Instructional strategies for culturally and linguistically ...



Instructional strategies for culturally and linguistically diverse classesLinks to subsections: REF _Ref15297116 \h Pre-Teaching: Building Classroom Structure REF _Ref15297388 \h Learning Student Names. REF _Ref15297395 \h Calling on Students. REF _Ref15297402 \h Class Objectives. REF _Ref15297151 \h During Teaching: Increasing Comprehension REF _Ref15297179 \h Wait time. REF _Ref15297194 \h Supported Social Interaction. REF _Ref15297201 \h Graphic Organizers. REF _Ref15297209 \h Academic Vocabulary. REF _Ref15297161 \h Post Teaching: Extending Learning Opportunities REF _Ref15297232 \h Required Office Hours. REF _Ref15297276 \h Feedback. REF _Ref15297282 \h Grading REF _Ref15297365 \h Deadlines. REF _Ref15297374 \h Cultural Values.Over the past 10 years, Northwest University has significantly increased international student enrollment in all categories: university preparation (Center for English Language Education), undergraduate, and graduate programs. In fact, international student enrollment has seen the largest increase among all other categories of student enrollment demographics at NU. So, while this has been a gradual change, every year the opportunities for international students increase and so it is crucial to continue positioning our university as accessible and welcoming to students with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and to purposefully engage diverse voices in our classrooms.Research demonstrates that even after an English Language Learner (ELL) masters the English language enough to matriculate into mainstream classes, there may still be cultural, social, or academic gaps that complicate student progress in mainstream content classes (Rubenstein-Avila 2013). We can intuitively understand why this would occur, and it is sustained in the research. Students learn English in a laboratory, of sorts, through ESL classes, cram schools or after-school supplemental language classes, and intensive English programs. Before university matriculation, they learn English language components, like grammar and vocabulary, and then they must expand outside the classroom laboratory into the land of rapid natural speech, with a vastly wider vocabulary, and complex, socially-governed communicative interactions and expectations. The following article is intended to help faculty prepare classrooms and develop instructional strategies that are academically and culturally inclusive. While these methods are specifically gleaned from ELL pedagogy resources, the methods function in ways that benefit all learners. Even if your particular major has limited cultural diversity among students, we shouldn’t underestimate the academic diversity between students based on their motivation to learn your particular subject, their learning preferences and disabilities, the impact of socio-economic background on their K-12 educational opportunities, and the socio-cultural experiences that informed their worldview.Tomlinson reminds us that “ultimately, what all students need is your energy, your heart, and your mind” (33). Students want to feel worthy of your effort, they want their unique selves to be noticed and invited into classroom participation, and they want to receive your creativity and thoughtful engagement. I want to invite you to read through the following strategies, structured in Pre-During-Post categories, and identify some strategies that you can implement to make your classroom more academically supportive & inclusive in the coming year. Pre-Teaching strategies will help you to build a predictable structure for your classes and connect personally with students. During-Teaching strategies are intended to help you increase student comprehension of your course material. Post-Teaching strategies will extend learning opportunities and academic support beyond the classroom as your students complete assignments and learn from your feedback. These strategies have been popularized through the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observational Protocol) teacher training methodology which was created to facilitate the instruction of English learners (ELLs) and learners with special needs in content classrooms. (Rubenstein-Avila 2013; Echevarria, Vogt, & Short 2010). You can refer to the cited SIOP Features by number to search for additional examples. Pre-Teaching: Building Classroom StructureLearning student names; 2) calling on students; 3) identifying outcomes Learning student names. All students deserve to be known and included in the class and trying to pronounce names accurately and fluently is the most basic step to making a student feel welcome and valued in your class (Tomlinson 28). Name mispronunciation causes anxiety for both students and teachers-students worry about how their peers or instructors will react to their long names or unfamiliar spellings. Professors struggle with their own confidence reading a list of unfamiliar names on the first day of class and then each class following.Names matter, and so it is worth the time to learn the correct way to say our students’ names. Names contain parents’ purposeful choices to honor family members or desirable qualities and contain the unique spelling that they chose to employ. Any name can be learned, it just takes care, attention, and practice. We can say Ichiro Suzuki, Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior and S?ren Kierkegaard because we care about