Monthly Archives: October 2022

BAP112 Free Voluntary Reading ft. Emily Francis

In today’s show, the author of If You Only knew; Letters from an Immigrant Teacher is joining us. That’s right, THE Emily Francis is here to help us talk and think about free voluntary reading.   We get some amazing ideas from Emily but this show offers so much more than that!  These notes are a mixture of links, my reflections and quotes from Emily.  They also include a short excerpt from her book that I read during the podcast.

Listen to “BAP112 Free Voluntary Reading ft Emily Francis” on Spreaker.

You listen here or in your favorite podcast app.  You can watch the YouTube version or just browse through some of the resources below.

And if you want to just run over and get this book, you can do that on Amazon or on the Seidlitz Education website.  You won’t regret it!

Emily is the perfect guest for this show because she is a shining example of what is possible with passion and persistence.  On this show, we usually focus on the most marginalized student, and that is a student who among other challenges, my not yet have literacy in their heritage language. How do we help that child while helping the entire class?  Emily is still in the classroom so educators stop and listen when she shares.  And she is constantly sharing!

In her own words, “Thank you so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure. Boosting achievement is always part of my teacher tool kit, and it’s always in my heart. You always bring in excellent tasks that we can take away to better serve our multilingual students. So if know me or you don’t, I am an ESL teacher. I teach English as a second language at the high school level is my fifth year, but it is my 11th year teaching.  It is my 19th year in my district as I was a teacher assistant before becoming a teacher. It is at the High School level where I found my passion, where I found my calling, where I found where I belong. …. If you know me on social media, I’m always sharing what’s happening in the classroom, on campus, in our community, anything that will highlight the excellence that our ELLs can reach.”

PLC4Newcomers

#PLC4Newcomers is a professional learning community that has come together to share and learn from other newcomer teachers.  Emily founded this group and keeps it alive with strong guest speakers and regular learning opportunities through synchronous asynchronous connections. You can search the hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Be sure to subscribe to Emily’s blog so you don’t miss her updates on this and other happenings.

Free Voluntary Reading for Newcomers

I asked her to respond to people who say that free voluntary reading is not appropriate for students who are not yet literate in their heritage language or the target language of English.  Emily’s response was, “I think the people who have those comments, I don’t think they have seen it in action. … they need to see what it is that they’re doing. So if you are raising your hand saying that free voluntary reading doesn’t work for newcomers because they don’t have, “ the literacy skills you need to” go and see what is really happening. In my classroom, I had twelve newcomers sitting there, opening a book and reading books.  Saddleback is my Go-To!  Just open that box and they just go at it picking books that they find interesting. Sometimes it’s just the cover that it might be interesting. ‘Hey, there is something that looks like my country, let me read this book.’ As long as it’s something that the student can relate to, and as long as it’s something that the student can share that can make a personal connection, then the student can sit down and read it.  The most important thing is that they can turn around and share. You know, so I have had newcomers who may not read the entire book. They may read one page. Maybe that whole class time they took to read that one page, but that one page can turn into, ‘Hey, I made a personal connection. Hey, let me tell you, let me tell my partner what I read.’ Because there were so many choices for them. And that student finds that one book that he or she can connect with. There was one time where one of my students found one about a cell phone, you know, ‘Oh my gosh, I love cell phones! What is this book about?’ And that was it. That’s all that student needed to be able to sit down and read. So again, I’m the type that I never teach an entire book. I’m all about opening the book and finding what connects with you. And it works. And it works.”

Honoring Students

Emily also shared about the importance of autonomy and honoring our students’ interests. She explained that offering choice and grade-level text is about dignity and humanity. The audio episode is so powerful to hear Emily describe what her students get out of connections with different types of text.”  During this part of the conversation, we talked about the work of Dr. Stephen Krashen who is one of the leaders in research on second language acquisition. His work recommends that we find compelling text and then allow students to choose what they want to read.  Emily’s work is right in alignment with Dr. Krashen.

Ideas for Free Voluntary Reading with Newcomers

Emily described different ideas including:

  • word banks that are generated with the students based on their interests.
  • pairing up students who read similar texts so they can share about what they are reading.
  • developing a positive classroom culture
  • fostering connections with our students and between them.
  • Making sure they feel valued.

Posting to Social Media and Raising the Bar

I thanked Emily for sharing what her students are doing in class. Her social media posts are important for my learning journey.  She describes her intent this way,  “So the expectation. We have to set the bar as a language acquisition expert, we have to set the bar. When I post, hey, look at all the writing my newcomers are doing, look at the presentation. Or here’s a video of Louise reading in English. Then a content teacher might see that and say, well, if he’s doing that in her class, then he’s going to do that in mine, too. So, we set the bar. We do that as language acquisition experts.”

