Regional County Office of
Education Lead
Collaboration Meeting
September 9, 2010
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Jack O’Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Chapter 2 Discussion:
“English Language Development:
Foundations
and Implementation Kindergarten
Through Grade Five”
by
Marguerite Ann Snow and
Anne Katz
Yee Wan, Region 5 COE Lead
Denise Giacomini, Region 4 COE Co-Lead
Chapter Overview
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• Chapter synthesizes studies and research that
focus on ELD teaching of students K-5
• Provides examples of strategies for teaching
ELD in each skill area
• Provides examples of effective ELD instruction
that focus on Step 3, Design and enact
activities in grades K-5
• Discusses the implications for professional
development for pre-service education and inservice
3
Chapter Organization
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• Foundations of ELD Instruction for
Young Learners
• Designing ELD Instruction and
Assessment
• Examples of Effective ELD Instruction
• Professional Development
4
Main Goal of ELD
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• Ensure students develop the levels
of English proficiency required to
succeed academically
• Move English learners through the
proficiency levels from beginning,
early intermediate, intermediate,
early advance, to advanced
5
Foundations for ELD
Instruction for Young Learners
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Primary Language
• Young ELs bring knowledge and skills
learned in their primary language
• Students’ sense of identity is embedded in
home language, and schools and
communities can create atmospheres
where home language and culture is
honored
• Children’s exposure to higher order
cognitive skills facilitates development of
literacy in primary and secondary language6
Foundations for ELD Instruction
for Young Learners, continued
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Sociocultural Considerations and Parental and
Community Support
• In order to school ELs effectively it is important to
understand background of students
• Variety of languages, countries, cultures, primary
educational experiences among English learners affects
their schooling
• Depending on age of arrival, grade placement, types of
literacy practices in home, and amount of schooling in
native countries students may differ in school success
• Effective schools are places where personnel believe all
students can learn, where school climate is safe and
orderly, where there is a warm and caring community,
where curriculum is challenging, teaching is informed by
research and best practices, and where there is
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concerted outreach to parents
Foundations for ELD Instruction
for Young Learners, continued
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Second-Language Acquisition Processes
• Common continuum along second language
route
• Rate of acquisition varies and may depend on
age, motivation, exposure to input, aptitude,
learning style, support of teachers
• Input, output and interaction are three views
of what contributes to language acquisition
• ELs need rich language environments to
acquire second language
• Explicit instruction (in reading, writing,
listening, speaking), at language level of
students, is necessary for language
acquisition
8
Designing ELD
Instruction and Assessment
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Standards-Based Instruction and
Assessment
• Plan for instruction must take into
account relevant standards because
they outline core content of instruction
• Challenging standards linked to
assessments
leads to school
accountability
high motivation
professional development leads to
improved teaching leads to higher
learning
9
Designing ELD Instruction and
Assessment, continued
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Using Standards to Plan ELD Instruction
and Assessment
• Standards used to focus instruction and
inform assessments; this occurs in a
dynamic framework of planning, enacting
and evaluating
• Four steps
–
–
–
–
identify learner’s proficiency level
select standards-based language objectives
design and enact activities
assess learning through standards
referenced assessments
10
Designing ELD Instruction and
Assessment, continued
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Role of Academic Language
• Learning the language of school is the primary
focus of K-5 ELD
• Academic language includes: grammar,
vocabulary, discourse structures, conventions,
and language for various functions
• One suggestion is that the focus on
differences between social and academic
language should be on the differences in
frequency of complex grammatical structures,
specialized terminology, and academic
language functions
11
Designing ELD Instruction and
Assessment, continued
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Role of Academic Language continued
• K-5 teachers need to plan systematically for
instruction that will help students develop the
decontexualized language skills they need for
cognitively demanding academic subjects in
upper grades
• Students need to be able to transition from
ELD to ELA
• Gibbons suggests “language inventory” or list
of academic language features found in unit of
instruction – use to develop language
objectives, design activities that focus explicitly
on content related tasks, help in designing
assessment around language
12
How Do I Teach Effectively?
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• It requires a well-designed plan that
integrates standards, appropriate
instructional materials, and effective
instruction and assessment strategies
that focus on second-language
development.
• Such a plan must address (a) dedicated
ELD instruction in a specific time block
and (b) instruction during the rest of the
day.
13
How Do I Teach Effectively?
Six Components of Language Learning: Crabbe, 2003
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
components
sample classroom activities
Input
Story listening or reading dialogue
Output
Making meaningful utterances in writing or
speech as monologue or interaction
Interaction
Speaking or writing with others in simulated
or real situations
Feedback
Receiving direct or indirect information
about one’s use of the second language
Rehearsal
Improving one’s specific second-language
performance by deliberate repetition from
memory or word pattern in role play or
pronunciation practice
Language
Attending to one’s language learning
Crabbe,
2003
Understanding leading to better cognitive control through
task, strategy and difficulty awareness
14
Strategies for ELD Instruction
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
1. Protracted Language Events: During
these protracted language events, ELs
can be exposed to a variety of sources
of linguistic input, can practice or
rehearse language performance, can
have multiple opportunities to produce
output, can interact with other language
users, and can receive feedback on
their language performances.
