1. Providing Academic Language Development Support
September, 2014

2. ALD New acronym – ALD – Academic Language Development
Separate and distinct from ELD
An example of current a teaching method which promotes ALD is reciprocal teaching

3. Reciprocal Teaching
Graphic organizer captures students’ thoughts for their small group discussion.
Summarizing – beyond retelling – what happens in the reading, identify what you think are the three most important events/details from the reading and explain why they are important and how they are connected.

4. Reciprocal Teaching Continued
Questioning – pose at least 3 questions about the reading – these could include questions that address confusing parts of the reading, or thought questions that the reading makes you wonder about.
Predicting – identify at least three text-related predictions – these predictions should be based on new developments in the reading and your predictions should help the group to anticipate what will happen next.

5. Reciprocal Teaching Continued
Connecting – make at least three connections between ideas or events in the reading to your own experience, the world around you, or other texts. Be prepared to explain these connections to your group.
ELL students will benefit from meeting in expert groups – all of the summarizers together – before being expected to share out with their home group (all four roles together).

6. THE THREE LEGS OF THE LANGUAGE STOOL
Kenji Hakuta proposes that language instruction is a three-legged stool:
Learning through discourse
Engaging with text
Writing about evidence, reasoning, and argument
What we do in the classroom must engage all three legs of the stool!

7. ACADEMIC LANGUAGE IS AT THE HEART OF ALL THREE LEGS OF THE STOOL
The CCSS requires that we target the oral and written language needed to learn about, discuss, and write about academic content.
ELD and content instruction must be integrated, so ELL students have the opportunity to apply the language they learn to academic tasks.

8. Vicious circle
Written text draws upon many more words than oral language situations, which makes it more challenging for ELL kids.
The majority of the words needed for understanding written language can only be learned through experience with written text, but written text is only accessible if the reader knows the majority of the words!

9. USE OF AN ACADEMIC NOTEBOOK
The goal is to have students store the meanings of words in their long term memory. For this to happen, students must process information actively and repeatedly.
It is important that students not simply copy the teacher’s explanation of a term.
Have students restate the description, explanation or example in their own words. ELL students can use sentence frames/starters.
Non-linguistic representations can be part of their notebook (drawings with no words or numbers).
Pre/post assessments – see examples
See examples of graphic organizers and notebook formats in your packet.

10. WORD STUDY ROUTINE
See the handouts

11. FRAYER MODEL
See handouts for templates – particular form of Word Study
They can make their own too!

12. RED DOT/GREEN DOT
Number off the students 1-4 and have each group visit one poster with vocabulary words on it, then rotate to each chart around the room.
As they visit each poster they put a red, yellow, or green dot next to each vocabulary word to denote their familiarity with the word:
Green – know it and can explain it
Yellow – heard it, but can’t explain it
Red – never heard it before
You can see at a glance what instruction is needed or how instruction is going.
Use it as a pre/post activity for a unit.

14. PICTORIAL INPUT
Select something that can be drawn – i.e. parts of the brain
Draw the picture/diagram onto chart paper as you lecture about the parts.
Once you’ve finished, have the kids define and label each part of the diagram.
Keep it up in the room – great replacement for pre-made posters with much more “buy in” from the students because you’ve co-constructed knowledge with them.
GLAD strategy – Guided Language Acquisition Design
Multi-modal input

15. I HAVE…WHO HAS?
You can make your own set of cards for the unit you’re doing – see packet for master.
The whole class can participate in reinforcing vocabulary and concepts taught.
I have cerebellum…who has the largest lobe in the brain?
Kids are forced to pay attention when you’re doing this.
Great to use for review before quizzes.
You can time them to make it more challenging and see how fast they get back to the first person.

16. ANALOGIES
They identify the common relationships between two sets of items or identifying relationships between relationships:
Bone is to skeleton as word is to _____.
Decibel is to sound as _____ is to _____.
Turn to someone else and provide terms that will complete these analogies.
Analogical thinking is perhaps the most complex activity involving similarities and differences and requires in-depth analysis of the content.
This can be done orally or in writing. They must include a description of the relationship that both sets of terms have in common.
Allow time to discuss and share aloud.
Students can work in pairs or small groups.
See handout for other ideas of specific vocabulary activities using Tier 2 Words.

17. FIRST LEG OF THE STOOL: LEARNING THROUGH ACADEMIC DISCOURSE
They can participate in academic discourse using speaking frames – see social studies and science examples in your packets.
Teacher might pose questions each group will address.
Proven benefits:
Helps students encode information in their own words
Helps students view things from different perspectives
Allows for self-expression
Students gain a deeper understanding
Increases the probability that they will store the words in permanent/long term memory
Students who knew they weren’t going to be called on during vocabulary instruction recalled fewer words than students who knew they might be called on in class.
Give students the frames to help them articulate - Language Functions and Frames for Classroom Communication – Kinsella – see handout

18. ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF STRUCTURED, INCLUSIVE ACADEMIC DISCUSSIONS
See handout – Kinsella and Feldman
Appropriate Question/Task
Structured Thinking/Processing Time
Partner Rehearsal
Class Debriefing and Wrap Up

19. EVIDENCE OF THE NEED FOR STRUCTURED VERBAL ENGAGEMENT
Only 4% of an English Learner’s school day is spent engaging in student talk.
Only 2% of an English Learner’s day is spent discussing focal lesson content, and rarely speaking in complete sentences or applying relevant academic vocabulary – Arreaga-Mayer & Perdomo-Rivera
The need for opportunities for academic discourse is great!