Getting to Know our Newcomers

Emily gets busy on DAY ONE engaging students in books and learning more about them.  Her explanation was “At the beginning of the year you can do ‘I am’ poems.  For example, I am Frijoles, I am Tamales, I am Mexico, I am Soccer. When you make activities that you get to know what’s interesting about the student, and then you post it in the room, that gives you ideas of what kind of books or what kind of magazines to bring in. So, there is some pre-work that needs to be done before you provide text. That way you can actually provide what they really would like to pick from.

Using Emily’s Story

I first heard Emily’s migration story when she was brave enough to write it down and then contacted me and Tan Huynh to get our opinions about publishing the post.  This post was compelling for me and for my students. We read together by chunking the text, tracking print, and stopping often to discuss what was happening.  As always, I allowed Google Translate to get the gist but we did our shared work in English.  You can do this type of activity with Emily’s story right here.

If You Only Knew: Letters from an Immigrant Teacher.

If I could recommend one book this year for your classroom library, this would be it.  When I told Emily how much the book meant to me, she said “I always have to say I thank you, and I hope you have read the acknowledgements, because I do mention you there. I published my blog about my personal life because you encouraged it. And then I got a phone call from John Seidlitz because you mentioned me at the table. So, I have so much to be grateful for you sharing about the possibilities, and reaffirming my story. Because as immigrants, it comes to a point when that story that we have kept inside of us, unvalued and unaffirmed, needs to come out. And sometimes it comes from people like you, like, hey, say your story is important, or sometimes it’s through text. I want to read a book that I’m going to say, oh, my goodness, this is my story. And so that’s my hope behind the book. So, when John Seidlitz and my editor Sarah Welch, sat down with me to talk about my book, we talked about the memoir version. Hey, here’s Emily telling her story…and it wouldn’t flow. It’s just the story of Emily. I don’t know. It wasn’t juicy. It wasn’t what we really wanted to until we started mentioning, okay, my story is like so-and-so in this area.  I started retelling students stories. And there you go. That was the key, the mixture, the intertwining of my story with the students. Centering students in the book.  It wasn’t about Ms. Emily Francis.  It was about students and their teacher. That relationship that we have built. I’ve got to learn a lot about my students through activities like I just mentioned earlier, like the I Am poems or readings, and students will come up to me and tell me how they relate to the text. So, all of these students identified in one way or another to me, and here am I sitting, looking at them and saying, oh, my gosh. I experienced what Sarah experienced. I am experiencing what Oliver is experiencing and those connections that I was able to make with students, that’s how the book ended up being letters to students.

There are eight letters in the story, and in each letter, there’s a theme that evolves. It could be immigration, it could be family separation, it could be addiction. So many things that come up throughout the chapters. But if there’s that one chapter that a student opens up and says, ‘This is me, and I can’t wait to tell the world about my story because I just read it in a book and I need to tell the world.’

So that’s one of my hopes, that a student can see this book as a mirror. And then again, those students or teachers who have never experienced anything like this, like the pictures you were just showing about teachers in South Carolina reading the stories, they don’t know what it is to cross a border. They don’t know what it is not to have anything to eat. They don’t know what it is not to be with your mother for several years. They don’t know what it is to take care of children at the age of 13. So, when they read something like this, my hope is that they have a light will go on and say, ‘I have students like that, and I need to do something about that.’ I have never experienced it, but I just read what it is to be sitting in that classroom, longing to be part of the classroom, longing to be someone, longing to break cycles, longing to be somebody. And that teacher can become that mediator.

That teacher can become the hero that student needs to reach the possibilities. So those are my hopes.”

 

I always get emotional when I hear Emily talking passionately about teachers or students. I told her that I loved this because books can be so powerful and can offer all of us that perspective.  They offer us a different world. They can transport us.  They open our minds.

As soon as Emily was brave enough to tell her story, it had an immediate impact on others.  That day it had an impact on me and it had an impact on Tan.  When she asked my opinion about what she had written for a blog post…I can’t even tell you the effect it had on me. I was blown away.  I said, Yes.  Right now.  Right now!  I thought, “This is going to be big.  This is so important.”

And it was big. Emily has continued to share her story, she has also gone on to several speaking engagements bringing people to tears and stoking advocacy from her keynote presentations to being featured on the Ellen show.

She is such an example to everyone.  It is such a powerful text because even so many young people would not have this type of experience, right? But through her book, she is giving it to them.  The book offers us so many things!  Teachers should be able to use it to teach about Mindset, a person’s value, Funds of Knowledge and more.