15
Strategies for ELD Instruction
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
2. Communitarian Practices: These
include approaches such as
cooperative learning
3. Multiple Representations: Teachers
should provide students with multiple
representations in instruction—visuals
and manipulatives of all types
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Strategies for ELD Instruction
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
4. Building on Prior Knowledge:
Teachers use a variety of ways to
activate background knowledge
instead of only reminding students
what was covered in a previous less
5. Learning-Strategies Instruction:
Learning strategies are mental
processes that students can learn to
control consciously when they have a
learning goal
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Applying Instructional Strategies
for Listening and Speaking
Key constituent skills of Listening/Speaking
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
At first students segment speech stream into word units and start to
recognize and use key vocabulary
Then, they use intelligible approximations of English and gradually
approximate native-like pronunciations
They recognize the main idea and supporting details of a listening
passage
They listen for phonemes, morphological endings, stress and
intonation and speak more fluently gradually
They use context and their backgrounds to build expectations,
predict and confirm predictions in speaking
Eventually, they use standard English grammatical forms
They recognize contractions, sentence fillers, reduced forms that
are typical of spoken English and use them orally
They will then make inferences and figure out the speaker’s intent
Finally, they take notes from listening sources (e.g., CDs, minilectures)
English Language Development Standards (2002)
18
Applying Instructional
Strategies for Reading
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Examples
1. Label items in the classroom and
have students read them.
2. Develop lesson plans using threestage approach: prereading, during
reading, and postreading.
3. Draw attention explicitly to
common discourse patterns and
function words during reading.
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Applying Instructional Strategies
for Writing
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Example
1. Explicitly draw attention to common
discourse patterns and function words
when teaching academic writing skills
2. Provide sentence-starters
3. Focus on writing as a way to express
meaning and also develop syntactic skills
4. Develop writing skills by expanding the
process for English learners to prewrite,
write, share, revise, edit and evaluate
20
Applying Instructional Strategies
for Teaching Vocabulary
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
Underlying proficiency in listening, speaking,
reading and writing is vocabulary. The three
categories of words are:
1. High-frequency general words used regularly in
everyday contexts
2. Nonspecialized academic words that are used
across content areas and not specific to any
content area
3. Specialized content-area words that are unique
to specific disciplines
Stevens, Butler, and Castellon-Wellington, 2000
21
Applying Instructional Strategies
for Teaching Vocabulary
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
1. Use direct vocabulary learning strategies
● Word and wall charts
● Vocabulary flash cards
● Vocabulary journals and notebooks
● Work sheets on prefixes, roots and suffixes
2. Use indirect vocabulary learning strategies
● Extensive and narrow reading
● Listening activities
● Strategies for guessing the meaning from context
3. Capitalize on students’ native language, for
example, Spanish-speaking students can benefit from
highlighting cognates
22
10 Elements of Effective ELD Instruction
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
1. Recognize and use primary language and culture to link
students with family and community
2. Focus on academic language
3. Provide foundation of standards-based instruction and
assessment
4. Use prior knowledge
5. Expose students to authentic input with multiple means
and representations of language
6. Expose students to correct language models and frames
that show how language functions is expressed
7. Give opportunities to use language receptively (input—
listen, read) and productively (output—speak, write)
8. Create language skill explanations and practice cycles
that give learners rehearsal opportunities in language
events
9. Provide variety of grouping strategies to encourage and
support extended interaction
10. Focus on learning strategies that lead to deep cognitive 23
language understanding and student autonomy
Elements of Lesson Plan
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
These topics are used in the sample lesson
plans included in Chapter 2
1. ELA and ELD Standards
2. Content and Language Objectives
3. Learning Strategy Objective
4. Materials/Resources
5. Assessment (self-evaluation)
6. Explicit Instruction in four language skills
7. Practice
8. Grouping Patterns
9. Closure
10. Homework/Extension
24
Professional Development
Five functions in preservice development for teachers
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
1. Communicator—teachers structure their own
language output for maximum clarity
2. Educator—teachers help students learn and use
academic discourse in various school subjects
3. Evaluator—teachers make valid judgments about
students’ abilities to understand variations in
language from vernacular varieties to normal
progress for second language learners or for
delayed language ability
4. Educated human being—teachers understand
basic language and literacy discussions in order to
make informed decisions for English learners
5. Agent of socialization—teachers help students
know the means and manner of communicating
without undermining parents and community
25
Professional Development
Ten competencies to equip teachers in both preservice and
in-service training
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
1. Knowledge of research on first- and second-language
acquisition and how this research has informed
instruction and assessment
2. Understanding of academic language in English, with
experience in helping students make connections to
the home language
3. Knowledge of discipline-specific content and its
cognitive and linguistic demands on English learners
4. Deep understanding of instruction, in practice and
through research, about implementing curricula and
strategies that are effective with English learners
5. Understanding and implementation of assessment to
inform instruction and monitor progress meaningfully
and efficiently in response to English learner needs
26
Professional Development
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
6. Understanding contextual factors in classrooms,
schools, and communities influence learning and
access to the curriculum for diverse learners
7. Understanding learners and their families, their
strengths and their challenges—especially the impact
of language and culture on communities in poverty
8. Knowledge and expertise using approaches to
involve families in extending classroom learning in
diverse communities
9. Knowledge and skill in conducting inquiry about
teaching and learning in classrooms in ways that
respond to English learner needs
10. Skills and experience in working effectively and
collaboratively within small communities of inquiry
designed to advance learning for English learners
(Merino 2007,6)
27
Implications for Practice
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• To develop lessons for instructed ELD,
teachers need to draw on a variety of
resources to deliberately plan for
instruction that incorporates
components to ensure they maximize
student learning.
• Districts need to build a comprehensive
system that promotes and sustains high
quality ELD instruction.
28
Discussion
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• What are some of the key insights from the
chapter?
• When providing technical assistance to Title III
LEAs, how do we apply these guidelines?
- How do we decide which guidelines to
implement?
- How do we prioritize the guidelines?
- What are some of the challenges we
encounter during implementation?
Discussion
JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent
of Public Instruction
• How can district or site
administrators measure the
effectiveness of ELD instruction at
their district/sites?
• What are some ideas to equip
teachers with the knowledge,
skills, and disposition to effectively
teach English learners?
30