Fostering Academic Language and Engagement: A deeper dive into two programs and an assessment Lowry Hemphill Wheelock College Catherine Snow Harvard Graduate School of Education Paola Uccelli Harvard Graduate School of Education

Two different curricula with a shared theory of change Word GenerationSTARI Tier 1Tier 2 Normal class sizeReduced class size Cross-content areasELA only Multiple teachers in grades 6-8Single teacher Focus on teaching academic vocabulary Focus on teaching decoding and fluency skills Texts at various reading levelsText difficulty level ramped up systematically over time Incorporates direct teaching of argumentation Incorporates direct teaching of comprehension strategies Variable implementation fidelityHigh implementation fidelity Tier 1Tier 2 Normal class sizeReduced class size

Shared theory of change Engaging students in controversial issues

Shared theory of change Promoting student talk, especially peer to peer talk (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003)

Shared theory of change Developing personal stances on a text

Shared theory of change Defending stances with text-based evidence

Shared theory of change Learning discourse practices for discussion and debate

Close partnerships with districts Critical for effective curriculum design Teachers tried out texts and activities with their students Contributed to lesson plans, content sequences Teachers gave rich feedback on coaching and PD approaches

Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) DEFINITION: a constellation of the high-utility language skills that correspond to linguistic features prevalent in academic discourse across school content areas and that are infrequent in colloquial conversations Uccelli, Barr, Dobbs, Phillips Galloway, Meneses, & Sáncez (2015), Reading Research Quarterly

Uccelli, Phillips Galloway, Barr, Meneses, & Dobbs (2015). Reading Research Quarterly

morphologically complex words (ethnicity, invasion) complex sentences (embedded clauses) words that refer to reasoning and text discussion processes (hypothesis, generalize) connectives prevalent in academic texts (consequently, nonetheless) reference chains (Water evaporates at 100 degrees Celsius. This process…) conventional sequence of argumentative text (thesis, argument, conclusion) stance markers’, that signal a writer’s degree of certainty (certainly; it is unlikely that)

Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) CALS-I Form 1: Grades 4 – 6 CALS-I Form 2: Grades 7 – 8 Group-administered paper-and-pencil instrument (50 minutes) Designed to measure cross-disciplinary academic language skills relevant to support reading comprehension across content areas Results reported as a single CALS-I score Uccelli, Barr, Dobbs, Phillips Galloway, Meneses, & Sáncez (2015), Reading Research Quarterly

Task 2: Connecting ideas Directions:  First, read the sentences to yourself.  Then, circle the answer that best completes the sentence. CALS-I Sample items

Individual variability within and across grades Proportion of students by CALS Percentile Levels and by Grade (n=3,563) 25th75th95th

Variability across and within SES groups Distribution of Students by CALS-I Percentile Levels and by SES

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305F to the Strategic Education Research Partnership as part of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.