I recently published my dissertation on why SLIFE (Students with limited formal education) might drop out or continue in high school and graduate.  One of the major themes was how valuable they were made to feel.  It was “Degree of Esteem” that we held them in.  So even though they may not understand the words, you know, when someone doesn’t value you, you know it.  When I mentioned it, Emily had some things to say about this.  She responded with “Students will always have a story to tell about the campus they attended, whether it’s a good story or a bad story. And what do we want our students to tell about? If I belong, if you created an environment where you made me feel like I belong, I’m going to have a good story to tell about you, your classroom, and your campus. If I did not, then I will have a story, but it won’t be a pretty one. It won’t be a good story. Your name will be out there today. I can tell you I have nothing good to say about Martin VanBuren because I never felt like I belonged. …that sense of belonging, it’s key for our students. Even if they don’t graduate, because I’ve had students who just didn’t make it. They made 21. They did not graduate, but they left my campus with a sense of understanding that they have a place in society, that they can walk through a community college and get a GED and move on with their lives, because they know their value.”

They know that they can contribute to our society. So it’s really not about handing them that diploma. It’s about how do we make them feel? What place do they have in our society? – Emily Francis

I shared with Emily that she and others continue to challenge my mindset.  I shared that someone asked me why our newcomers don’t have a space on Student Council and I had no reply. These are the moments I need to help me reconsider the regard in which I actually hold newcomers.  We have to keep raising the bar in or minds and Emily is here to help us do that.

Excerpt from Emily’s Book

Emily allowed me to read just a few paragraphs from the book.  This is the part that I read. In this letter Emily is connecting to a student’s story and telling them what it was like when she first got out of high school and applied for different jobs.

“…Even when they didn’t require a diploma, there was always something else that held me back. I remember applying for jobs at banks and thinking how cool it would be to work in a nice, clean place like that. Some banks I applied for required a test to show how fast you could count money and process information. I’m not sure if it was my lack of confidence or my lack of English proficiency, but I was never able to pass those tests either. Another job I applied for was at an insurance office. All I was supposed to do was answer calls and sell the product. When I started practicing for the position, I was intimidated by the people on the other side of the line. I remember thinking, what if they ask me something I can’t understand? What if I can’t remember everything I’m supposed to know? So I called the next day and I told the office manager I wasn’t interested.

After that phone call, I realized I was not ready for the workforce. Even though I had completed my years of high school, I was not ready to contribute to society. I was scared and confused. I felt useless. But you know, Marco, we shouldn’t need a diploma to feel useful. We shouldn’t need a diploma to feel prepared to serve our society. What we need is the feeling that we matter, a sense of belonging in this country, a clear idea that who and what we are can impact those around us.”

THIS IS WHY YOU AND YOUR STUDENTS WILL LOVE IT!

Emily responded with “That’s a reflection of what happened when I was interviewed as a teacher assistant. After working so many years as a cashier, I was interviewed as a teacher assistant. And what gave me the idea that it could work, that I could be that teacher assistant is the validation of my story, the recognition that what I have experienced was enough, that what I had gone through throughout these years as an immigrant, as a student, was enough for me to contribute to society. And that’s all I needed to have that mind shift that I can be more than scanning a grocery store.”

Emily and I have talked about being a cashier and there is nothing wrong with that job.  It is a noble profession, for sure, but she had in her heart that she wanted to be a teacher.  We just want the students to understand that all of us can always go further. We can always look forward. That is the message I get from Emily is that she had that realization that she actually could do more. Always.

I loved her response to me.  She said, “It’s doing whatever you’re passionate about, whatever it is that you feel like I can contribute to society, whether it’s cutting hair like my sister, whether it’s running  an 18-Wheeler business like my other sister, whether it’s a realtor as apartments as my brother. I mean, we all have different choices. You are contributing, but at the same time, the core of that contribution is who we are not versus who people want us to be.”

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Boosting Achievement ESL podcast. I’m super grateful to Emily. She adds so much to the field and so do you. I hope you know if you’re supporting educators or supporting students as a teacher, how important you are, how valuable you are. I know a lot of times it might feel like you’re not doing enough and there’s not enough time, but I think this episode with Emily, I hope it helps you remember how important it is to make a student feel valued that has such a big impact. And yes, we are just a piece of their journey, but it’s an important piece and you can have a lasting impression.  That’s going to be one of the most powerful things you can do.

So if you’re listening to Education Radio, I’m pretty sure that you are passionate about supporting students and multilingual learners if you’re listening to the show. And so I want to thank you. Thanks for helping me with my journey and thanks for everything you’re doing.

All right, take good care.

Bye.