them and we care enough to be accurate even though they are long names and include non-English conforming spellings.Application:Send an email before class begins asking students to contact you if they often hear their names mispronounced. Ask them to call your office and leave a voicemail or email you with a pronunciation description. Don’t ask if students have an American name. Instead, through email or outside of class, ask if students have a nickname they prefer to be called, so you don’t put International students on the spot in class implying that international names are hard and they need an American name in order to be included. Ask how many syllables there are in their name and if all syllables are equally stressed or if a particular syllable is stressed or unstressed. In pronunciation in general, vowels receive the stress in a stressed syllable, while consonants may be reduced or silent. Regarding a prevalent population at NU, you should note that Chinese uses some letters that are particularly uncommon in English, their pronunciations are: Q=/ch/, X=/sh/, ZH= /j/ Even in names that may appear familiar, please consider that individuality is often expressed through spelling variations. Ask if there is a common mispronunciation if the spelling is ambiguous (resist saying ‘strange’). For example, “Lise” could be pronounced Lease or Lisa, Lee-za, or Lie-zaYou can also Google common international name pronunciations as a starting point. Calling on Students.Make a purposefully inclusive plan to include all student voices in your class. that is. Use name sticks, assigned numbers, groups with internal jobs, to help yourself avoid calling on the same students repeatedly. When you only call on the students who raise their hands, you are only hearing from the students who are already confident (whether they are correct or not) about that day’s content and you may overlook a topic that needs additional explanation. You may also subconsciously avoid students who have difficult names, who are struggling, or who you simply overlook. Calling on students randomly keeps everyone alert and engaged (see also: “wait time” in the next section).Application: Name sticks: write the names of your students on colored popsicle sticks (available at craft stores). You can easily draw sticks to make random groups, or select according to colors to make new groups. You can use the sticks to visually demonstrate instances when all students will eventually need to participate. Writing out the names will also be a tangible way for you to practice your students’ names. Jobs within Groups: during group work, have groups number off and then you assign specific jobs to each number. For example: 1s find the textbook page citation, 2s contribute real world examples, 3s generate an extension question, and 4s write or report the group’s examples to the whole class.Class Objectives. All courses have learning outcomes that have already been identified and codified in the course catalog and your syllabus. However, breaking those outcomes down into incremental class objectives is left up to instructors, and explicitly stating daily class objectives is very helpful for students. Your class objectives will typically be content, process, or performance-oriented statements. Ideally, the objectives accumulate over the course of a unit to build into the higher-level content mastery. (SIOP FEATURE 2). English learners can particularly benefit from course overview/agenda/summary statements because they briefly identify the main goals of the lesson and clarify what they are supposed to be doing with the day’s new content knowledge. As a preview step, this practice helps students anticipate the main elements of a lesson and identify internal transitions more clearly. As a summary step, it can help build student confidence when their notes and assumptions were confirmed or help them gain clarification when they were incorrect. For example, the progression of objectives in an English class may be: In this unit, students will be able toRecognize Similes in TextDiscuss the Function of SimilesWrite Three SimilesWrite a Paragraph Describing a Setting Using SimilesList your class objectives for your students to help them to know the goal of the class, to focus their attention on the elements that they will be evaluated on, and to help them understand how the current lesson fits in, relative to previous and upcoming lessons. When students are still gaining language fluency, they may work equally hard translating your pre-class, community-building, small talk about TV shows and the core content. Having these class goals articulated will help signal the importance of different parts of a lesson. Furthermore, written objectives “remind us of the focus of the lesson, provide structure for the classroom time & processes, and allows students to anticipate the direction of the lesson and stay on task” (Echevarría, Vogt, Short, 154). Return to your class or unit objectives at the end of class to help students place the information you taught within the larger context of the unit, class, or major. All students will benefit from setting the context of your lesson, but ELL students particularly benefit from purposeful repetition of main ideas.Application: Types of objectives (adapted from Echevarría, Vogt, Short, 29-31)CategoriesLanguage ComponentsStudents will be able to (SWBAT):VocabularyTechnical terms, concepts, names of people/placesDefine terms orally and in