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ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students: Grades 4-8
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Grade Level: Fourth grade in a self-contained, content-based ESL class
English Proficiency Level: Beginning
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Social studies
Location: Urban school district in the Southeast
The following vignette describes a fourth-grade, self-contained ESL class in an urban school district. It takes place in the first month of the school year. The beginning-level, immigrant students are taught by Mr. Thompson, a licensed ESL teacher. Mr. Thompson has observed that his students have limited knowledge of their community. He plans to integrate the teaching of English with an increased awareness of the neighborhood's resources so that students can feel more at home in their neighborhood.
Mr. Thompson begins the lesson by drawing a large, simplified map of the streets and immediate neighborhood around the school on chart paper. Then, in a series of interactions, he elicits the location of the school, using prepositions of place in context. Students take turns coming up to the map in pairs and telling each other how they walk from school to their homes. Where needed, Mr. Thompson provides directional vocabulary for the students as they mark their paths on the map.
Next the teacher models a short dialogue between a person who is lost and a police officer. That person is asking directions to a specific place. He asks the students to practice the conversation in preparation for a role play. Students take turns role playing similar conversations and integrating their own ideas and places of interest. Creativity of expression is encouraged. The "lost" student requests assistance from the "police officer" and on occasion asks for clarification of the directions provided. The teacher models and restates students' words to offer support and guidance.
Students then brainstorm names of community businesses and resources, and Mr. Thompson lists them on the chart. He introduces and reinforces other community vocabulary using pictures, photographs, and student drawings. Students are grouped in fours, with each group divided into two pairs. One pair from each foursome join one of two walking groups that will walk through the school neighborhood.
After careful planning and discussion with students about what to look for, Mr. Thompson and another teacher each take one of the groups on a walk through the school neighborhood. The two groups walk in different directions to cover more territory. The students begin their work by looking for signs to read in English or in other languages. As they walk, the teachers and students point out the location of businesses and community resources, such as the drug store and the post office. Students use a teacher-made trip sheet to tally the number of times they see a particular type of business or resource, discussing along the way the important community resources available to them.
Back in class, pairs reform their groups and discuss what they saw on their separate trips. Then the student groups create a community pictograph on poster paper using the results of their tally. Each group decides on the icons they will use to represent the businesses and community resources they saw. After completing the pictograph, they discuss as a group which business or resource they consider most important in their community. They write some descriptive words, phrases, or sentences on the posters. Each group presents its poster to the class and explains the reasons it chose those icons and that business or resource as most important.
Students are encouraged to
One of the most difficult social adjustments for immigrant students is to feel oriented to their new country, beginning with their own neighborhood and community. Mr. Thompson aims to make this process take place more smoothly. The map skills portion of his lesson introduces a skill that is especially helpful for beginning-level, immigrant ESOL students.
Mr. Thompson's use of a model conversation based on a real-life situation (being lost, understanding directions given orally) serves two important functions: (a) it helps the students develop language skills for meaningful social interactions, and (b) it aids students in gaining the confidence they will need to ask for clarification or help. The "lost" students had to elicit information from the "police officers" and check their comprehension of the information received. Mr. Thompson also encouraged the students to rely on their own knowledge to create their conversations. Pair work, both during the map activity and the dialogue, provided a support structure for the beginning-level students as well as a genuine conversation partner.
Mr. Thompson often designs his own materials based on his students' unique needs and proficiency levels. In this lesson, he drew a simplified map, collected pictures and photos, and designed a trip tally sheet. This sheet set a purpose for the walk as it helped students focus on desired items. Having two separate groups added another benefit. When they reconvened, the pairs had to use English to explain what they saw. Student interest was further captured as they tallied the types of businesses and community resources they found. The pictograph activity offered the student groups an opportunity to discuss possibilities and negotiate the design of their own icons. In selecting one business or resource to highlight and write about, they also had to use listening, speaking, and negotiating skills.
Grade Level: Sixth grade in an after-school art program
English Proficiency Level: Intermediate to advanced
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Art
Location: Suburban school district in the West
The following vignette describes an after-school art program offered to sixth graders at a middle school in a suburban district. Ms. Ashakazian, the art teacher, sponsors the club after school as part of the extended day program. The club includes both native English and nonnative English speakers. The nonnative English speakers come from multiple language backgrounds and study together in the ESL classes at the school.