 

 

BAP111 Teaching Newcomers What to Say Instead of IDK

I’m working in districts where we have been in school for 5-8 weeks. This show is in response to some challenges and reflections on what I want to emphasize more.  You can listen to this show right here or on your favorite podcast app.

Listen to “BAP111 Instead of IDK for SLIFE and Newcomers” on Spreaker.

An edited transcript follows with links to what I talked about:

This episode is going to be about lessons learned. I think there’s value no matter what you do if you’re a teacher, instructional coach, or administrator.

This is that time of the year when the honeymoon is over!  LOL.  Things are playing out in a certain way depending on what routines you put in place or did not put in place. What I’ve learned is that in many places where we’re not getting things off the ground with students, it’s because this strategy is not in place.  We are realizing that we did not emphasize the teaching of this skill enough.

So let me offer you the strategy, and then I’m going to tell you why it’s so critical for new arrival students.  And this one is important for even your highest flyer in your classroom no matter what you teach. And I’m also going to tell you about a fail, so look forward to that. People always say they love hearing about what didn’t go right or a non-example when I’m trying things.

So this fail is kind of funny too. All right, so here’s the strategy.

The sheltered strategy is to Teach Kids What to Say When They Don’t Know What to Say.

Let me say that again. We’re going to teach kids what to say when they don’t know what to say. Some teachers know this as an “Instead of ‘I don’t know’ poster.” We are working to remove “IDK” from our classrooms.

So let’s think about it a little bit differently. We’re not talking about a poster. Idk is what the students use. Many students text, I don’t know Idk. All right?

Often you will see a poster that says IDK, and it has an X through it in a classroom. The idea is that we are not going to say, ‘I don’t know’ anymore. Instead, we want to encourage other things such as: May I ask a friend for help? Would you please repeat the question? Where can I find more information? May I have some time to think? etc. That’s a fantastic poster to have. The company I work for, Seidlitz Education, sells these great posters of things that say, they’re beautiful.

WHY is this Important?  Can the Students Tell Us?

If you ask the kids, why is it important to say other things instead of I Don’t Know, could they tell us?  Have we talked with them about this and let them come up with answers.  This offers relevancy.

If I asked you to come up with three reasons why it is important for young people to say something instead of I don’t know, I bet you could.  As adults, we have built a skill where we might pause and say something like “Could you give me a minute?”  Or “Can I ask someone to help me with this?”

Just Google It!

You know, the reality is that we don’t use the skill so much anymore.  Now we just ask Alexa.  Or we ask Google. We google it. That’s kind of dangerous for the world, don’t you think?   In the Boosting Achievement book that I wrote with Anna Mattis, we cite researchers that talk about how a part of our brain is starting to atrophy because of technology.  We don’t have to think deeply anymore.  So then it is more important than ever that our classrooms are places where we can practice thinking, be more curious. Be more curious. Don’t just default to I don’t know.

It’s a teenage culture kind of thing, right? I’m sure you can appreciate, even for your own child, do you want them to be okay with not knowing?  So the first one that I always teach is, May I ask a friend for help? Because I’m trying to create a culture of conversation. And as soon as the student says that, we say, yes.  And I’m going to hover around that student, and I’m going to make eye contact, and I’m going to ask them, Are you ok to answer before we come back. I might have to give them the answer. We need them to have a win in that moment in front of everybody. And if they didn’t know the answer, they may not be the only one. They’re likely not the only one that doesn’t know.

Why is QSSSA not Working?

I’m going to talk about the Newcomer classroom. I am always talking about the newcomer student.  This week, I was in a newcomer classroom where the majority of the students have missed large amounts of formal education, and we are at high school.   The issue is that the students are not turning and talking when we want them to.  And we have a really good structure, QSSSA, for students to turn and talk.  But they’re still not talking to each other as much as we would like for them to, even when we encourage the use of native language.  We just don’t have it off the ground.

Modeling for Teachers

A part of my job is modeling for teachers.  So I decided I would model how to get this strategy off the ground with a class where most of the students are new to the target language of English.  I never promise that I can pull off a spur of the moment lesson well.  It is a challenge to model because I don’t know the kids and I don’t know the content.  But I’m willing.  I feel that it is important to be vulnerable enough to do these things to support the teachers. Even if  the lesson doesn’t go as planned, we get a chance to debrief and so we are both going to come out better.

Using Native Language

So remember that most of the kids in the classroom don’t understand what I’m saying. Now, a lot of these kids speak Spanish, so I’m going to just be honest, my first instinct would be to just say it in Spanish. I speak Spanish. And this is not the moment to worry about language acquisition. This is the moment to worry about teaching a skill so that we can acquire more English! Routines, directions, telling a student how amazing they are…Those kinds of messages we need to get across, however we can get them across.  Use your entire language repertoire to communicate these things.  We have Google Translate and I will use it or whatever I need to use to help me , might use whatever I need to make sure they understand.