writing.Describe steps in discipline/genre specific terminology.Describe interpretative differences between English and Greek readings of a text. Language FunctionsDescribeCompareSummarizeFormulate questions and general hypothesize before conducting an experiment.Critically analyze social media messaging for new product marketing.Language SkillReadingWritingListeningSpeakingScan directions for a laboratory experiment to identify the necessary equipmentDraft a lab reportConsolidate written reports from group members into one cohesive reportPresent historical summary with visual and auditory supporting aids.Lesson TasksDemonstrate learning through teaching othersRead and summarize a text passage with peers and then teach the main idea to another student.Summarize main events of the era into a 10-point visual timeline.Learning TasksDemonstrate self-corrective steps or learning process skillsOutline essay with key points and supporting examples.Pre-write possible directions research project may go.Revise draft for clarity in organization and precision of academic terminology. Revise drafts to include more visual language in personal examples. Content ObjectivesIdentify, solve, investigate, distinguish, hypothesize, create, select, draw conclusions about…Skill ObjectivesListen for, retell, define, find the main idea, compare, summarizes, rehearse, persuade, write…During Teaching: Increasing Comprehension1) wait time; 2) supported social interactions; 3) graphic organizers; and 4) academic vocabulary building. Wait time. Creating a patient climate in the classroom has many benefits and can be achieved in several ways. Wait time refers to the amount of time that elapses between the professor asking a question and expecting an answer. Increasing the wait time slows down the pace of a lecture, allowing students more time to process the content, consider other input, form their answer, and participate. The shorter the wait time, the more likely the class will come to be dominated by only the professor’s voice or those of a few confident students. Application: Pause just a few additional seconds before calling on students to allow them to compose an answer. Allow students to complete their answer, even if it is incorrect, before commenting. Give students an alternative for participation even if they are personally unsure, such as, would you like to ‘phone a friend,’ ask a friend for help, or ‘50-50’ choose between options that the teacher gives. After the assistance, circle back to the student and ask them re-state the answer in their own words so they can benefit from the language practice. (SIOP Feature 18)Supported Social Interaction.In most classes, we hope to move students beyond information recall to information application and creation. Developing these higher-order learning skills are important for all students, and particularly for ELL students because it facilitates the retention of both language and content knowledge. Social Interaction has been found to increase student learning motivation and content comprehension (Guthrie & Ozgungor, 2002). Allowing for supported social interactions facilitates class discussion, allows students to have guided interactions, and relieves the possible ‘threat’ or anxiety response of being called on directly (Jensen 2005). Working in pairs also allows students extended time to prepare and increases attention (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollack 2001).Application: Think-Pair-Share: Instead of asking just one or two students to answer each of your questions, ask all students to think of an answer, share with a neighbor, and THEN call on students to share with the whole class. Chunk and Chew: On particularly heavy content-lecture days, plan to pause every 10 minutes (chunk) to allow students to discuss and reflect on the content (chew). Then allow students to share questions or examples that they may have. (SIOP Features 16, 25)Graphic Organizers.Graphic organizers is a term that refers to a broad range of visual supporting materials that assist students with the categorization of information. By providing students who have a language or auditory challenges a visual representation of the content, you are able to increase the comprehensibility of key content. As you lecture, think about the details that you can reinforce visually. What key words are you writing on the board or featuring on the PPT? Can you add outline numbers or letters to your key points or PPT slide headings to make the transitions more clear? Numbering slide headings can help students know if this a new point, or an example of the current point. A simple test of this strategy is to take a photo of your white board at the end of your class (like your students probably do). How could you make small changes to your written/visual notes to make the messages more meaningful long term as students use them to study for exams or write response essays? (SIOP feature 5)Application: Input:A written class Agenda or Outcome list Timelines, cause-effect mapping, character relationship/family treesGraphs, pie charts, spacial diagrams, mapsWord webs, discussion webs, concept clustersOutput:Have students create their own versions of the ‘input’ suggestions (timelines, family trees, consequence flow charts) and compare with their partners.Scaffolded Outline: Instructor provides basic outline that students must fill in. Especially useful on high-information density lecture days, at the beginning of a unit perhaps. Can