1. Reflecting on ESL Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum LAUSD District 6 January 18, 2006

2. Professor Pauline Gibbons Faculty of Education University of Technology Sydney, Australia Pauline.Gibbons@uts.edu.au

3. Key Question What is the “signature” of an effective teaching and learning classroom environment for English language learners?

4. 3 Basic Assumptions Underpinning ESL Teaching and Learning Effective ESL teaching and learning requires: 1. Development of a “high challenge and high support” curriculum 2. Teachers’ understanding of language as a meaning –making system 3. Explicit teaching of academic language integrated with content teaching.

5. The Planned Curriculum: Evidence front-loaded scaffolding; scaffolding that builds on what learners bring to the learning situation (language, experience and knowledge), and makes connections between this and the curriculum; language and subject/content integration; meaning-driven language teaching;

6. The Planned Curriculum: Evidence (continued) explicit focus on form and grammar; links made between spoken and written language; the development of second language literacy;

7. The Planned Curriculum: Evidence (continued) opportunities for students to use new language in contextually appropriate ways and in authentic situations; ‘message abundancy’; the development of metalinguistic and metacognitive understandings; formative assessment practices with assessment used to inform teaching.

8. The Enacted Curriculum: Examples extended dialogues (non- IRF) by students with teacher and peers, leading to ‘substantive conversation’ and increased depth of knowledge; increased ‘wait time’ in teacher-student talk, and opportunities for self correction/repair by students; opportunities for students to take on ‘expert’ roles; initiation of questions and topics by students; use of higher-order questioning by teacher;

9. The Enacted Curriculum: Examples (continued) thinking (of teacher and students) made explicit in the discourse; respect for alternative viewpoints: knowledge as problematic; teacher as active listener (e.g., through appropriation of student ideas, and building on student responses); positive interpersonal/affective relationships; understanding by students of how to work collaboratively.

10. Implications for Teacher Learning in Schools 1. participation in action learning with others; 2. development of a shared language by teachers (about language, learning and second language development) across faculties, classes;

11. Implications for Teacher Learning in Schools 3. addressing teachers’ own perceived needs, questions and concerns; 4. authentic collaboration between researchers/academics and teachers;

12. Implications for Teacher Learning in Schools 5. professional development that mirrors a collaborative classroom: congruence between the ‘medium’ and the ‘message’; 6. a focus on principled knowledge, not simply procedural knowledge.