 

A key word or phrase is always okay.  – Said by Nancy Motley in one of my first ESL trainings.)

But as the instructor, I want to stay in English as much as possible. I’m the model.  I would only just pop out of English for a moment and come right back in. I don’t want them to think that I will be translating everything. I want them to get comprehensible input (understandable messages) with me staying in English as much as possible. But again, this is so important that I would use my Spanish. Absolutely. Not a problem for me. It always has worked out just fine.

 

Translation Can’t be our Go-To Strategy for Comprehensible Input

I have no problem using Spanish from time to time but the teacher I was working with does not speak Spanish! And another thing is that several kids in there don’t speak Spanish! I could use Google Translate and I would still use some Spanish translation, though. I would still do it because the majority were Spanish speaking kids and they just communicate kid-to-kid better than they can with me often. They’re friends. So I would do it, but I would be thinking “What about my student that speaks Farsi? What about the child that speaks Arabic? Are they getting it?”  And so translation cannot be our comprehensible input default. And as the year goes on, I want to make sure it’s not because more kids have more comprehension and I should not need to translate at all anything pretty soon. So anyway, the teacher I was working with didn’t speak Spanish, and I want to make sure that I’m trying to model something that they can do easily.

How do I Get Buy-In for This Norm?

Okay, so here’s how it looks if everybody speaks English in my classroom.  I would write “I Don’t Know.” on the board and talk about how it is OK not to know answers.  I’d give them a scenario in life like if I’m at the bank and they ask me, “What is your husband’s mother’s maiden name?”  I might just need a minute. I might know it, but I might just say, “Can you hang on just a moment? Can you give me a minute to think?” My husband might be in the car, and so I might instead ask them if I could go ask him for help.

Most importantly, I want them to talk to each other. I’d like the students to talk and to tell me why is this important.  I want their buy-in. This is a lesson. It is not just, ‘Hey, we’re going to start doing this today.’

We can just write one thing on the anchor chart and add to it throughout the year. But they need to buy-in. They need to understand why it’s important. So I would have that “I Don’t Know” written on the anchor chart and at that point, I would cross it out.  Then I would add “Instead of…” and we can start writing other things we could say onto that poster.

Poster vs. Anchor Chart

Instead of ‘poster,’ let’s call it an anchor chart. It needs to be big enough for the kids on the other side of the room to be able to read it. Any environmental print needs to be big enough, written in big enough print, that it’s usable no matter where you’re sitting in the class. And it needs to be referenced.  Otherwise, it is just decoration.

NO FORCED OUTPUT

That’s how it goes when everybody speaks English. So now I will explain what I do when they don’t comprehend much English.

I want to say, before I start to tell you about the simulation, No Forced Output. That’s a mantra in my mind that I’m saying to myself as I walk in front of a class of new arrival students or any students, no forced output. I am not going to force anyone. I’m never going to force a kid to speak in English. When they’re acquiring English, it’s just so cringy. And it is doing the opposite, the exact opposite of what I want, which is a low-stress environment where they can acquire, consume, and comprehend as much English as possible.

I want that to go as fast as possible. And there’s a researcher named Steven Krashen who will tell you it’s really all about reading. And he’s right, in my experience. I want to get them reading with support, high interest, compelling things, acquiring and understanding these words as they start to understand how they sound and as they start to use them, we get it off the ground, and it starts going so fast.

They have to be comfortable for that. They have to be really comfortable. Not freaked out. So whatever I’m doing in front of the class, they can attend to it, they can see it, they can get it. They can start getting little things. They can be comfortable enough to talk to their partner in a low-stress way.

QSSSA

One-to-one is low stress, so use whatever language, but I want them to talk to each other. Some of them won’t even talk to each other in their native language.

Think about that. A turn-and-talk. What could go wrong with a turn and talk in a regular math class?  I’m sure you’re thinking a lot of things.

They’re not talking about what I want them to talk about….

One of them is doing all the talking…

They weren’t paying attention, so they don’t know.

And on and on…

QSSSA is a routine that helps solve for so many of the challenges we face when we want students to Turn and Talk. It’s a top tip. It is our top tip.  I work for a company called Sidelitz Education, and QSSSA is always a Top Tip!  Chris Hagy of Charleston, SC has a padlet on the technique here. And this script by Michelle Gill is popular:

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That routine is one of John Seidlitz’ Seven Steps to a Language-rich, Interactive Classroom.  It is a fantastic routine.  But guess what step one is? Step one is teach kids what to say when they don’t know what to say.