be as simple as reviewing or listing the main ideas of the lecture before you begin and giving students a goal of listing one definition, example, or text page number under each main point. Answer frames: Share (five) examples from the text with your partner using the following format to guide your discussion:The founder of __________ was ______________ and he/she is best known for ________________.As simple as this seems, sometimes sharing this level of structure will allow students to have confidence sharing the content they know without needing to worry about the language forms they are using. The same method can apply in homework or quiz design. Academic Vocabulary.Building academic English vocabulary is important for all students as it enables both their content comprehension and their academic participation in your particular field or disciplinary genre. There are two basic vocabulary categories that can assist students in your classroom: learning Content-specific and Process-oriented words. Content words are the key terms, concepts, vocabulary that are associated with the topic you are teaching. Some words may be contextually defined such as the difference between a tea party and the Boston Tea Party. Make these types of definitions overtly clear in your lectures when there are cultural assumptions that play into the definition. Process words in the classroom refer to the actual classroom processes and tasks. It is helpful to have consistency in your terminology for classroom activities such as: share with a partner, summarize, discuss, reflect, analyze, debate, etc. Establish your key terms for yourself during your syllabus design period, and then be consistent as you describe assignments and in-class activities. (SIOP Feature 9)Application:Speak reasonably slowly and comprehensibly during lectures and activity instructions. Excitement and/or nervousness on the part of the instructor can cause us to speak faster or quieter, adding an auditory challenge for our ELL students. Limit activity instructions to 4 clear steps and then reiterate the key verbs that will guide the activity. This will take some advance preparation on your part, but it will make activity transitions go more smoothly. For example: With your partner Identify 3-5 qualities of effective leaders from the text, Tell a personal story that describes each quality for you, Categorize those qualities based on the Clifton strength categories that they have.Write a list of current leaders that you want our class to analyze and categorize with you.With your partner you have 4 tasks: Identify, tell, categorize, and write.Synonyms: As you are introducing discipline-specific terms, also use more accessible synonyms overtly and repeatedly to make the connection between the terms clear. Actions: when possible, add gestures to clarify meaning of related words i.e. when the government lends (hand extends) vs borrows (hand returns)... Roots: many English words have meaning-packed root words, foreign base words, pre-fixes, or suffixes that can help students understand the key term and other related concepts. As you introduce important key words, utilize these language clues (morphemes) to help students develop independent vocabulary building strategies.Post Teaching:Required Office Hours; 2) Feedback; 3) Revision; 4) Grading; 5) Deadlines; 6) Cultural ValuesRequired Office Hours.Understanding the value and function of visiting a professor’s office hours is one of the biggest cultural challenges for international students and also for first generation to college students. Students who come from cultural backgrounds that have a high power distance between students and teachers may especially struggle with “inconveniencing” you by talking to you outside of class, in your professional space. Other students may simply misunderstand that office hours are intended to be your times of availability for students, not that office hours are when you do your office work (Condis 2016).Let students know the best ways they can use your office hours: to ask for content or assignment clarification, to ask other questions related to the discipline they are studying, for advice about courses, for assignment feedback clarification, and for other academic opportunities that may be available through their major.Application:Require students visit your office during the first weeks of class as part of a warm-up assignment. Require students visit your office in small groups as a preliminary step in a larger group project to give an oral description of their plan before they continue to the research and writing steps. Require students who want to complete an assignment rewrite to meet in your office hours to discuss changes.Keep your door open during office hours so that students know you are available. Make your office inviting by having an easily accessible chair, which is at the same height as your chair, so that your conversation will feel more like a collaboration. Use online services like Zoom or Skype to have virtual office hours available during designated times to meet with students who may live off-campus. Take any opportunities you have in office hours to check in with students about how you are doing as an instructor or to gather their preferences. You may ask: how is my speaking speed or volume during lectures? Do you have preferences about our in-class pairings or group assignments? Do you prefer to work with other students who speak your same first language