It is early in the school year and Ms. Ashakazian wants to help the sixth graders feel more at home in their new school. She also knows that many of the students in the art club do not know one another because they recently enrolled from various elementary schools this year. To foster their connection to the middle school and help them get acquainted, she proposes they paint a mural along one of the cafeteria walls. The mural will depict the students' favorite heroes, but the selection of which heroes to paint would be based on a contest. Students would have to research their hero, sketch a mural representation, including a likeness with some symbols, and present a speech nominating their hero. The sixth graders would then vote for the heroes and mural design. The club members are excited about the project and agree to spend about two weeks in preparation before giving their speeches.
The ESOL students tell their ESL teacher, Mrs. Nekola, about the mural contest the next day and request her assistance. She agrees to stay after school for several days to help them with their research and speech writing. When Ms. Ashakazian gives the club members permission to conduct their research in the library, their classrooms, or the art room, some ESOL students join Mrs. Nekola in the classroom to use the computer to search for background information.
Antonio wants to nominate Cesar Chavez, an advocate for the rights of migrant farm workers. Sergei selects Abraham Lincoln as his hero because Lincoln ended slavery. Radika opts for Mahatma Gandhi, her countryman, who preached nonviolent civil disobedience. Mariko proposes Mother Teresa because she helps poor and sick children. As needed, Mrs. Nekola helps the students find information resources on their heroes. She discusses their selections with them, probing why the students find these individuals to be worthy heroes.
After the students conduct their research, they work with the art teacher to design a mural representation. She shows them how to incorporate symbols into their design. In the second week of the project, the sketch is finished and the students ask Mrs. Nekola for help once again. She guides them on the use of persuasive language in their speeches and offers them the chance to practice in front of their peers in class. Each ESOL student who is a member of the art club accepts the challenge and gives the speech in class. The feedback from their peers is useful, especially since it will be their clubmates who will vote for the heroes, not the teacher.
Students are encouraged to
The art club is a way for students to get together socially and have some fun after school in a supervised way. Students join for their personal enjoyment and artistic interests. ESOL and non-ESOL students mix freely and use English for most of their interactions. The mural painting and hero contest appeal to all the students. Although they conduct some research on their heroes and take some notes, the students do not view this activity as an academic assignment. Several ESOL students request assistance from Mrs. Nekola who is pleased to help. They seek information through various sources -- books, computer networks, and individuals. Throughout the course of the project, the students use English in an enjoyable way. Yet, they also learn some speech-making skills and aspects of persuasive rhetoric. They have the opportunity to practice their speeches informally with ESOL classmates before speaking at the club contest.
Grade Level: Seventh grade in a regular class
English Proficiency Level: Variety of levels
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Science
Location: Urban site in the Northwest
This vignette describes a heterogeneous, seventh-grade, science class in a medium-sized urban school district. ESOL and non-ESOL students are present in the class, which is taught by a teacher bilingual in Spanish and English. ESOL students range from beginning to advanced levels of English proficiency. Mr. Amado, the teacher, is taking the class on a trip to a local science museum.
At the museum, Mr. Amado tells students to pair up. Daniela, a beginning level student, does not know the expression pair-up, but she watches the teacher's nonverbal communication and the behavior of other students. She then finds a partner and gets in line.
After an initial introduction to the museum by a guide, the student pairs walk around the exhibits. Yolanda, an advanced beginner, and her partner stop in front of a hands-on science exhibit and look at the written directions and diagrams. Mr. Amado comes by and strategizes with the girls about ways to understand the directions. Using the diagram and guessing at the meaning of some of the technical terms, the girls discuss the directions. When asked, Mr. Amado provides some assistance, but for the most part, the girls take his advice: "Try to figure it out first." Yolanda is finally ready to try the experiment to test the pair's interpretation of the directions. It works.
Another ESOL student pair approaches as Yolanda is finishing the experiment's activities. She tries to explain the directions and the purpose of the experiment to her classmates. As she explains in English, she notices some quizzical looks so she turns to Mr. Amado and asks, "¿Como se dice gear?" to clarify in Spanish for her peers.
Later, the class eats lunch in the museum cafeteria. Yolanda sees quiche on the written menu and asks Mr. Amado, "What's ki-chay?" and points to the word on the menu sign. Mr. Amado says, "Oh, quiche," and Yolanda repeats, "Yes, quiche." Mr. Amado then points to a dish holding a slice of quiche and tells her in Spanish what it is made of. Yolanda repeats to herself, "Quiche, quiche, quiche" while in line. When she gets to the serving counter, she says, "Quiche, please."
Students are encouraged to
In this vignette, low proficiency students such as Daniela watch their teacher's nonverbal cues and the behavior of their classmates to follow the direction to pair-up. Their performance of this task demonstrates that they have learned the meaning of this new expression.