Teaching Students what to Say instead of IDK is STEP ONE.

That is step one for a reason. We need low-stress environments where everybody is willing to take risks.  See, I don’t want to force them to speak in English, but I do want to arm them with something they can take anywhere they go in the building and also not be so worried that they’re going to be called on. So this “Instead of “I don’t know” poster that we’re creating, I have a little one for you.

They’re about six to a page and you can just print them out and cut them up and tape them to the desk. Tape them to their agenda.  Have a big one on the wall and also tape these on their Chromebook and everywhere so they can take it with them because it’s a skill.  It is what they might need at the doctor’s office. To use in math class. To use everywhere.

The Fail

Okay, so I’m walking to the front of a classroom where kids do not speak English. The class is for that. And these are new arrival students. And it’s at the beginning of the school year and it’s specifically for students who have missed education. So imagine there’s not much comprehension across the board.  So I went up there and I wrote, I don’t know on the board. And you see kids, they’re looking at it quizzically. So I think, “I’m going to explain this like I always do, but I’ll just use gestures.”

So for whatever reason, I pointed to my eye in my face. Ha!  I’m going to try not to laugh because it was so ridiculous.  So I pointed to my eye, but then immediately I was like, no, not that kind of eye .. I.   And I pointed to my chest and I saw a kid mouth “me” as soon as I pointed to my chest.  He mouthed me and I was like, yes, like me… I.  And another student pointed at me, like at the teacher, and said, I?  No, no, no… now my mind is racing. I’m thinking, God! Because you know what?  I did this for a living, for years. But every time I go in front of a class, I get slapped back into reality of how hard it really is. It is not easy to teach, period.  But you forget how intentional you need to be to teach newcomers effectively.  But I need this vulnerability. I need to be up there so that I can help. I don’t have to have a magic wand and do anything perfectly.  Or say “just do this!”  I was up there so we can figure out things together. And I know there’s a way to do this with newcomers. I’m just thinking, “Why didn’t I think about this before I walked up here??”

I was like, no, I (pointing at my chest).  Of course some kids got it. “I” is a very common high-frequency word. I like, I am here. Okay, let me just go on to “Don’t”… the word “Don’t.”  So I pointed to the word don’t, and I said, Say “don’t”, and everybody repeated it.

I wagged my finger like, no… like you’re shaming somebody.

Don’t… don’t… Don’t

And one of them said, “no.” And I said, yeah like “no.” But he was saying, “I no?”

No. So when I was shaking my finger back and forth, they were getting “no” like yes or no. So I was like yeah, it’s no…but it’s don’t.   And I’m trying to think, how do you say don’t? How do you convey don’t without saying no? Because the next word is know!

I don’t know.

So then I was like, okay, don’t. Just say don’t, and then no. And then point into my temple….know.

 

I know they’re thinking, “I no no?  And that no is with a K??”

Okay, right there. Let’s just stop. This all happened in just a few seconds, right?  To me, it is so funny.

Making Things Harder Than They Need to Be

It is so funny because I’m just making it so much harder than it needs to be. As always. As always, I’m making it way harder than it needs to be. Let’s back up.  I could have said it in Spanish because one kid finally did say “No Se?” That’s beautiful. Yes! Throughout the school year, if they say it in Spanish, I’m going to say, yeah, exactly. Or if they get it, yeah. I don’t care if they translate to each other all year long.  I just don’t want that to be their go-to either.  But anyway, as soon as he said No Sé, I wrote No Sé. And they’re like, yeah, okay. But there were still kids in the class that don’t speak Spanish.   But I did see that they can help each other understand this.  I saw a kid turn to another kid and make the gesture like shoulders up, palms up. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Yes. That kids should be teaching. LOL!

That kid should be teaching. Because here’s how I’m going to always do it from this point forward. They all got it when I made this noise, when I shrugged my shoulders, when I put my palms up, and when I made the “I Don’t Know” sound… it isn’t even a word. It is a sound.  So that gesture with your shoulders up and your palms up, that resulted in 100% of them getting it.  And they started laughing, and they’re like, okay, we get it.

I can also invite our kids who do have literacy in Arabic or something else to come and write that over here on this anchor chart. There’s nothing wrong with the native language. In fact, it’s powerful. But I want the English words big as that is our target language in this class.

So they understand this is what we’re talking about. But they needed to understand, just like any class, what does it look like in a class? So let me circle back that little moment that I had in front of that class. That little fail, I call it, was such a fantastic learning opportunity for me and for the teacher.  At least I  know it was for me and I hope for him because we debriefed afterward that we’re just making it harder than it needs to be.

