the moment a teacher walked “Marco” to my classroom. I went to say hello and he said, “Hola.” As he entered the room and had a seat, the teacher whispered to me, “he doesn’t speak English.” I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I was terrified. I took three years of Spanish in high school and one semester in college, but I could only remember a few words and phrases. Conjugating a verb would have been a miracle! I instantly began to panic because I did not know how I was going to help a student I could only communicate with in broken phrases. Immediately, I did what most first year teachers would probably do…I looked in my class, found my only other Latinx student in the classroom and asked her to help me communicate with Marco. He was in my classroom for approximately three months before he moved away and in the short three months of being in my classroom, he transformed my teaching practices.

While I know that my instructional practices with Marco were not the most useful or the best practices, he always walked in my class with a smile and was willing to allow me to practice my Spanish with him. See, Marco was fluent in Spanish and could read in Spanish. He was a highly intelligent student, and even with the language difference, he often outperformed half of my English only students. In that short three month period, I saw Marco step out of his comfort zone, in small group settings, and practice speaking English with his peers. When we worked together one-on-one, I would attempt to speak Spanish and he would practice English. When we just couldn’t connect the dots between the two languages, he began to call for the student in class that spoke both languages to translate – he became his own advocate.

I saw Marco for who he was and I valued his language and his culture which created an environment where he felt comfortable enough to practice English out loud. He went from being unwilling to speak a word to anyone in the classroom, except me, to actively engaging with his peers. As he became more vocal, more of his English only speaking peers began to engage with him and embrace his language and want to learn Spanish as well. In all honesty, to me those moments were magical. My English only students seemed to realize that Marco was not behind, or not as smart as them, simply because he spoke a different language and English with a thick accent; instead, they heard beyond the accent and saw Marco for who he was, someone who was extremely knowledgeable, smart and an emerging bilingual. My English only students wanted to also be able to speak two languages.

Everyone noticed when Marco stopped coming to class. He and his family moved to California. While, I most certainly did the best I could – speaking slowly, using visual pictures and my hands to describe words, encouraging collaboration with peers and one-on-one conversations with me, providing tests in Spanish (thank you Google Translate), I can only imagine how much more I could have done for Marco if he was in my class after I gained my ESOL certification, or even after I had taken one ESOL course.

Lessons Learned

While I met Marco in my first year teaching, there are a few lessons that I have kept close with me from that experience.

Allow students space to use their first language on their journey to acquire a second language.

Can you imagine an English only speaking student enters their ninth grade French course for the first time and the teacher tells them they are only allowed to speak French, which they do not know yet, and the teacher only speaks to them in French? Most parents would be in an uproar because the students do not have foundational knowledge of the language, language structure, or language vocabulary, but they are being held to a standard of fluency and proficiency. But, yet and still, we ask emergent bilingual students to do that each and every day. Instead of allowing them to use their language as a bridge, we expect them to make a leap across uncharted territory into the unknown, without support. This has to stop!

Allow students to use resources in their first language.

One thing that was abundantly clear, is that Marco could read and speak Spanish fluently. Many of our emergent bilingual students are coming to school with skills in their first language, but how often do we, as educators, leverage that knowledge? Through the use of Google translate, I was able to allow Marco to complete his assessments in his dominant language. I would provide Marco with the English and Spanish versions of his tests and quizzes. If Marco stayed longer, I would have tried to phase our usage of the Spanish document as a support and supplement, if he was ready for it. In fact, I once taught a German exchange student, and we were able to do just that. Allow students to show you who they are and what they can do. Support them in the continued development of their first language as they acquire English. Show interest in their language, learn what you can so that you can communicate with your student in their language of comfort, before you require them to stretch to yours.

Now, I know what some folks are thinking, but what about the state assessments that require the usage of English? Well, that’s why you have to continue the work and continue to support your emergent bilinguals in their English development. I think we could also argue that assessments given to emergent bilinguals in a language other than their first language, especially when they can read and write in their first language is problematic, but that would be a whole other blog post.

