From Visions of the Possible To Quality Learning and Teaching With All Students

1. From Visions of the Possible To Quality Learning and Teaching With All Students Aída Walqui, Ph.D. Director, Teacher Professional Development Program, WestEd awalqui@wested.org LAUSD Local District 4 Principals and Assistant Principals Meeting December 12, 2007

2. The plan for today’s presentation • Discuss what is possible in schools in terms of the acquisition of English and academic achievement by students who are currently underserved • Observe segments of an accomplished teacher in action • Define and operationalize accomplished teaching with linguistic minority students • Outline the task of moving all teachers towards the goal of offering quality learning opportunities for all students and view an example of the apprenticeship of a teacher

3. The teacher and his context Accomplished teachers are the result of years of reflective practice in collegial and supported environments Teacher: Anthony DeFazio Class: Humanities (ESL) Students: In the U.S. between 3 weeks and 3 years, Junior Institute (9th and 10th graders) School: International High School at La Guardia Community College, Queens, NYC Unit: Linguistics Lesson: Third day of a five-week unit focused on the exploration of language

4. What happened before this class? Monday • Teacher announces the theme of the next 5 week exploration • Students in their groups brainstorm questions they may explore • Tony carts in a wide variety of books and other materials on language (in many languages, at a wide variety of levels) for students to peruse and begin answering their own questions individually Tuesday • Students work in groups sharing what they found out about language and construct Semantic Maps • Requirements for the Semantic Maps: they must be self-explanatory

5. Sample Semantic Map Parts of a language: lexis, syntax, grammar Characteristics of a language: etymology, sound Animal communication is not a language Language is a mode of expression There are about 6,703 languages in the world A way to communicate with sounds, movements that combine and make a sentence Lenguaje, Langage How can we define language? Different languages are expressed in different forms: different grammar, sounds, intonation, etc. There are no languages better than others A language is a system of arbitrary sounds and symbols by means of which a social group understands each other Dialect is a variety of language. We all speak dialects Language is the expression of [unclear] by means of symbols and sounds combined into words DeFazio’s class, 2001

6. As you watchTony and his students in action • Jot down three elements of his teaching that you find noteworthy • After we view the clip, I will outline 5 principles that underlie the teaching of Mr. De Fazio

7. Defining quality teaching with English Learners: Five principles • Academic Rigor • High Expectations • Quality Interactions • Focus on Language • Quality Curricula

8. 1. Sustain Academic Rigor in teaching ELLs • Promote deep disciplinary knowledge • Develop central ideas of a discipline • Establish the complex relations that exist between central ideas • Sustain a focus on central ideas and depth of knowledge • Require higher-order thinking skills • Lead students to combine facts and ideas to synthesize, evaluate, generalize • Lead students to solve problems and construct new meanings and understandings • Develop substantive, generative concepts and skills, and teach students to support thinking with evidence • Lead students to construct explanations and arguments in the discipline

9. 2. Hold High Expectations in teaching ELLs • Engage students in tasks that are high challenge and high support • Use tasks that are academically challenging and engaging • Provide scaffolds that facilitate student engagement in intellectual tasks • Provide varied entry points for instructional tasks • Promote apprenticeship and increased participation over time • Engage students in the development of their own expertise • Act on the belief that all members of class community can achieve • Foster a climate of mutual respect that contributes to the achievement of all • Have clear criteria for high expectations • Be explicit about the criteria for what constitutes quality performance • Be clear with students that it is necessary to take risks and work hard to master challenging academic work

10. 3. Engage in Quality Interactions with ELLs • Engage in sustained, deep interactions to build knowledge • Dialogue between teacher and student and between peers is sustained and builds on the participants’ ideas to promote improved understanding of concepts • Dialogue involves the exchange of ideas and is not scripted or dominated by one party • Jointly construct knowledge mediated through language • Talk is about the subject matter of the discipline and encourages reasoning, application of ideas, argumentation, forming generalizations, and asking questions

