Preparing Teacher Candidates to address Academic Language Colin Haysman Laura Hill-Bonnet

Introduction and Goals Our goals for you: Strengthen 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

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

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….

Conjuring a Context Pair-share with a table-mate some recent teaching context One in which your supervisees currently teach… Discuss language proficiencies of the students in this class.

CA Content Standards Take a look at the task card and resources card. Complete tasks 1, 2, and 3.

What makes an effective learning objective? Addresses a content standard Is specific Is measureable and/or observable Includes “doing” verbs

Writing a learning objective CA H/SS 10.5.4 Understand the nature of the WWI Students will be able to evaluate the causes of the 1st World War by writing a 5 paragraph essay. Complete task 4

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

Language Functions and Forms Activity With your partner complete the activity sheet.

Making learning objectives into language objectives CA H/SS 10.5.4 Understand the nature of the WWI Students will be able to evaluate the causes of the 1st World War by writing a 5 paragraph essay. Students will be able to use sentence structures that include phrases such as “more important than,” and “on the one hand...,” “however.”

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 Complete task 5

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?

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.”

How can we provide K12 students with opportunities for learning content AND language? Complete tasks 6, 7, 8 Procedures Identifying language demands Scaffolds

Questions?

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