The designation of a student as an English language learner or emergent bilingual has no bearing on a student’s intelligence.

Too often, educators are surprised when students like Marco perform well on assessments and can understand and analyze content. The ability to speak more than one language is often seen as a value added when the first language is English and the second language is… well, not English. Too often we see students who speak two languages, but due to their primary language being a language other than English, it is seen as a deficit. This has to stop! Linguistic prejudice and linguistic racism is real and we all must do the work to self-identify the language biases we hold, and we must do that work ourselves. Furthermore, we need to see all emergent bilingual students as walking into our classrooms with additional knowledge, and that should not be determined based on the geographic location associated with their first language.

Into the Beyond

As students enter the classrooms in our school buildings this year, I’m calling for all educators to work on leveraging the funds of knowledge students bring with them to school each and every day. Leverage the language and the cultural practices that create the foundations on which students build their understanding. Support student development of their first language, in addition to supporting their development of English. Most of all, seek to understand your students, and not just to have your students understand you. It’s only at this point that we can move into the beyond, beyond listening to just the accent, beyond preconceived ideas of what it means for a student to be an emergent bilingual, and we can begin to center our students’ experiences in meaningful ways to help them process the language around them.

About the Author

Elizabeth McCauley McDonald is an Assistant Principal at Northside Elementary School in Seneca, South Carolina. She holds a Bachelor’s in Secondary Social Studies from Clemson University, a Masters in Education from Anderson University and a Masters in Educational Administration from the University of South Carolina. Elizabeth is currently pursuing a PhD. in Literacy, Language and Culture at Clemson University. Elizabeth also serves as the LiD 6-12 Blog Editor.

Tags Culturally Responsive Instruction, Emergent Bilinguals, English Learners, Non-Native Speakers of English

Research

Culturally Responsive Instruction for Non-Native Speakers of English

Post author By admin
Post date August 7, 2020
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By: Dr. Elke Schneider, Winthrop University

What is culturally responsive instruction and why is it important?

How would you feel if you involuntarily had to leave all you knew and were comfortable with, and found yourself in a completely new environment, including a school where everyone spoke a language you could not understand, and where people interacted differently than you are used to seeing happen in the culture you came from? How would you feel, if you did not even know how to ask for a bathroom break, or were not sure if it was safe to eat the unfamiliar food that you saw served in the school cafeteria? For some of us who have never moved far from the environment and home culture of our initial upbringing, this might be really hard to imagine. It would probably come close to a nightmare that you wished you could wake up from and forget.

Photo by Leonardo Toshiro Okubo on Unsplash

Such experiences are common for non-native speakers of English, or English Learners (ELs) who represent the fastest growing community of learners in our public schools nationwide as well as within the state of South Carolina. Many of them have recently moved into our state and only know themselves in their home language and culture. Coupled with this newness, ELs have to participate in state standardized testing without integration time, and their school performance is part of annual school report cards. All this puts pressure on content area instructors to have strategies at hand that help ELs succeed quickly.

ELs, along with their classmates, present a potpourri of diverse learner backgrounds due to different socio-cultural, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and socio-economic experiences. Teaching in a culturally responsive way actively integrates these differences into instruction in which a) a culture of respect for differences and diversity is fostered as an enrichment and asset for all, b) common life challenges are seen as connecting anchors amidst apparent differences, and c) knowledge is built in such a way that every student has the same fair chance to succeed.

Specifically, culturally responsive instruction thus provides explicit opportunities for students to link the newly learned content with what they already know. It infuses a variety of different, multisensory, carefully structured learning opportunities that occur often through cooperative learning interactions. These allow ELs to learn in the context of natural exchanges with peers and teachers. Such instruction requires teachers to model different learning and problem-solving strategies explicitly and to make academic language structures and associated nonverbal behavior patterns explicit.