At one of the exhibits, Mr. Amado encourages Yolanda to get the meaning of the directions from the context. Yolanda uses the diagram to help understand written directions for carrying out an experiment. She tests her understanding by trying the experiment and sees that it works. She then teaches her knowledge to other classmates, although she asks the teacher for some assistance in order to clarify the meaning of certain words.
Later in the day, Yolanda makes a hypothesis about the pronunciation of quiche based on her Spanish literacy. She then checks the meaning by asking her teacher, knowing that this strategy will help her understand the new word so she can learn it. Mr. Amado uses a visual representation, the actual plate of quiche, to explain what quiche is in Spanish and also to model the correct pronunciation in English. Yolanda repeats the word several times to herself to be sure she can recall the English pronunciation and then tests out her newly acquired vocabulary by using it with the cafeteria server.
Grade Level: Eighth grade in a sheltered science class
English Proficiency Level: Variety of levels, high beginning to advanced
Language of Instruction: English (with 5-minute overviews of activities in Vietnamese and Spanish)
Focus of Instruction: Science
Location: Urban school district in the West
The following vignette describes a self-contained, eighth-grade science classroom in an urban school district. The class consists mostly of immigrant students from Vietnam, Central America, and Mexico. All of the students are high beginning- to advanced-level ESL students. The teacher has training and experience working with ESOL students. Two bilingual instructional assistants work in the class on a daily basis. One is a Spanish/English speaker; the other is a Vietnamese/English speaker.
Today the class is going to examine containers of various shapes and sizes, hypothesize which ones contain more or less liquid, and then evaluate the predictions by measuring the capacity of each container. At the beginning of the class, the teacher, Ms. Smith-Sung, and the two assistants provide a 5-minute overview of the day's activities in their respective languages. Then the teacher, using English, demonstrates what the groups are to do by showing the class four glass containers of different shapes and sizes. As she makes her predictions, she models language such as, "I think this one will hold less," and "I think this one has the greatest capacity." She also uses vocabulary such as, more, less, most, least, equal, amount, capacity, liters, and milliliters. She adds the vocabulary words to a permanent, poster-size wall chart during the demonstration. The teacher then demonstrates how to measure each container's capacity, read the measure in milliliters, and record the amount in a log. Then she asks two students to review orally for the others what each group has to do.
The teacher next divides the class, creating eight groups of four students, with each group including as wide a range of English proficiency levels as possible. Two members from each group are instructed to pick up the materials their group will need to perform the activity. These students check off the materials on their group's materials list. When Tien looks for a graduated cylinder, she cannot find one. "Excuse me, Ms. Smith-Sung," she says. "Where is another cylinder?" The teacher directs her to a glass cabinet. "Thank you."
The groups also receive written instructions. The teacher asks each group to begin by having one student read the written directions to make sure that everyone understands the tasks. The teacher and assistants circulate among the groups, clarifying the instructions in the students' native languages or English as needed. Although the students are used to working in groups, some initial organization still takes place. In one group, two students, Rebecca and U Thi, offer to record the measurements. Ricardo reminds Rebecca that she was the recorder last time. She concedes and lets U Thi record this time. In another group, Altagracia, an advanced beginner, checks on the directions. "Do we put in water antes de guessing the big ones?" Joel, a high intermediate student, clarifies. "No, we make predictions first. Then we fill them with water."
The groups work on their assignment for the rest of the period, occasionally asking for help from the teacher, one of the instructional assistants, or another group. Near the end of the period, they clean up their supplies and prepare to share their findings with the whole class.
Students are encouraged to
Because of the varying language proficiencies of the students, bilingual instructional assistants are present, and levels of English proficiency are balanced in each group. This both facilitates primary language support for students of lower English proficiency and provides second language support from more fluent peers.
The teacher demonstrates what the students are to do by performing a similar activity. This presentation allows her to pre-teach the vocabulary necessary to understand and discuss the concepts and to complete the tasks. She contextualizes the language, thus making the English comprehensible. The poster-size word bank provides a written version of the words and a handy reference for the students. Less proficient students are able to participate fully in this lesson for two reasons: (a) There is as much primary language support as they need; and (b) the activity involves kinesthetic, hands-on interaction with concrete, demonstrable concepts.
As the students paraphrase the teacher's directions and carry out the activity, they demonstrate that they are able to follow both spoken and written instructions. As needed, they request the necessary supplies to conduct the experiment or help in understanding an aspect of the task from the teacher, assistant, or peer. The students are also able to form groups and negotiate their roles, using appropriate language to do so. These skills will serve them well in most academic settings.