20. SPECIFIC EXAMPLES “Talk a Mile a Minute” – Marzano – see handout
Think/Pair/Share or Think/Pair/Square/Share
Inside Outside Circle
IDEA Wave – Kinsella – see handout

21. SECOND LEG OF THE STOOL: ENGAGING WITH TEXT
What are “complex texts”? - see handout
Characteristics vary according to the subject matter and the intended audience, but they have certain things in common.
Reading complex texts helps develop complex reasoning.

22. DOCUMENT READABILITY
Since the very first years of Earth’s existence, there has been water present. No water is ever added or taken away from our atmosphere because it’s constantly moving in a water cycle.
From a Word document:
Click on Word Options
Proofing
Make sure “Check grammar with spelling” and “Show readability statistics” are checked
Click on spell check
Gives you the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
Gives you Flesch readability – 100 point scale – higher score is easier – based on average sentence length and number of syllables per word
Can be used to help modify text according to the needs of your students.

23. HOW TO APPROACH COMPLEX TEXTS
Not only do they need to know the vocabulary of the content area, but the syntax and text structures as well.
Teachers must deconstruct complex texts by paying close attention to the grammatical and rhetorical structures involved, and then assist ELL students to pay attention to the way these texts are constructed, developing “habits of mind.”
We accomplish this through the use of “Close Reading” – a careful and purposeful re-reading of a text.
It is a means of accessing complex text and learning to provide evidence and justification.

24. WHAT DOES CLOSE READING LOOK LIKE?
It is an encounter with text where students really focus on what the author had to say, the author’s purpose, what the words mean, and what the structure of the text tells us.
It requires that students actually think and understand what they are reading.
Teachers give them text dependent questions, not recall questions, but questions that allow students to think about the text and the author’s purpose, the structure, and flow of the text.
When they practice close reading they pay attention to the words and ideas, and are better able to answer more complex questions that require them to think about what the author said, and compare it with what they know, what they believe, and what they think.
For lower level ELL students you can use close reading and just help them work through 1-2 “juicy sentences” per day so they can pick up the big ideas.

25. “SYNTAX SURGERY”
Dissecting a sentence or paragraph or story to see how the parts are related
Goes beyond decoding vocabulary
Critical to reading comprehension
Pre-requisite to “active reading”

26. “SYNTAX SURGERY” CONTINUED
What should we focus on as we “dissect” a complex text?
Pronouns and their referents (more common in literature)
Transition words which indicate text structure (more common in expository text)
First, next, finally = sequence
Because, in order to, as a result of = cause/effect
For example = generalization and examples
However = signals a change
Flags for vocabulary context clues (rare in literature)
“The abolitionists were reformers who wanted to abolish or end slavery.”
Eileen, my mother, is a nice person.
How do you read punctuation?

27. 3-2-1 GO! Done with a partner or group
What are three things you know about ELL students?
What are two challenges ELL students face?
What is one strategy used to help ELL students?

28. GRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS
Drawing is integral to the meaning of informational texts. It shouldn’t be relegated to a “when you’re done” activity or thought of as art.
Visual literacy – different types of graphic texts.
Flowcharts, tables, pie charts, picture glossaries, storyboards, scale diagrams, bird’s eye views, tree diagrams, maps, bar graphs, webs, timelines, etc.
Recomposing – reading information in one format and summarizing it in another.
Tree diagrams and storyboards can be used as pre-writing activities.
Great book by Steven Moline – I See What You Mean – 11 different types of visual texts.
– you can preview the entire book online.

29. TEXTMASTERS Similar to Literature Circles – but for older students
Can be used with non-fiction texts
See handouts for job descriptions

30. THIRD LEG: WRITING ABOUT EVIDENCE, REASONING, AND ARGUMENT
Kids must first learn the “language” of the writing tasks we are asking them to perform – so the discourse we discussed earlier is the perfect way to start!
Begin with writing frames/sentence starters – see handouts
Be careful to know the difference and how you will use them.
Sentence starters may not always scaffold language use, but can still be used to get the information flowing for higher level ELL students.
Sentence frames help the students reconstruct the response for lower level ELL students.
Sentence frames must consider the level of your ELL students – you can include a word bank to help them or give them part of speech clues.
Gradually move to more complex ideas.

31. DIFFERENTIATED SENTENCE FRAMES
Beginning
People come for a better/safer ____. (noun: job, home, school, neighborhood, city, country)
Early Intermediate
Some people immigrate to have a better _____. (noun: salary)
Some people immigrate to have a _____ life. (adjective: safer)
Intermediate
Many people decide to immigrate because ________________. (sentence: they want to join relatives)
Many immigrants come to the U.S. for _____________. (noun phrase: a better job)
Early Advanced
People from diverse countries decide to immigrate because ________________. (sentence: they are victims of war in their homeland)
Some families decide to immigrate in order to __________________. (verb phrase: escape war)
Advanced
Families apply for U.S. immigration for various reasons, including ________________. (noun phrase)
Due to _____________, many individuals decide to immigrate to the U.S. (noun phrase)

32. MORE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
Readwritethink.org is a great website &title= - great interactive webbing tools that students can fill in on the computer.
resources/student-interactives/essay html - interactive essay map.
/cube_creator/ - Cube Creator – can use for science, social studies, etc.
Another terrific website for graphic organizers is -

33. Words of Wisdom
“Expertise isn’t what we have in our head or experience – it’s putting it into practice!” Aida Walqui – LTEL Symposium – June, 2014