The interconnectedness of acculturation and language acquisition

Acculturation refers to the process of integrating a representative of a minority culture into a majority culture. This includes accepting and learning social interaction patterns and the language of the majority culture. Acculturation and language acquisition are therefore tightly interrelated. This means for ELs in the school culture that the safer and more socially integrated ELs feel, the faster and more successful is their learning progress. This is true for all learners with language and cultural experiences different from those of the main culture. While this blog focuses only on ELs, many of the shared strategies can be considered for the integration of learners of other minority groups.

Strategies to strengthen culture-sensitive instruction of ELs

Helping ELs understand the American school culture

Create video clips about essential features of the school culture (i.e., school nurse, bus or morning routines, homework assignments) or routine tasks and expectations in your content area (i.e. science lab procedures, history project) in collaboration with colleagues and administration. These, both ELs and their parents (i.e., during parent conference times) can watch repeatedly until they understand the shared routines or procedures when the oral explanations are provided in several most commonly used languages. Each can be saved separately so they can be shared among teachers as needed.

Activating ELs’ unique contributions to the learning community

Allow ELs to use their native language to make connections with the content presented in English. Canadian multilingual learning researcher Jim Cummins stresses the importance of allowing the use of ELs’ first language in school because, if denied, an essential part of ELs’ identity and livelihood is squelched. This in turn impacts the learning progress negatively.

Examples could be a) providing space on graphic organizers to note a realization in the first language, b) allowing ELs to use their native language as they figure out tasks or work together with others by using a bilingual dictionary and translation digital devices, c) pairing up several ELs with native speakers so clarifications can occur naturally in two languages.

Prior to any topic, activate ELs’ prior knowledge by eliciting experiences from their home culture where appropriate (i.e., wild life, weather, socio-cultural routines, historic sites, historic events, or how basic math skills were taught in the home culture).

Infusing culturally and linguistically sensitive content instruction

Provide repeated opportunities for ELs to orally repeat essential academic language structures used with a content through whole or small group choral response. This builds ELs’ confidence in using academic language when engaging in natural group interactions with peers. Such oral practice also provides the basis for subsequent writing tasks.

Provide Illustrations in handouts, posters, and/or on PowerPoint presentations with subtitles in English for each step-in procedural task (i.e., math task, science project, history report). This makes content more comprehensible and allows ELs to participate in community learning tasks more successfully.

Building culturally sensitive relationships and understanding

If something does not feel right in the communication process (verbal and/or nonverbal), do not ignore it, rather seek clarification in a way that allows an EL to keep his/her face. Often ELs do not feel comfortable asking questions or acknowledging confusion, especially not in front of peers. Therefore, it is the teacher’s responsibility to seek clarification, best one-on-one.

Teach all students about how to be a culturally responsive citizen. This includes building empathy for differences and practice of conflict resolution through explicit reflective dialog and role play as needed. It also includes clarifying what bullying is and what the consequences are for such behavior in the classroom learning community and during recess. It also includes teaching all students how to act respectfully towards each other. Positive behavior reinforcement of appropriate interactions can provide meaningful incentives.

Assessing ELs’ acquisition of academic knowledge

Preteach test language and response structures for different test tasks. This is important because American common test types may not be familiar to ELs nor may they have the language capacity. Collaborate with ESOL teacher/s on this as well.

Provide alternative assessments. ELs who cannot present their knowledge with proper academic language yet need to share their knowledge via projects that allow them to illustrate or gesture what they know or label graphic images with what they know. Provide word banks to use for responses, and simplified sentence structures and number of response choices in test tasks.

These are just a few ideas to infuse culturally and linguistically responsive strategies for ELs into content area instruction. The following three sources provide a variety of research-evidenced instructional practices beneficial for ELs to be culturally and linguistically integrated into the American education system.

Additional resources to investigate are:

a) Go to Strategies retrievable from: http://www.cal.org/what-we-do/projects/project-excell/the-go-to-strategies

b) 50 strategies for teaching English language learners by Adrienne Harrell and Michael Jordan (6^th edition)

c) For more project-based content instruction see Dinah Zike’s foldables resources on the internet for math, science, social studies, math