Grade Level: Fourth and fifth combined grades in an ESL class
English Proficiency Level: Mostly high beginning to low intermediate
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Language arts
Location: Urban school district in the Northeast
This vignette describes a combined fourth- and fifth-grade ESL/language arts class that is part of the Spanish and Punjabi bilingual programs in an urban school district. The ESL teacher is monolingual and collaborates with bilingual teachers in planning lessons. The majority of the students are native Spanish speakers, and nine are native Punjabi speakers from India. Most are at the high beginning/low intermediate level, with some recent arrivals from the Dominican Republic. A unit on Native Americans was recently completed, and this follow-up lesson on traditional stories, storytelling, myths, and legends is presented. It is the middle of the school year.
Ms. Johnson introduces the lesson by holding up a picture of a night sky filled with stars. She initiates a class discussion through questions like: "Tell me about this picture." "What do you think of when you see this?" "Have any of you seen a night sky with so many stars?" She gives students time to respond and allows some students to translate for new arrivals.
The teacher next holds up a picture of a coyote, writes coyote on the board while saying it, and the class repeats. More discussion about this picture ensues. Students share their knowledge of coyotes and other similar animals. One student from Guatemala describes a time when a coyote rampaged chickens on his uncle's farm. Ms. Johnson affirms the students' responses and explains that this animal is a small wolf. "Besides Guatemala," she asks, "where do you think coyotes live?" Juanita, a beginner, responds, "My country, Mexico." The teacher agrees and adds, "Coyotes usually live in southwestern lands of North America." She uses a map to show the states in the United States where coyotes live and points out Mexico and Guatemala too.
At this point, Eduardo, a special needs student with a behavorial disorder, begins to make loud coyote noises to get attention. Having taught Eduardo in the program for 2 years, Ms. Johnson knows it is best for the class if she ignores his behavior. She moves to another activity and asks the students to recall the land features found in those southwestern areas and has some students draw pictures of the features on the board. She calls on Eduardo to draw a plateau and praises him for his positive contribution. Other students find the symbols on the map that refer to desert and prairie.
The teacher introduces a Native American story, "The Night Sky," by writing the title on the board and explains that it is a myth passed from generation to generation among Native American Indians. Myths often explain how something in nature, like the sun, moon, and stars, came into existence. The teacher explains that Native Americans used animals as heroes who acted in extraordinary or unusual ways, such as creating the sun, moon, and stars. The students are already familiar with vocabulary concepts (e.g., myths, nature, existence) that they studied in their native language.
Ms. Johnson then asks students to share myths from their cultures about animals or nature. One student from the Dominican Republic tells a myth in Spanish to her classmate, who in turn interprets it in English. It is about a man and woman who had a child that they divided into two children by magic. When the children died later in life, their spirits roamed the island seeking to be reunited. Another student shares a myth about an owl, and a third about a tiger in India.
The teacher next directs students to listen and look at the pictures. As she reads the story aloud, she regularly points to the pictures to help with vocabulary and concept development. At times, she writes key words on the board. Afterward, she distributes copies of the story. Student triads read the story together. A strong student is placed in each group to support the oral reading process. Juanita is seated with Sudesh, an intermediate level student from India. Ms. Johnson places Eduardo with these two students who consistently model appropriate classroom behavior and with whom he has worked well before.
Students then retell the story as a class while the teacher records their comments and ideas on the board. As a group, the class reviews the sentences on the board and organizes the story chronologically. Some students recognize gaps and add information. At other points, the teacher asks comprehension questions to elicit more of the plot. She praises the students for their active participation.
As the period draws to a close, the teacher asks the student groups to underline new vocabulary words in the story. These words are shared as a class and one student is selected to add them to the bulletin board word list that is generated with each new thematic unit. For homework, Ms. Johnson assigns the first step of a research project. Students are told to ask their parents, relatives, or neighbors about myths from their native culture that the students will write and illustrate over the next week. The myths will then be published as a class book. Newer students are paired with more capable ones for assistance.
Students are encouraged to
The cooperative setting and peer support aided all levels of proficiency in a comfortable, social atmosphere. The recent arrivals were comfortable questioning and sharing ideas with classmates who spoke their native language. Their cognitive abilities were not curtailed because they were able to think and express themselves in their native language if necessary, yet they witnessed their ideas being transformed into English. The teacher's use of nonverbal pictorial cues enabled all students either to connect with their own background schema or associate the visual concepts to the printed words and phrases.