Collaborate with Like Minded Educators

This is the kind of thing I get better at because I reflect on it.  I am reflecting on it right now in this podcast. But I want to talk with or communicate with other educators to remind me of the basic things that are most powerful.  And things like ‘When is native language okay?’  Again, A keyword or phrase is always okay for the teacher. I mean, when is native language okay for the students in an ESL classroom?

Always, always allow and honor their native language.

Students can use your entire language repertoire in this class because I have a language target. I have a language objective today. Our language objective is “We will use language such as “May I ask a friend for help?” and “Would you please repeat the question?”

That’s our language target today. And we all repeated it at the beginning of class in unison because that is low-stress. I’m not forcing anybody, but if we say it all together, you know, and we used it several times in the class, and I’m constantly bringing them back into English. The ones who can speak English, the ones who are able to repeat, the ones who are we’re constantly coaching for that through the entire 39 minutes. But you have to use your native language.

It’s a source of comfort. Your funds of knowledge live there… everything that you’re able to express.

I have a kid who speaks Spanish and a kid who speaks Arabic sitting together. And they do great, but they do use some of their native language. Their common language is English, but they can communicate with each other using everything they have.

We want to create a culture of conversation. And that conversation, we cannot force it all to be in English. But there’s more and more English as we are going through the year. I promise this is the answer. Low-stress environments, low-stress opportunities for output.

Opportunities for output. No forced output. And tons of comprehensible input. Tons of messages that you start to understand, what does that person mean? What are they trying to get across to me in this language?

Comprehensible input would be in the target language of English in that classroom. But comprehensible. So me making that gesture really exaggerated…it’s comprehensible. It was more comprehensible than anything else I was doing up there.   So we just played around with it. We’re just playing around with it.

Partner with Students.  Be Transparent

And you know, what is great about what happened is the kids don’t forget it. The kids won’t forget it if it’s a fail like that. I’m just transparent with them.  I was always telling my students that I’m learning how to be a better teacher every day. That’s what other people say, too.

I have heard Instructional Coaches say they don’t model because they don’t want to take the power away from the teacher.  NO.  You won’t take the power away from that teacher. I don’t believe that for a minute.  Let’s hold students to a higher regard. Partner with the students. I’m trying to get better about that.  Right when I walk in, if they let me introduce myself, I want to say “Hi, I’m Dr. Salva. Your teacher and I are both learning.  We’re always learning. I hope for you that your whole life you will be learning. So today we’re going to try some things together because I want to learn, and he wants to learn. And we’re always working together to get better at things, to get better at teaching you. And so what I learned from you, too.  And you guys learn from us.  So we’re going to try some things in here and see how they go.”

I mean, that’s just transparent because we’re all still just on this journey, all of us, me, the teacher, the principal, the kids, all of us. Hold them in high regard. We are all learning together, okay?

So Instead of, ‘I Don’t Know.’

Here are some things for my journey of learning lately on supporting teachers:

It’s not a poster. The strategy is not a poster because a poster is just decoration. If the kids aren’t using it, if we haven’t implemented it. And so if you look around your room and it is a small thing where kids can’t access it, or if we only talked about it one time, that’s where we learned, okay? We haven’t emphasized it enough.

We haven’t made it a norm. We haven’t made it our default. We haven’t spent time making sure our highest kid in the class uses it, because we ask them questions that they would need to use it like, “Can you tell me more about that?” Or “Can you say it another way?” Or “Why? Why do you think that?”

Are we using this to help with rigor?  Those kinds of higher-order questions would have your highest kids going, hhhmmmmmmm….  So you can offer them, “Okay, do you want a moment? Do you want to use something from the poster?”   We want all the kids to see that it’s for all the kids. So your highest kids have to buy into it. And if we want our students to buy into this technique, we need to give them the relevancy.  We need to explain all of this and make sure they all understand why it’s important.

Motivation – Helping Them Find It

We had kids speaking in their native language to each other and coming up with ideas of why it’s important because that was the thing. We need buy in from students. We need them to buy into this.

Larry Ferlazzo has written a lot on how to help kids be intrinsically motivated. I’ll link to one of his articles. Here are the four things.

I say them all the time. (I’m a Larry Ferlazzo groupie.) The researchers agree. If you want kids to be motivated, if you want people to find their motivation, intrinsic motivation, put these four things in the environment.

  • Relevancy like I just said, why is it relevant? How is it relevant? Why is it relevant to you? Why should you care.
  • Relatedness that’s relationships. Teachers have relationships with students, and students have relationships with each other, and we want to work on those because it really helps motivation. So relevancy, relatedness another one is:
  • Autonomy or choice.  So I give them that anchor chart, and you can choose whatever one you want to say. But how much choice you have in anything helps you be more motivated about doing it. And then the fourth thing that Larry writes about is:
  • Competence.  A sense of competence. That doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. It means I feel myself getting better at it.  I’ve had a little win.

