The Language-Rich Classroom

A Research-Based Framework for Teaching English Language Learners

Pérsida Himmele, William Himmele

• Verlag: ASCD
• Jahr: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781416611936
• Thema: Education
• Thema: Education General

Today's multilingual classrooms challenge even the best teachers' skills. As teachers strive to help all students reach their full potential, the needs of English language learners (ELLs) can seem overwhelming.

In The Language-Rich Classroom, educators and consultants Pérsida and William Himmele present a five-part, research-based framework--CHATS—that teachers can use to help ELLs, as well as other students, attain greater language skills and deeper content comprehension. This field-tested framework includes diagnostic tools, comprehensive overviews on second-language acquisition, and teaching techniques to boost language learning in any classroom. The CHATS framework provides teachers with

C = content reading strategies,
H = higher-order thinking skills,
A = assessment tools,
T = total participation techniques, and
S = scaffolding strategies

The book also contains helpful planning worksheets, assessment logs, and scaffolding tools. Teachers will also find more than 25 classroom and team-building activities and specific tips about how these activities benefit ELLs. The Language-Rich Classroom is an invaluable resource that will help teachers foster greater gains in students' language development, increase their comprehension across all subject areas, and build classrooms that are engaging and welcoming to students of all cultures.

Chapter 1

ELLs: An Overview

As we'll see in the section on the backgrounds of English language learners, this student population represents a highly diverse group of students and thus a special set of challenges for the educators and administrators who work with them. This chapter offers an overview of the characteristics of ELLs as well as the most pressing issues pertaining to them.

The Dropout Problem

One of the greatest challenges that teachers of ELLs face with regard to bridging the achievement gap between these students and their native English-speaking peers is the development of academic language.

If we look at statistics from 2002 graduation rates, the estimated dropout rate for whites is 29 percent and 44 percent for African Americans. For Latinos, the dropout rate is the highest at 48 percent (Greene & Winters, 2005). Richard Fry (2003), of the Pew Hispanic Foundation, found that of the 16- to 19-year-old Latino dropouts in his study, about 60 percent had poor English language skills, compared to 15 percent who had fluent English skills.

Academic Language

We consider academic language in greater detail in Chapter 2. For now, if we were to take an honest look at the level of English language proficiency needed to do well in school, or even the level needed to marginally pass basic 12th grade proficiency tests in reading, writing, history, and even math, and if we were to go a step further to look at the type of English one would need to be considered proficient enough to do moderately well on an SAT exam for college entrance, we would have to admit that ELLs face a daunting task. To succeed in school, they must acquire not just a conversational fluency but a deeper type of academic language that continues to develop long after many ELLs have been formally exited from ESL programs. In pullout ESL programs, too often the term exited from ESL sends an entirely wrong message to classroom teachers. Teachers will often assume that the ELL no longer needs linguistic support. In fact, students may need the most help after they exit the program, when all visible linguistic supports have been eliminated. In a nonbilingual ESL program, the best kind of support that we can offer ELLs is not solely linguistic but that of meaningful content and language together (Echevarria & Graves, 2003; Faltis & Hudelson, 1994; Freeman & Freeman, 2001). So then it is the classroom teacher, not just ESL specialists, who must have the ability and the responsibility to provide a critical bridge into the rich world of academic language development, which is most practically developed in grade-level and content-area classrooms. However, it is important to note that the process of creating an integrated language-rich environment is not likely to happen without informed and intentional planning on the part of the teacher.

Cummins (1991) examined the referrals and psychological assessments of over 400 English language learners. He found that in many of the special education referrals, ELLs' oral communicative language was more developed than their academic language. Although in many referrals language was seen as a possible problem area, others overlooked the topic of language altogether and suggested that the student had deeper problems stemming from learning disabilities. One referral addressed a student from Portugal: "Arrived from Portugal at age 10 and was placed in a second grade class; three years later in fifth grade, her teacher commented that 'her oral answering and comprehension is so much better than her written work that we feel a severe learning problem is involved, not just her non-English background'" (p. 4). What is most notable in Cummins's examples is the lack of accommodations, linguistic understandings, patience, and support given by school personnel for ELLs to acquire the second language. Cummins also noted referrals that demonstrated concern over learning disabilities as early as the first year that the student arrived. In one example, a child was referred for special education services in 1st grade, with no mention of that child's status as an English language learner. "PR was referred in first grade by the school principal who noted that 'PR is experiencing considerable difficulty with grade one work. An intellectual assessment would help her teacher to set realistic learning expectations for her and might provide some clues as to remedial assistance that might be offered'" (p. 5).