11. 4. Sustain a Language Focus in teaching ELLs • Explicitly develop disciplinary language • Explicitly discuss how language works (purpose, structure, and process) and the characteristics of language, texts, and disciplinary discourse • Focus student performance and corrective feedback on: fluency, complexity, or accuracy • Amplify rather than simplify communications

12. . 5. Develop Quality Curricula for teaching ELLs • Curricula have long term goals which include benchmark moments • Curricula are problem- based and require knowledge construction and sustained attention beyond a single lesson • Curricula spiral to increasingly deepen student understanding of concepts, language and skills, and enable students to move from ambiguity to increasing clarity • Curricula weave knowledge in ways that interconnect the world of ideas to the student’s reality and that of the world around him /her • Curricula build from the students’ linguistic and cultural knowledge and group identity

13. Tackling the Educational EnterpriseTheories of Development Three ways of conceptualizing the future (Valsiner, 2001) • Atemporally • Past to Present • Present to Future

14. Atemporal: humans do not develop but mature • genetics (e.g. innatism) • environment (e.g., behaviorism) • Past-to-present: life history of the organism leads to its present state of functioning • Development “sequence of stages” a person passes through on way to final stage • stages cannot be skipped • future predicted post factum – already has become present • Present-to-future: emergence of novelty • Chart development before it happens, while it is emerging • Others participate actively in developmental process • Brings person’s past into contact with the future

15. A future-oriented pedagogy: Sociocultural L2 Disciplinary Learning • Development follows learning (therefore, instruction precedes development) • Participation in activity is central in the development of knowledge and language (the mediator) • Participation in activity progresses from apprenticeship to appropriation, from the social to the individual plane • Learning can be observed as changes in participation over time

16. Quality Teaching with ELLs Is premised on apprenticeship notions of schooling. This means that students: • Are perceived and treated as capable, legitimate participants • Engage in rich, intellectually demanding interactions that have been deliberately crafted • Engage in high challenge, high support tasks that provide them with multiple points of entry to the academic community • Takeover responsibilities that are handed over to them

17. More on the Future-in-the-Making • A. N. Leont’ev: “American researchers are constantly seeking to discover how the child came to be what he is; we in the USSR are striving to discover not how the child came to be what he is, but how he can become what he not yet is” (Bronnfenbrenner 1977)

18. How do we help teachers become what they are not yet? By engaging them in a coherent portfolio of professional development opportunities that are situated in the particular of their own context and offer: • Workshops • Coaching • Lesson Planning Sessions • Video Clubs • Intervisitations • Team Teaching, etc

19. Assistance from more capable peers or adults Inner Resources: knowledge, experience, memory investment SELF REGULATION Interaction with less capable peers Interaction with equal peers “If one member of a dyad undergoes developmental change, the other is also likely to do so” 65) Working with teachers (and with students) in four kinds of relationships Resourcefulness, Self-access Scaffolding: Modeling… “Docendo discimus” (We learn by teaching) van Lier, 2004 20022004

20. high challenge ‘FRUSTRATION’ ZONE ‘APPRENTICE SHIP’ ZONE (ZPD) low support high support ‘TWILIGHT’ ZONE ‘POBRECITO’ ZONE low challenge So that they learn to teach in the apprenticeship zone(adapted from Mariani, 1997; Hammond and Gibbons, 2007)

21. Teachers going through quality professional development learn, just as their students do, by participating in activity

22. This active engagement enables them to understand the language and pedagogy necessary to implement tasks, and builds a basis for pedagogical reflection

23. A focus on language is essential for teachers Language is the most important tool they use in their work, so teachers need to: • Develop language awareness • Recognize the linguistic assets their students possess • Understand how language mediates all learning • Explore disciplinary uses of language • Learn to learn from their students’performances to build their futures

24. If provided with the right support, teachers can develop their expertise … and move from the terrible following example from a class in Merced, California, into becoming teachers who in similar ways to Tony De Fazio, can dream futures of excellence for their students and make that possibility a reality.

