© British Council, All rights reserved. Language Awareness in the Primary Classroom An ELIS WSA-EC course, under licence from British Council Session one.
© British Council, All rights reserved. Course aims To enable teachers to understand key concepts in subject literacy. To guide teachers in identifying language-specific demands of Science, Mathematics and Social Studies in EL-Medium Classrooms at Primary level To equip Primary teachers with approaches and strategies to support students with subject-specific language required for understanding subject content, taking into consideration language-specific requirement of each subject
© British Council, All rights reserved. Language Awareness in the Primary Classroom Why are we here? What is the purpose of this course?
© British Council, All rights reserved. Subject Literacy Subject Literacy is an acknowledgment that different subjects ask different questions of texts require different kinds of background knowledge to understand Use different subject specific vocabulary, grammatical structures and functional language
© British Council, All rights reserved. Course overview Session 1: background and application (learn concepts and examples) Session 2: focus on language awareness (develop your language awareness) Session 3: integrating and language and content (apply your knowledge when planning lessons)
© British Council, All rights reserved. Session aims Session 1 aims to: Clarify key terms and theory surrounding subject literacy Examine some models of subject literacy Consider whether language is the key barrier to learning success Examine some ways that language support can be brought into the subject lesson
© British Council, All rights reserved. Concept Check Consider these statements: “Monarch caterpillars sure vary a lot in how well they grow.” Monarch caterpillar growth exhibits a significant amount of variation. Reflect upon the differences: Vocabulary, Syntactic structure, Parts of Speech, Sentence Subject, Modifiers.
© British Council, All rights reserved. Why are you here? “It’s not just that you should teach LITERACY; the bigger issue is that you are teaching LITERACY; whether you like it or not. The only question is: how well are you doing it? This means at some point in every lesson, you will be modeling how to _____, _____, ______, or ________.” -David Didau “The Secret of Literacy: Making the Implicit Explicit” © British Council, All rights reserved.
Why are we here? “It’s not just that you should teach LITERACY; the bigger issue is that you are teaching LITERACY; whether you like it or not. The only question is: how well are you doing it? This means at some point in every lesson, you will be modeling how to read, write, speak, or listen.” -David Didau “The Secret of Literacy: Making the Implicit Explicit”
© British Council, All rights reserved. What does this mean? BICS CL CALP
© British Council, All rights reserved. Jigsaw Reading
© British Council, All rights reserved. Dr. Jim Cummins
© British Council, All rights reserved. BICS stands for: Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, and the language to do relationship building and maintaining on a day to day level. BICS
© British Council, All rights reserved. CL is Classroom language. This is what teachers use to discipline, control and set up tasks, and the functions students need to share their thinking. CALP is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency. The ability to talk, and understand in a ‘disciplinary specific’ way. CL and CALP
© British Council, All rights reserved. BICS to CALP
© British Council, All rights reserved. (B) High cognitive demand BUT low linguistic challenge (C) High cognitive demand AND high linguistic challenge (A) Low cognitive demand AND low linguistic challenge (D) Low cognitive demand BUT high linguistic challenge Cummins (1979)
© British Council, All rights reserved. Language Awareness ReadingWritingListeningSpeaking Grammar, Vocabulary, Functional Language Where do we need to provide language support?
© British Council, All rights reserved. Features on Language in Mathematics Complexity of working with words used in mathematics that have other meanings. Homophones Technical terms : specific / precise to mathematics Spatial terminology Performance verbs Procedural Vocabulary Lexical density Specialist syntax to express logical relationships Mathematical symbols : symbols have their own discourse Word Problems as a text type – semantic structuring of questions – multiple clauses - identifying the task embedded in the text Use of conditionals Zero Conditional - Use of being and having verbs - use of the present tense Informative technical language with no storyline Use of infinitives Modal verbs of prediction and recommendation Future tense Comparative Structures
© British Council, All rights reserved. Swee Eng loves caterpillars. She found a pair of caterpillars in her back yard. She called her two caterpillars Tim and Tom. Her caterpillars are very hungry and they each eat 2 leaves every day. How many leaves will her caterpillars eat in one week?
© British Council, All rights reserved. Identifying Language Concerns What mathematics language support would children need to be successful with this word problem?
© British Council, All rights reserved. Language Awareness ReadingWritingListeningSpeaking Grammar, Vocabulary, Functional Language Where do we need to provide language support?
The Mathematics Register Without language fluency in mathematics, students are restricted in the ways that they can develop or redefine their mathematical understandings. (Meaney 2005) Mathematics Register = analytical, descriptive and problem solving language Mathematics Register = the ability to listen, question, discuss, read and record in the discourse of mathematics. Reading Writing ListeningSpeaking
© British Council, All rights reserved. Review Time Why are we here? What is the purpose of this course? How can you represent the key concepts of the course through illustration and new names? BICS > CALP