Cummins's research led to a greater understanding of the differences between conversational and academic language and the impact each has on school performance. In the 1980s, Cummins's acronyms of BICS (basic interpersonal communicative skills) and CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) became self-contained words among the bilingual and ESL teaching communities, and these terms continue to remain so today. Cummins found that it often took children an average of two years to acquire the conversational language he called BICS. Consider BICS to be the type of conversational English you might hear students speaking on the playground or in the cafeteria. CALP is the type of language one would experience while reading a textbook or hearing a formal speech. CALP, or academic language, often took an average of five to seven years to acquire. Hakuta, Butler, and Witt (2000) confirmed Cummins's findings on academic language development. In their study, academic language took about four to seven years to develop. Although they noted that because their study included only students who had been enrolled since kindergarten, their findings might have been underestimated. In fact, the amount of time for many ELLs to approach grade-level norms may be closer to a range of 7 to 10 years (Thomas & Collier, 2002).

An In-Depth Look

For criticism of and expansion on the concept of academic language, refer to Valdés's (2004) article cited in the references section of this text.

If you are interested in additional articles on teaching ELLs and a quick look at BICS and CALP, with rebuttals to counterarguments, refer to Jim Cummins's Web site: www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/.

To summarize, conversational language is different from academic language. Students need academic language to succeed in school. Sound simple enough? Unfortunately, children rarely arrive with information that indicates the level and extent of proficiency that they're in the process of acquiring. And, they also rarely come with information suggesting the instructional approaches that would help them succeed the most. Even though teachers may, on the surface, know the definitions of BICS and CALP, the differences between the two can become muddled when working with actual children. The distinction between the two can lead to big misunderstandings on the part of teachers who misdiagnose students as having reached a high level of English language proficiency, when in fact they have not. Students may have reached a level of English proficiency where they are able to communicate at a conversational level but need support to reach the levels of their native English-speaking peers in tasks that require academic language proficiency.

Consider the following scenario. Let's say that you are a 3rd grade teacher (Mrs. G.), and you've just come in after lunch and are approached by Mariana. Mariana came to the United States in the beginning of 1st grade and is struggling in your classroom. The following dialogue takes place.

Mariana: Oh, man, Mrs. G., can you believe they had potator tots again for lunch today? That stuff is so nasty it makes me wanna barf.

Teacher: Really, is it that bad?

Mariana: Oh, I can't tell you how bad. You know, not to be rude, but it looks like barf on a plate.

Teacher: Oh, my goodness! That bad?

Mariana: Worse! Teacher, ya gotta do something about that for us. Talk to the lunch lady or somethin'.

Now consider the same scenario again, but this time you are Mr. G. (to be gender-fair), and your student is Mitsy. Mitsy's parents are two lawyers living in the uppercrust section of town. Mitsy is a 3rd grade native English speaker who approaches you about the same problem.

Mitsy: Uh, Mr. G., You wouldn't believe. They had potator tots for lunch today. This has to be the gazillionth time in a row!

Teacher: Is that a bad thing?

Mitsy: Bad?! That stuff is so nasty! I look at it and I wanna puke!

Teacher: Wow! It can't be that bad.

Mitsy: Huh? No, potator tots are so disgusting that people say they look like barf on a plate. And they do!

Hopefully, if we've made our point well, you didn't notice much of a difference in the language use of Mariana and Mitsy. The fact is that we use a different type of discourse when we speak in conversations than we do when we are presenting formal speeches or writing papers. Both Mariana and Mitsy use slang, made-up words, and common expressions to get their point across. And both have effectively made their point.

In the context of a conversation, it's hard to see any difference between the linguistic competence of Mariana and Mitsy. But the fact remains there is a huge difference. Mitsy is at the top of her class. Mariana is at the bottom. Mitsy scores well on tests. Mariana scores poorly. Mitsy's rankings on standardized tests show that she is at about the 85th percentile in reading. Mariana is struggling at about the 20th percentile. Yet, a teacher who isn't intentionally assessing language development or investigating ways to understand Mariana's language development might very well believe that because Mariana and Mitsy sound about the same, there's no reason that their performance shouldn't also be about the same. Not only does the teacher become frustrated with Mariana, but Mariana becomes frustrated with school. If we are going to meet the needs of ELLs in our classrooms, then we have to have a clearer understanding of the process of second language acquisition. Simple and ongoing assessment of academic language development should be practiced by all teachers who have ELLs in their classrooms. (We cover classroom assessment of language development and proficiency in more detail in Chapter 5.)

A Note About Writing

Asking Mariana and Mitsy to complete a writing assignment provides a much clearer picture of the differences of academic and conversational fluency that the two students have. Writing is often a truer measure of academic language proficiency than speaking or even comprehension in reading. Although Mitsy may not use a great deal of academic language in her speech, she knows to pull it out in her writing. For Mariana, often what you get in writing is a reflection of conversational competency. For example, words and word phrases that are heard one way in oral language, but that appear differently in written text, are written in the way they sound or appear in oral conversations. For example, "could have" appears as "could of." Oftentimes, when a student has little or no experience with these words in written form, the result will be the oral form in the student's writing. Unfortunately, Mariana does not have the academic language with which to explain her feelings of inadequacy in writing. She's not likely to say, "Well, teacher, I haven't really developed a strong enough bank of academic vocabulary with which to effortlessly create writing activities that rely heavily on academic language." Instead, you're more likely to hear Mariana say, "I hate writing."

