Support English-Language Learners with Scannable Technology

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8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Language

Understanding Academic Language

"Change your language and you change your thoughts." -- Karl Albrecht

Clay Activity

Sumerians are believed to have the oldest written langauge where the writing is mainly in pictographs. The earliest forms of Mesopotamian script dates back as early as 8000 BCE where cuneiform tablets were used for some kind of record keeping.
The Mesopotamian boys started as young as 12 when they became scribes. They were trained to write cuneiform and record many of the languages spoken in Mesopotamia. The students watched a video on how to write on the tablets. While the ancient Mesopotamians used a stylus to scribe, our students used clay and a chopstick to inscribe their wiritng on the tablets.

Character and Key Details

As we teach traits the students are taught to understand the difference between character traits and feelings. They were taught to use words to describe the qualities of characters in the book they have read.
The author may tell us these traits directly, but mostly they will show us these traits in action. The job as readers is to draw a conclusion about the character's traits (to infer them) from what the character says, thinks, and does.
An inference could be made from something a character does only once, or conclusions might be drawn from a series of things the character says and does.
The students worked on a activity which furthered their understanding of identifying character traits.

The students learned about character traits and used them to explain their character. After reading their book, they went through a process of listing the traits on a graphic organizer followed by creating a poster. On this they wrote the physical and personality traits. Here is an example of the of the students' work.

Vocabulary Charts

Through the use of vocabulary charts English Language Learners can be helped in acquiring academic language. Displays on the wall can help them access the words more easily.

Through the use of word charts you can help English language learners with one

of the most critical factors in their academic success – the acquisition of academic

vocabulary.

Through the use of word charts you can help English language learners with one

of the most critical factors in their academic success – the acquisition of academic

vocabulary.

A  visual chart is placed in the classroom and the words are written in all langauges to help all students. This technique is beneficial to all learners as it reinforces the content words as it they see it everyday which imrpoves their understanding.

Through the use of word charts you can help English language learners with one

of the most critical factors in their academic success – the acquisition of academic

vocabulary.

Lascaux Cave Art

Lascaux is famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings which is estimated to be about 20,000 years old found in South Eastern France. he caves were discovered by  teenagers who stumbled upon the ruins.
The paintings are mainly pictures of animals and symbols, and possibly one human figure.
The students were invloved in this hands on project where they did cave art after taking a virtual tour around the caves.
As they did the tour, they noted down the characteristics of the caves and used them to create their piece of art work. They worked in partners and used butcher paper with color pastels (keeing in mind the only colors used during that time period were red, black, orange, and brown).
This project was targeted for all learners and they enjoyed working on it.

As students read, they are required to write a book review. They will use the rubric and the sentence starters to write the summary and about the characters.
The review is posted on our book blog which will be updated everything they post a new one. This is an example of of the beginner EAL student and her first attempt in writing a book review. Here is a story stem activity:

The Weather Drum
by Rosalind Kerven

This story is time immemorial. This village had thunder and lightning and rain. Everyone ‘’Please stop the storm’’ they shouted to the sky.There was a man called ‘’Big Raven’’. He have magic coat and he changed into a big black bird. He came to a village in the sky world. There was a terrible storm here too. He went into the tent. He saw an old man and an old woman. The woman was his wife, rain woman. Two people helped to stop the thunder and lightning.

Posted by Miyu

Early Humans Mini -project

Students choose the three advancements of early humans that they felt had the most impact on mankind. They researched and then created an A4 sized poster including three images and three descriptions of why this advancement was important. The students had a choice to either present it through techonolgy or on a poster. Here is an example along with a decsription of the project and the rubric.

Memoirs


This year students wrote memoirs as their personal narrative for our first writing unit in language arts. We spent a considerable amount of time on mini-lessons that addressed the following:
*generating story ideas
*characteristics of memoirs
*hooking the reader
*focusing on the main event
*showing not telling using the senses
*good endings
*revision and editing skills



As a final assessment, they were asked to self-assess using the following rubric. The rubric begins with a grade 4 level to the left and works towards a grade 7 level of writing proficiency. This rubric was adapted from materials from TCRWP (Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project). The original rubric is about 4 pages long; however, we knew that this would overwhelm our student population in which many of them are ELL's. So, we adapted this rubric to make it more manageable.

Here are some examples of memoir writing from the beginner EAL students.

Welcome and Goals

Welcome to my self assessment blog for the 2014-15 school year. On this blog, I will reflect on my professional practice and growth. In addition to my goals I will be sharing related educational articles.

The following ae my goals set for this academic year:-

Professional Goals (Personal)

I intend to use some types of technological programs such as Blabberize, Book Reviews and Book Trailers to monitor growth on writing and speaking with the level 1 EAL’s.

Standard 12: Teacher demonstrates proficiency with technology.

I will use multiple measures, including summative and formative assessments to evaluate student progress and growth.

Standard 2-Assessment of student learning is consistent with AISC expectations.