Artifact 3 || Teaching Language

Something all native English speakers take for granted; their social cues and vocabulary that associates with each scenario.  While we are out with our grandparents we know that we should speaking in an honorific form, please and thank you's, correct pronouns etc.  How about the ELL's in your classroom or community?  This is something not quickly recognizable or dealt with, however with an analysis of the language and vocabulary types we use daily we can see there are two general types; BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency).  

This graph clearly outlines the subtle, or not so subtle, differences between academic and everyday language.  This helps to articulate the importance of teaching the two language structures and vocabulary and how different they are.  This graphic may serve as a wonderful articulation between the two structures.  The need to practice each area cannot be expressed enough; socially students need to feel welcomed in the classroom and in the playground and without the interpersonal vocabulary and skills they won't be able to approach potential friends with confidence and may lose the confidence going forward to make that approach, while in the classroom students want to participate in classroom conversations which take on a different paradigm than those of the playground and thus the needs this contextual information as well.  Providing visual cues for ELL’s to follow along with, and throughout the classroom will aid them as they take part in individual and group work, and further offering guided practice will allow the student to practice ad nauseum safely until such time mastery is reached.  We can make the change in our preparation to include these two different strands of language into our lessons, adding in cue cards or classroom visuals that discreetly advise ELL’s of the subtle differences or the sentence structure needed or a vocabulary chart.  Providing open ended exit tickets will enable ELL’s to showcase their understanding in their own way and further establish their comfort in the content.  

I especially like this exit ticket strategy to help accentuate the importance of teaching different language assets.  After a long lesson, ELL’s are very likely in overload mode and surely not retaining a lot that traditional exit tickets ask of them.  As such they may not have their intended impact where as something of this nature allows them to use less brain as these images are cross-lingual.  Keeping it simple, yet focused on the lesson will help reaffirm the new knowledge and connection to prior skills is an important step.  Setting a general question for all to answer provides a platform for educators to assess their lesson, the state of the students or the understanding of content.