Dual Immersion Programs

There is compelling evidence that prior literacy and schooling experiences in the home language are the most important factors that account for student success in the second language (Cummins, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1991; Fillmore, 2005; Krashen, 1996). The interdependence of literacy skills exists from one language to another for students who speak a home language with similar alphabetic foundations as that of English (e.g., Spanish), but it also exists for students who speak languages with writing systems that are remarkably different from English (e.g., Arabic or Chinese) (Chan, 2004; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001). When a school's ELL population is highly homogenous, bilingual education provides opportunities for students to continue cognitive development in their home language which has a positive effect on their academic development in the second language (Cummins, 1980, 1991).

Dual language immersion programs, often called two-way bilingual programs, offer a practical alternative to English-only classes. In dual immersion classes, both native English speakers and native speakers of another language are provided with an opportunity to continue experiencing cognitively intense concept development while they learn another language. In dual immersion programs half the students in the class are native English speakers and the other half of the class speaks the second language used in the program. Instruction is given in both languages at a predetermined ratio of time (e.g., 50 percent English, 50 percent Spanish) without having content be repeated. In dual immersion programs, English language learners and native English speakers enjoy the cognitive and social benefits of learning a new language.

While we support bilingual programming as the most successful model for teaching ELLs, we also realize that in low incidence schools or schools with heterogeneous linguistic populations, bilingual programs are not always feasible. The challenge for teachers in these schools is to become mediators of comprehension for students of differing linguistic backgrounds in a way that provides all students with opportunities for meaningful access to academic language and content in English.

An In-Depth Look

Interested in reading more about dual language immersion? For practical tools to help you run an effective dual language program, see Soltero's (2004) Dual Language: Teaching and Learning in Two Languages. Soltero provides background on dual language programs, but probably the most helpful feature of her text is the way she provides the nuts and bolts for how to actually plan and implement the program well within your school district. This book would be a good read for members of a steering committee charged with establishing an effective program. Chapters are followed by questions that can be helpful in facilitating discussion among faculty.

Another excellent text for understanding dual language is Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators, by Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri (2005). The authors effectively lay a foundation for understanding how to implement dual language programs. They are ESL gurus, well respected among the ESL teaching community. This text is helpful for a thorough understanding of the theoretical foundations behind dual language programming.

CHATS and Language Development

No matter what program model your school implements, the CHATS framework can be successfully implemented in bilingual, sheltered, or multilingual classrooms. It's aimed at developing content and language through active learning at deep levels of thinking. It honors many of the principles used in sheltered instructional programs, in that "sheltered instruction is a means for making grade-level content, such as science, social studies, and math, more accessible for English language learners, while also promoting English development" (Echevarria & Graves, 2003, p. 53). It differs from sheltered instructional programming in that where sheltered classrooms are designed so that ELLs of similar linguistic levels make up the entire class (Krashen, 1992; Richard-Amato & Snow, 2005), our framework applies many of the principles of sheltered instruction for use in teaching and learning in mixed classrooms that include ELLs, students with special needs, and native English speakers. As you'll notice, all students will benefit from the use of the framework.

The CHATS framework works particularly well when used in a co-teaching model, where in-class units are coplanned by the grade-level classroom teachers, the special education teacher, and the ELL teacher. During the units, targeted support is provided to students with special needs by the special education teacher, and students with linguistic needs are supported in class by the ELL teacher.

The 3rd grade team at Washington Elementary School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, put this idea into practice. They presented their lessons to 48 students as two teachers combined their classes to successfully make optimal use of their time with the special education and ELL teachers. Lessons were so engaging that principal Dr. Janette Hewitt commented, "Usually when you're sending children out to go back and respond, you get some laggers. … Not one! And there were two classes together, so it was almost 50 children. Not one of them stopped any adult; they went right back to their seats, and they knew, they knew what they wanted to write." Lessons were presented by any one of the teachers and included instructional strategies and approaches that foster engagement, language growth, and content learning. This was an ideal inclusive structure that allowed for students to lea...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: A Schoolwide Effort
• Chapter 1. ELLs: An Overview
• Chapter 2. Developing Academic Language
• Chapter 3. C = Content Reading Strategies
• Chapter 4. H = Higher-Order Thinking Skills
• Chapter 5. A = Assessment
• Chapter 6. T = Total Participation Techniques
• Chapter 7. S = Scaffolding Strategies
• Conclusion: Planning Your CHATS Units
• References
• About the Authors
• Related ASCD Resources
• Study Guide
• Copyright