The collaborative efforts of the ESL and bilingual teachers reinforced the Native American theme and also aided in the students' cognitive development. Through collaboration across the ESL and bilingual classrooms, the students became familiar with new concepts prior to the actual lesson. This created a pleasant environment and lessened anxiety levels.
In previewing the story, the teacher used pictures and words written on the board to prepare the students for the reading. Encouraging the students to tell myths from their culture demonstrated her interest and respect for their heritage. The teacher recognized and was comfortable with the need for some students to speak in their native language as an intermediary step to becoming more proficient in English. She effectively included a student with a behavioral disorder in the lesson through positive reinforcement, selective attention, careful grouping, and peer modeling techniques. Ms. Johnson also linked the setting of the story with social studies concepts (i.e., land features, map legends) that the students had already studied and used this occasion to review some of them. Throughout this prereading phase, students were able to verbalize their prior knowledge and make connections to the new lesson. This preview activity helped the students get more meaning from context as they read the story later.
The teacher's oral presentation of the story provided a language model for the students. The group activity gave all students practice reading aloud with peer support and also helped develop their pronunciation skills. The retelling activity provided more reinforcement of the connection between the written and spoken word while at the same time establishing a common academic task, sequencing a story. The vocabulary activity was another cooperative task that benefited the bilingual students.
Finally, the creation of the class book of legends and myths will enable the students to relate their cultures with the Native American Indians'. They will involve their family network to research their project which will foster the home-school connection. The beginning-level students will be paired to write their stories, perhaps relating them in their native language and then having their partner translate the stories into English. In both of these activities, the ESOL students will be assisted by more knowledgeable others and be able to work with nonprint as well as print sources to complete their task.
Grade Level: Fifth grade in an ESL pull-out class
English Proficiency Level: Intermediate
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Social studies
Location: Suburban school district in the South
The following vignette describes an ESL class of four fifth-grade students, three girls and a boy, in a suburban elementary school. The teacher, Ms. Wilder, is monolingual and certified in ESL. She is conducting a 40-minute ESL class in a pull-out program. The students are Japanese children who are literate in their native language. They have low intermediate to intermediate proficiency levels in English. Because the students will be studying Native American Indians next week in their fifth-grade classroom, Ms. Wilder begins preparing them for that topic of study. In addition, she plans to cooperate with the fifth-grade teacher by modifying the regular classroom assignments to fit the needs and abilities of the ESOL children.
During the two previous class sessions, Ms. Wilder taught skimming and scanning techniques to the four students. On this day, she assigns a different Native American tribe to student pairs and takes the students to the computer in the school library. She asks Yoriko to type in Native American and shows her how to press subject on the computer. Several book titles and call numbers appear for that subject, listing various tribes. At Ms. Wilder's suggestion, the students scan the list and Yoriko and her partner, Takeo, write the call numbers for books about their tribe. Takeo then suggests that they also look at the subjects, Seminole Indians or Apaches, because these are the two assigned tribes. Yoriko types the subject, Seminoles, into the computer. Several anthologies on Native American Indians that include Seminoles appear on the screen. Yoriko copies all relevant call numbers. She enters several of the call numbers and abstracts of the book appear. She and Takeo take notes as to what each book contains. The other student team repeats the process on the computer for the Apache tribe.
Ms. Wilder models how to use the call numbers to locate a book on the shelves. She gives the students a tour of the library and demonstrates how to find a book by looking in a specific section of the library, as indicted by the call number. The students watch attentively and then demonstrate their understanding as each student locates one of the resources identified from the computer. The students have call numbers for three different areas of the library. As they explore, they learn that reference books, such as encyclopedias, cannot be checked out, while nonfiction and fiction books can. Masago, a low intermediate-level student, checks with her peers in Japanese to be sure she understands this point correctly because she is unfamiliar with library procedures.
Ms. Wilder suggests that the students locate the books and reminds them to skim the table of contents for history, culture, religion, and modern day life. She asks Ryoko to review what they learned about skimming and scanning. The pairs look for books and skim the contents. They then scan the relevant chapters to see if the information they need is given and if they can understand the book. The students check out the books they have found so that they can continue this lesson during the next class. Yoriko and Takeo organize their books by subject on a shelf in their ESL classroom, so they can easily retrieve the books the next day. They plan to assist each other to select two books to bring to their fifth-grade classroom next week because each ESOL student belongs to separate groups in the regular classroom. After a week preparing their resources in the ESL class, the students will be able to share the books they find with the other fifth graders in their groups in the regular classroom.
