1. Preparing Teacher Candidates and Faculty to address Academic Language
Colin Haysman, Stanford University
Laura Hill-Bonnet, Stanford University

2. Introduction and Goals
Our goals for you:
Raise awareness and understanding of Academic Language (AL) across a variety of content areas
To experience identifying AL demands and objectives
To be better able to prepare your teacher candidates in addressing AL in their own teaching

3. Introduction and Goals
Teacher Candidates (TCs) will need to determine:
their students’ language proficiencies within an additive framing (what they CAN do linguistically)
the language demands for the learning segment they are teaching
how to support all students in meeting those language demands

4. Introduction– First Steps
Our premise is that in order for TCs to be able to do these 3 things, we must first begin with
A context
Some [state] standard
And a solid learning objective….

5. Conjuring a Context Think of some recent teaching context
One in which you have [recently] taught…
One in which your supervisees currently teach…
Try to be as specific as you can in thinking about the language proficiencies of the students in this class.
Share with your group & collectively decide on a context to use for this activity

6. CA Content Standards
Take a look at the task card and resources card. (You have already done tasks 1 & 2!)
Complete task 3.

7. What makes an effective learning objective?
Addresses a content standard
Is specific
Is measureable and/or observable
Includes “doing” verbs
(see handout)

8. Writing a learning objective
CA H/SS
Understand the nature of the WWI
Students will be able to evaluate the causes of the 1st World War in writing.
Complete task 4

9. TCs are asked to:
Consider language demands associated with content understandings in the learning segment. These include the oral and written academic language that students will need to understand or produce in your learning segment.
Identify the key academic language demand and explain why it is integral to the central focus for the segment and appropriate to students’ academic language development.
Consider language functions and language forms, essential vocabulary, symbols, and/or phrases for the concepts and skills being taught, and instructional language necessary for students to understand or produce oral and/or written language within learning tasks and activities.

10. Language Demands Language Functions
(lesson components that are challenging)
Language Functions
(what we ask students to DO in those challenging components)
Language Forms
(linguistic structures of those functions)

11. Functions (genres/purposes)
The tasks or purposes AND uses of language.
We use language to accomplish something in formal or informal settings, for social or academic purposes.
Social purposes include: exchanging greetings, expressing needs, making jokes, indicating agreement or disagreement, participating in personal conversations, etc.

12. Academic Language Functions Chamot and O’Malley, 1974
Seek Information - use who, what, when, where, how
Inform - recount information or retell
Compare - explain graphic organizer showing contrast
Order - describe timeline, continuum or cycle
Classify - describe organizing principles
Analyze - describe features or main idea
Infer - generate hypotheses to suggest cause/outcomes
Justify & Persuade - give evidence why “A” is important
Solve Problems - describe problem-solving procedures
Synthesize - summarize information cohesively
Evaluate - identify criteria, explain priorities, etc.

13. Forms (linguistic structures)
Content-specific vocabulary
The words that hold our language together and are essential to comprehension. They are words that determine relationships between and among words.

14. For example…
Connecting words: because, then, but, sometimes, before, therefore, however and whereas
Prepositions and prepositional phrases: on, in, under, behind, next to, in front of, between, among and in the background
Basic regular and irregular verbs: leave, live, eat, use, saw, and went
Pronouns: she, he, his, their, it, each other, and themselves
Academic vocabulary: notice, think, analyze, plan, compare, proof, and characteristics

15. Making learning objectives into language objectives
CA H/SS
Understand the nature of the WWI
Students will be able to evaluate the causes of the 1st World War in writing.
Students will be able to use sentence structures that include phrases such as “more important than,” and “on the one hand...,” “however.”

16. Identifying AL Functions and Forms
To identify the key AL demands we ask credential candidates to think about the following areas of their lesson plans:
Learning objectives (look at the verb)
Assessment

17. Identifying AL Functions and Forms
What is it that you want students to do/read/write/say/draw?
Say/write/draft what an “appropriate” student response might be.
What content words does it contain?
What grammatical structures does it contain?

18. Example: Content Standard: Learning objective:
Grade One, Reading
2.7 Retell the central ideas of simple expository or narrative passages.
Learning objective:
Given a read-aloud of “The Little Red Hen,” students will be able to retell key events in the story.
Language objective (key language demand):
Students will be able to use regular and irregular past-tense verbs to retell the story.
“The Little Red Hen [found, planted, harvested, ground, baked] a grain of wheat.”

19. AL in PACT
Complete task 5
Your questions?

20. chaysman@stanford.edu laurahb1@stanford.edu
Thank you!!