So that whole technique instead of I don’t know, it’s not a poster, it’s a skill. What do you do when you don’t know what to say? What can you say? So that’s what I was saying.

Recap on Some Things That Can Go Wrong

What can go wrong is that we can have it to where it’s just a poster. It may even be a poster that they can’t read. So to offset that, to mitigate those challenges, we would use it more often. Explain it. Explain the relevancy.

Have kids talking to each other, your relationship with them, hold them in high regard that you want their opinion about why it’s important and even using it, explain to them, we’re doing it in here, not because I’m the teacher and I want you to answer it’s because your voice is important. Your voice is important. And you may just need a moment. You may just need your friend to remind you of something. You may not know the answer, but that’s okay. You know a lot of other things, and together we know a lot.

Don’t Force Output but Expect Them to Use These Phrases?

So it may sound counterintuitive. Like what I’m saying is make sure they know what to say, but don’t force output. Okay…I don’t care if they say it in Spanish.  I don’t care.  I mean, once they’re comfortable.  If I get a brand new student that come this week, I’m going back to relatedness. I’m going to have a conversation with them one on one, and I’m going to use Google Translate to make sure they know that they are in a safe place. That I’m not going to randomly call on them. They’re new. I’m going to respect their need for support, but I’m going to have a lot of conversations with them.  They’re going to be pretty comfortable sooner versus later.  They will be ready because they’re in a classroom where we do these things and they’re going to see this is how we roll in here. This is a very safe place. So when I do finally call on them, it’s okay for them to answer in whatever language. It’s okay for them to use their entire language repertoire to answer.

Or they can even give me a signal.!  They can even point to it in the book when they are new or nervous.  And I’ll say, “Yeah, right!  The answer is landforms. You see this?   Landforms. What he’s saying is ‘This week we are studying landforms’. That is the right answer! Let’s all say that…”

If I’m trying to get complete sentences out of everyone’s mouth, we can do them in unison. And I can honor this child, whatever their language.

So think about your language learners. If you’re teaching language learners, they have different proficiency levels, and so a brand new student is not the time to force output, but they can be included. Inclusion!  They can understand way more than they can say usually. So let’s make them comfortable. They can attend, they can repeat, and in low-stress environments it all works better.  Remember, low stress opportunities for output.

Low-stress output could be one-to-one. That would be a whisper read to my teacher. That would be with the students getting comfortable talking to the person next to them one-to-one.

A Culture of Conversation

And I can walk around and listen.  I can get a formative assessment. That’s better than me calling on one student that doesn’t know the answer or only calling on the professional answer. Always, if I call on somebody and they don’t know the answer, they can ask me something from the poster, or they can even point to the one on the poster and I can say “Yeah, this one says, May I ask a friend? Let’s all say that. May I ask a friend? Yes.  Okay… everybody. Ask your friend what do they think? And we’ll come right back to this person.”

But again, I’m going to make sure they have a WIN. See, with QSSSA, and Teaching kids what to say instead of IDK, you’re well on your way to a very language rich, interactive classroom.  I’m just asking you to respect the need for support of a brand new student, but in a way that allows them to acquire the language as quickly as possible.

I’m going to wrap up the show now and thank you for helping me reflect that’s, what I just did. This is my journey of learning. And thank you to everybody that’s allowing me to work with them and support them in their classrooms, in their districts, with training, with modeling, with coaching. Reach out. If you have any questions about that, you can find me on Twitter.  I’m @DrCarolSalva  or Come over to Facebook with us.  I’m also on Instagram but I don’t check that regularly. Sorry.

Last Thought

One more thing on “Instead of I don’t know.”  Think about the cumulative effect of that over a person’s life. Think about a student, what effect you’re having if you help someone build that skill right now over the course of their lives. A person who doesn’t just go, “I don’t know,” especially in this age of technology. What does that do for them in their working groups, in their lives, as they walk through their day, as they get their first job, as they get their next job? Look at the long game, always. Let’s look at the long game and realize the effect.  That’s what I’m asking you to do is realize YOUR effect.  Little things add up and they have major effects over a person’s life. So that relatedness that relationship you’re building with that student, it makes a difference.  Hold them in high regard. Hold every one of them in high esteem. Their voice is important, and you want them to have that skill so that as they go through life, they can show what they know and they can get the answers they don’t know, and they can add to their knowledge because the sky’s the limit.

Please stop and reflect on the huge impact you’re having on students. Thank you for everything you’re doing.

Bye.

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