Students are encouraged to
Ms. Wilder's ESL class is composed of four Japanese fifth graders. The students learn to use appropriate learning strategies that aid them in constructing and applying academic knowledge as required by their fifth-grade social studies curriculum. Ms. Wilder works with the regular classroom teacher to assist the ESOL students' understanding of the forthcoming unit, and to help them with specific tasks that they can complete ahead of time and share with their groups to facilitate academic learning.
By going to the library in a small group with their ESL teacher, the students are able to focus attention on the use of the computer and the organization of the library collection. They use technology as a resource to support their research efforts. By reading abstracts of catalogue entries on the library computer and taking notes, students are able to locate appropriate reference materials that they will use as part of a social studies project in their regular classroom. As needed, throughout the lesson, they check their comprehension in English and in the native language.
When Takeo suggests other ways to locate information from appropriate and varied sources, his idea assists the others in finding other pathways to gather information. The students work readily and successfully in pairs. They locate the books on the shelves following Ms. Wilder's modeling of this task and organize their materials for the next day's activities.
Yoriko, Takeo, Ryoko, and Masago are on their way to meeting the standard illustrated. They have focused on important aspects related to the completion of their assignment by actively seeking information. They have skimmed, scanned, and previewed material in English, after locating and gathering information from appropriate sources. Next week, when the lesson begins in their regular classroom, they will serve as resources to their groups, sharing the books they have selected as most appropriate. Each fifth-grade group will use, in part, the reference materials located by the ESOL students, thereby validating the ESOL students' learning experiences as contributing to the work of the group.
Grade Level: Seventh grade in a regular English class
English Proficiency Level: Low advanced
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Language arts
Location: Crow Indian Reservation in a Rocky Mountain state
This vignette describes a seventh-grade English class on the Crow Indian Reservation in a Rocky Mountain state. All the students have low advanced proficiency in English, and all are Crow Indians. Most live in homes where Crow is the predominant language. Ms. Bender is a monolingual English-speaking teacher. During the first semester, she devotes each Friday's class period to teaching her students to identify and learn the meanings of idiomatic phrases the children are likely to encounter outside the reservation, and in which social contexts use of the idioms is appropriate or not appropriate.
Every Thursday Ms. Bender hands out small notebooks to each student to take home for the night. For the next 24 hours, the students will be on an "idiom search," jotting in the notebooks any phrases they hear or see that they believe are idioms. Ms. Bender encourages them to find idioms using authentic sources, such as books, conversations, television programs, videos, movies, radio, music tapes, and CDs. During the first 10 minutes or so of Friday's class, the students write on the chalkboard the idioms they have found. Ms. Bender asks each student who writes an idiom on the board to try to define it according to the context in which it appeared. The other students offer their opinions about the phrases too. As needed, Ms. Bender then affirms or corrects the meanings. The students record new idioms in their notebooks.
Before the class began, Ms. Bender had written four idioms on construction paper and attached them to the wall. At this point, she divides the students into groups and reads each idiom. The first idiom is fish out of water. Ms. Bender uses the phrase in one or two sentences, such as "She was the only kid at the gathering, and so she felt like a fish out of water." Each group discusses the phrase's role in the sentence and then writes down a possible meaning. As a whole class, the groups share their definitions. This process continues for the next three idioms. At the end, Ms. Bender confirms or further explains the meanings and students also record these idioms and their meanings in the personal notebooks.
Ms. Bender then conducts a discussion on the social contexts in which the idioms raised in class that day can or should not be used. As an example, she says, "In the classroom, if one or two students are having difficulty with a task while the others are not, they should not be called a fish out of water because this would be considered impolite and rude." As a final activity, student groups prepare short dialogues that incorporate some of the new idioms in appropriate social contexts and read them aloud in front of the class.
Students are encouraged to
All the students in Ms. Bender's class are Crow Indians and have low advanced proficiency in English. They are studying many idiomatic phrases that are common in mainstream society to develop the knowledge of when certain phrases are appropriate or not appropriate in different social contexts.
Ms. Bender has structured her lesson so that her students are actively involved in identifying idioms, learning in context, and determining correct usage of idiomatic expressions. She has the students "search" for idioms in their everyday environment. These searches lead to a class process where students work together to understand the meaning of idioms. The students discuss their idiom discoveries as well as the four idioms selected by the teacher in terms of their language usage, particularly the sociocultural settings in which a given idiom would be considered either appropriate or inappropriate. In their groups, they produce written definitions based on their discussion, then every student enters the new idioms and their meanings into a personal idiom notebook. Finally, they write dialogues to use the idioms in context and read their dialogues aloud in front of the class.
