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The Research

Culturally Proficient Teaching

The Highlights:

  • Diverse literature from various perspectives of different racial and ethnic backgrounds

  • Specific goals and strategies for English learning students

  • Know your learners, foster healthy relationships with students, and develop a safe, democratic community 

  • Believe in your students and challenge all learners in a productive struggle using higher order thinking skills

  • Examine your own beliefs and biases on a regular basis

All About Me Questionaire

SIOP

Lesson Preparation:

Scaffolding:

Integration:

Application:

Grouping Options:

SIOP Lesson Plan Template

Videos:

  • Choose and set clear content and language objectives

  • Supplemental Materials: hands-on manipulatives, real-life objects, pictures and visuals, multimedia, demonstrations, related literature, and text sets (adapted texts) 

  • Verbal Scaffolding: Paraphrasing students' responses to clarify meaning, use a think-aloud,

  • simplify language to reword definitions, repeat students' responses with correct 

  • pronunciation

  • Procedural Scaffolding: explicit teaching, modeling, guided instruction and independent 

  • practice, small-group instruction, or partner work

  • Instructional Scaffolding: Graphic organizers, timelines, completed assignment examples

Lessons need to incorporate an integration of processes.

  • Speaking, listening, reading, and writing and the four domains of English language development.

Websites:

  • Personalize Feedback During A Whole-Group Task: validate responses, prompt students to try something previously taught, support with additional scaffolds

  • Strategic Partnering to provide supports for peers during discussion

  • Small group based on skills, interests, or mixed ability grouping

  • Students can organize new information on a graphic organizer, generate solutions to real-life problems, have a debate on a current event, discuss scientific theories in class and then write their opinions. (Echevarria, Vogt, Short, 2017, p. 187)

  • The application portion of the lesson plan must be tied to the language and content objective. This phase of the lesson must tie into students background knowledge.

Discourse

Highlights:

  • talking, listening and thinking are a powerful combination of processes associated with learning, and each strengthens the others

  • teachers need to create many opportunities within the lesson for students to engage with academic language

  • sufficient "wait time" is required as well as giving students chances within the lesson to clarify their understanding of key concepts

  • Differentiation for discourse is needed, such as sentence frames, word banks, pictures, nonlinguistic representations, and discussion prompts

  • literacy involves social practices as well as cognitive practices

  • Brain research shows that retention improves when students are able to rehearse and have repeated practice within timed intervals

  • Effective discourse can lead to:

    • deeper understanding of texts and vocabulary​

    • oral language development

    • increased motivation

    • brain stimulation

    • more processing time

    • increased attention

    • more positive learning environment

Feedback

Highlights:

Teacher provides a review of content and language concepts

  • Teacher gives students opportunities to reflect and self-assess

  • Teacher gives students regular feedback 

  • Teacher assess comprehension and learning throughout the lesson plan

  • Teacher allows students to show learning in differentiated ways

  • Progress principle:  people develop a greater sense of "I can do it!" when they are able to confirm they are making progress towards a goal

  • Feedback can strengthen learning partnership with student

  • Quality feedback characteristics: 

    • Instructive rather than evaluative​

    • Specific and the right dose

    • Timely

    • Delivered in a low stress, supportive environment

  • Wise Feedback (while delivering negative feedback):​

    • explicit holding of high standards​

    • personal assurance that the student is capable and can improve with effort

    • specific actionable steps to work on

Feedback Research Paper

Ways to Give Feedback

Learning Partnerships

Highlights:

  • Learning partnership: building a culture of care that helps dependent learners move toward independence

  • Affirmation, mutual respect, and validation

  • Rapport + alliance = cognitive insight

    • Rapport:​ sympathetic connection with another person

    • Affirmation: acknowledge the personhood of our students (ie. I care about you.)

    • Building trust not self-esteem

  • Operationalizing Rapport Strategies: express care nonverbally, find time to play and have fun as a class, practice affirmation​

  • Learning Partnership Alliance: make a pact with the student, act as a warm ally and demander, make the student the driver of his or her own learning

  • Warm Demander: kid-friendly vocabulary, checklists to help decision-making skills, tools for tracking their own progress, organized data and regular time to process data, engage in metacognitive strategies, set a clear process for reflecting on and acting on teacher or peer feedback

Assessments

Highlights:

  • Frequent informal assessments can enhance student growth

  • Constructivist assessment: through observation and interaction 

  • Authentic assessments

  • Formative assessments

  • Effective assessments encompass participation, teacher and/or peer feedback, and student reflection

  • Multiple indicators: lesson plans need to provide the teacher with multiple opportunities to assess and look at students' language proficiency

  • Assessments require a comprehensive review of key vocabulary and key concepts before assessment

  • Regular feedback is needed for students oral or written language

  • Assessments need to assess the content objective(s) and language objective(s)

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