or would you like to work with new students?Feedback.There may be many errors, or possible areas of improvement, in students’ written assignments. It is important to focus and prioritize your feedback. First, make sure that your assignment was clear about the learning outcomes that are going to be assessed. Consider that not all work needs to be graded on grammatical accuracy as long as content is comprehensible. Some assignments should just focus on engagement with text or topic, interaction with classmates, or sharing personal insights for example. In these cases, focus your feedback on strong content points and areas needing additional content development, or where they were missing specifically required elements. When grammar is the only, or primary, feature that you are grading in student work, you are telling them that grammar is more important than their ideas about content, discussion, etc. Critical thinking is a complicated process and students should have some developmental freedom to process information in stages, and then build up to more finely-crafted written assignments. Keep in mind that the grammar pet-peeves that you grade on will likely be different from other professors, so share your particular feedback priorities with students (a/the, comma use, heading formatting, etc).Application: Give feedback in categories that include Organization, Content (add additional specificity to your topic such as Content-summary, theory, application, analysis, etc.) and then Grammar and Format. Based on your outcomes you may need to add other categories, but by being consistent in your feedback categories you will communicate your academic values to your students. Try to include praise, specific error identification, and/or areas for expansion briefly in-text. Then in end-comments give an extended explanation of next steps for improvement on just a few of the main error types. It is best to be very specific about the error that needs to be fixed, and then have an opportunity for students to interact with that error in a direct activity to facilitate learning. Grading.Criterion not norm-based: When evaluating ELLs, try to grade based on your outcome criteria (competencies, goals, standards) and not on their success relative to other native English-speaking students. Try to build your outcomes to reflect your disciplinary content, and not primarily their English language proficiency. Your ELL students will likely always have a spoken and written accent. Please take some time to consider what is necessary and developmentally possible for students to learn, and what is merely native-speaker preference. Some ‘errors’ belong more in the preference or accent category and are not necessarily critical errors. In the case of courses with a specific ultimate audience or constituency, it is important to take the students’ goals into consideration. Make instructions comprehensible so that students are not graded down for not following form expectations when their content knowledge is the assignment outcome. Application:As you give written feedback, do so in a way that is efficient for both you and your students:Find a guidebook you trust and use it to make your own expectations consistent.Prioritize feedback for 1-2 grammar and 1-2 format error types.Reference rules, and correct examples in your feedback.Give students guided revision/application opportunities.Deadlines.Giving grace on deadlines is one way to accommodate student learning. Not only do ELLs have to spend significantly longer to read and write assignments for your class, but time management skills are also very culturally informed. While students do need to learn American timeliness culture and deadline expectations, this is still part of their formative process, and for some assignments, giving some flexibility may be a real moment of grace amidst the rigidity of American academic culture. Cultural Values.While no one is entirely defined by their home culture, it may be valuable for professors to examine Hofstead’s Cultural Insights and compare the cultural preferences between selected countries for greater insight into elements of their students’ cultural worldviews. The cultural dimensions with the greatest impact on classroom behavior may be: Individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence. Individualism: will impact students’ preferences for group or solo work, and their preference to hear input from others over promoting their own ideas. Uncertainty Avoidance: will influence a student’s willingness to participate on exploratory assignments or open-ended activities. Long Term Orientation: will influence a student’s ability to create long term goals and short term incremental processes. Indulgence: will influence a student’s time on task and responsiveness to external stimuli. Works CitedBarshay, J. (2018). College students predicted to fall by more than 15% after the year 2025.TheHechinger Report. , M. (2016) How to convince students to attend office hours. Inside Higher Ed. Nov 1, 2016, J. Vogt, M, and Short, D. (2019). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model. Pearson.Grawe, N. (2019). How demographic change is transforming the higher education landscape. Higher EdJobs. Hofstede Insights: Country Comparison. (2019). , C. (2017). How to differentiate instruction in academically diverse classrooms. Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ................
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