Because the use of language is a vital form of human behavior, the learning of idioms and their appropriate application demonstrates that Ms. Bender's students are achieving success in meeting this standard. She draws from the students' own encounters with idiomatic speech to facilitate this learning process.
Grade Level: Sixth grade in a regular class and an ESL pull-out class
English Proficiency Levels: Mostly intermediate, some advanced
Language of Instruction: English
Focus of Instruction: Nonverbal communication styles
Location: Suburban school district in the Midwest
The following vignette describes Ms. Perlman's pull-out ESL classroom. The students come from Ms. Hess' sixth-grade classroom of 21 students, one third of whom are ESOL students. The ESOL students come from the Middle East, Central America, and India. Five of them are at an intermediate level of English proficiency, while the other two are advanced. The intermediate-level students are pulled out of their classroom to spend about an hour each day with Ms. Perlman, a certified ESL teacher. Ms. Hess and Ms. Perlman work very closely together; in fact, the preceding year, they were peer coaching partners.
While the students are busy with an experiment on fossils, Ms. Hess notices some commotion in the group where Hanan is working and overhears comments by some of the Anglo students about Hanan being "in their face" all the time. This is the fourth time that an incident like this has occurred with Hanan as well as with two of the other ESOL students. Ms. Hess has observed that when the Arab and Latino girls are together, they stand very close to one another and touch each other frequently. She remembers thinking that she has also felt crowded by these girls when they were talking to her, and realized that some of these ESOL students stood closer to other people than she would. She talks to Ms. Perlman about this and they decide to try to make the girls aware of the different cultural norms of interaction related to the positioning of speakers' bodies during conversations. Ms. Perlman says she will focus on this issue some time in the near future in the daily ESL period that she has with those students.
Over the next couple of weeks, Ms. Perlman plans for this mini-lesson. She tapes segments from television programs and commercials that demonstrate interactions among people of varying ages. In class, she prepares the students for the discussion by slouching down in her chair and asking the students if they think it is appropriate for a teacher to sit that way in class and why. The students then make a list of inappropriate behaviors in and out of the classroom setting. Ms. Perlman moves the discussion to interaction styles and ends the session by showing the videotape and having students think about the rules that govern interactions in various contexts. For homework, the students are to take the list that they developed earlier and think about whether the same behaviors would be considered acceptable or unacceptable in their own cultures.
At the next session, the students discuss their findings and view the video segments again. Ms. Perlman narrows the discussion to focus the students' attention on acceptable distances that people maintain with one another as they interact. Leticia's suspicions about proximity norms in the U.S. culture are confirmed, whereas Hanan is perplexed by the different norms. Maha suggests to her that some Anglo students might be upset at times by the close distance that she and Hanan maintain.
Ms. Perlman is very satisfied and relieved with the way the discussion evolved, and when she reports back to Ms. Hess, they decide that they can talk about it openly with individual students as needed. Ms. Hess asks the ESOL students if they would present their findings to the full sixth-grade class.
Students are encouraged to
The ongoing, collaborative effort between Ms. Hess and Ms. Perlman clearly benefits the ESOL students. In this lesson, Ms. Hess, who is a good observer of behavior patterns, shares her concerns with Ms. Perlman. Ms. Perlman, through careful planning, prepares a lesson that allows the ESOL students to act as mini-ethnographers. Neither she nor Ms. Hess make a value judgment about cultural proximity norms. Rather, the students are asked to analyze nonverbal behavior on videotaped interactions drawn from television. At this stage, the students' own behaviors are not the focus.
The students begin by considering the appropriateness of certain behaviors according to the setting, such as in or out of school. Then through the videotape analysis activity, the ESOL students uncover some norms about proxemics. Within the ESL class, they are then able to discuss their own behaviors and place themselves in the shoes of some of their peers to determine what distances might be appropriate according to the people present. Ms. Hess validates the students' conclusions and has them present their findings to the class. The mainstream students and the teachers thereby benefit, learning about the different cultural proximity norms and perhaps adjusting their own behaviors and expectations accordingly.
Grade Level: Eighth grade in a bilingual class
English Proficiency Level: Intermediate
Language of Instruction: Khmer and English
Focus of Instruction: Community service
Location: Urban school district in the Northeast
The following vignette describes Mr. Seng's eighth-grade class of 12 Cambodian students in their third year of a transitional bilingual education program. They are at an intermediate level of English proficiency and will make the transition out of the bilingual program next year when they enter high school. In their district, all middle school students are expected to perform 10 hours of community service. To accomplish that goal, Mr. Seng has arranged for the students to visit a nearby nursing home for 2 hours after school, one day a week for 5 weeks.
Mr. Seng usually instructs his students in Khmer except for their English language arts course. At this point in the school year, March, however, he begins to include more English in all the subject areas to help prepare the students for their studies next year. He views the community service requirement of the social studies curriculum as an ideal means for helping his students practice English in a meaningful way. Beginning next Thursday, he and the class will walk to a local nursing home for a 2-hour visit in the afternoon. The patients at the nursing home are mostly Polish Americans and Greek Americans who have lived in the city for most of their lives.
Last week the director of the nursing home came to class and spoke to the students about the patients. She cautioned the students that some of the patients they will visit will be in wheelchairs or walkers. Others may have Alzheimer's disease or similar memory loss difficulties. She explained that they love to have visitors, and she intended to pair up each student with one patient. From time to time during her talk, Mr. Seng would interpret medical or other unfamiliar terminology in Khmer or ask one of the students to do so, thereby ensuring all the students understood the information.
This week Mr. Seng shows a clip from a television movie that has scenes in a nursing home. He asks the students to pay attention to the way the nurses and the family members speak to the patients. After viewing, they discuss as a class the way language was used. Students note that family members seemed to use Grandma or Papa or even Dear, while the nurses always used Mr. and Mrs. when addressing the patients. Mr. Seng asked the students how they might address their particular patient. All the students agree they would use titles, such as Mr. and Mrs. when they first meet. "Suppose one of the patients asks you to call her Sofia?" Mr. Seng asks. One student responds that he would not feel comfortable calling an elderly woman by her first name. "I would not do that in my culture. We try to show respect to the elderly," he explains in Khmer. Another student suggests that perhaps after they got to know each other, she might use a first name, if the patient insisted.
Next, Mr. Seng replays 4 minutes from the clip and asks students to write down one or two sentences from the dialogue. Upon request, he stops and replays an interchange so the students can write down all the words. Several students write their sentences on the board. The class comments on the choice of words and the type of grammar that was used by the characters in the scene. "The nurses seem to say 'Would you like something' every time." Mr. Seng concurs and explains that Would you like is a bit more formal. One student also comments that the patients, the nurses, and their visitors all spoke more slowly than most Americans that she encounters. "Why do you think that happens?" asks the teacher. Another student offers, "Maybe because they do not hear very well." Another student points out that everyone seemed to begin a conversation with a patient by asking how he or she was feeling.
Mr. Seng replays the full clip one last time and has the students take notes on the physical movements of the people who interacted with the patients. Afterwards, students discuss what happened, noting such things as who gave the patients hugs and kisses and who offered their hand, or how they helped the patients move around. One student remarked that the grandchild of one of the elderly patients repeatedly patted him on the head. "Is this something Americans do? In my country we do not touch the head."
As a final activity, Mr. Seng has the students role play several situations. Using the fish bowl technique, students sit on chairs that are placed in a circle. Three students take turns entering the circle to play a patient, nurse, and student visitor. Mr. Seng describes scenarios, such as: the first time the student and patient meet, a visit on the patient's birthday, a misunderstanding about patting one's head or arm on occasion, a visit when the patient must receive some medication, and the last visit scheduled for the class. Students practice what they will say and classmates give suggestions to improve the conversations.
Students are encouraged to
Mr. Seng, in helping his students meet a school requirement and get ready for the mainstream classes they will attend the next year, designs a community service project that will place the students in an unfamiliar, sociocultural environment where they will need to be sensitive to their use of English and the cultural implications of their actions. He does not, however, immerse the students in the new environment without preparation. Before they are scheduled to visit the nursing home, he asks the director to talk with the class about what they should expect.
To further increase the students' awareness of language use and behavior and develop their skills in assessing appropriateness, Mr. Seng uses a television movie clip as a tool for data collection and reflection. By viewing the clip several times, the students can focus on the formality of the language use and the nonverbal gestures. They can make comparisons to their own cultural ways of behaving and addressing adults.
The role-play activity offers the students an opportunity to practice both what they have observed and have concluded about interacting with elderly patients in a nursing home. They rehearse different situations and interactions. They evaluate their classmates' role-play scenarios and make suggestions for adjusting language and behavior, as they deem appropriate. This practice opportunity also helps diminish the anxiety level the students might feel when they enter the English-only environment of the nursing home.
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