25. Tony understands language and his discipline deeply, and he has developed ways of teaching it Rather than beginning his review of student work by focusing on the most atomistic elements of an assignment, he follows a very different direction.

26. Tony’s framework for evaluating writing Purpose and Constraints of the Assignment

27. Tony’s framework for evaluating writing Purpose and Constraints of the Assignment Ideas

28. Tony’s framework for evaluating writing Purpose and Constraints (Audience, etc.)of the Assignment Ideas Organization

29. Tony’s framework for evaluating writing Purpose and Constraints of the Assignment Ideas Organization Sentences/Clauses

30. Tony’s framework for evaluating writing Purpose & Constraints (Audience) of the Assignment Ideas Organization Sentences/Clauses Vocabulary

31. Tony’s framework for evaluating writing Purpose and Constraints of the Assignment Ideas Organization Sentences/Clauses Vocabulary Spelling

32. Deepening our understanding of quality teaching and learning Other materials from Tony’s class included: • Tony’s reflections on his assignment • A set of letters written by two students in Tony’s class, Angela Pérez and Eric Lee • A commentary by Kenji Hakuta on Eric Lee’s letters

33. A Lens on Quality Interactions and Language Focus • Talk helps us apprentice into the ways of being and using language of a specific community • It organizes our thinking into coherent utterances • It allows us to hear (assess) how our thinking sounds • It enables others to respond to our ideas • We provide others with the opportunity to add, expand, or contradict our thoughts

34. There is a long and rich traditionin the study of quality in talk:Grice’s Conversational Maxims (1975) MAXIM OF QUANTITY • Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary 2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more informative than necessary

35. Grice’s Conversational Maxims Maxim of Quality • Do not say what you believe is false • Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

36. Grice’s Conversational Maxims MAXIM OF RELEVANCE Be relevant (i.e., say things related to the current topic of the conversation)

37. Grice’s Conversational Maxims MAXIM OF MANNER • Avoid obscurity of expression • Avoid ambiguity • Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness) • Be orderly

38. Talk that leads to quality learning • Does not emanate spontaneously • It takes effort and time to create classroom cultures where it becomes a valued norm • Teachers need to scaffold student participation to develop the norms and skills needed for valuable talk to occur • Scaffolding students’ ability to engage in talk requires attention to the structures that support the participation, as well as to the process enacted

39. Quality interactions and deep learning can be taught The task: • Requires teacher expertise • Assumes that intelligence can be socialized • Acknowledges two requirements: deliberate work by teacher and students, and the conscious development of student academic stamina

40. Teacher scaffolds the process:Guidelines for the apprenticeship of the genre: description Discussion of purpose: why do people describe scenes to others? Structure: • Where does the scene take place? • Who is the central character(s) in the picture? • What does this person look like (approximate age, sex, height, face, hair, clothes)? • What is this person doing? • Any other relevant information?

41. Preferred language: Teacher offers models of language that students may use: • This scene takes place in … • My picture shows … • The picture I have shows a … • The central character in my picture is • In my picture you can see a …

42. A A A A B B B B C C C C D D D D A A A A B B B B C C C C D D D D Oral Development Jigsaw BASE GROUP EXPERT GROUP Genre:Description

47. Apprenticing a Second Genre: Narratives… Short Stories Discussion of purpose: Why do people tell stories? Structure: • Setting, title • There is a central character (and other character/s) • Something happens to the character • Resolution • The event transforms the character

48. A A A A A A A A B B B B B B B B C C C C C C C C D D D D D D D D A A A A B B B B C C C C D D D D Oral Development Jigsaw BASE GROUP EXPERT GROUP Description FromDescriptionTo Narrative BASE GROUP

49. Roza Ng’s Class: The Transcript Please read the first two parts of the transcript and focus on whether students are engaging in quality interactions and academic rigor.

50. The Apprenticeship of one teacher • Teacher: Roza Ng • School: MS 131, Chinatown • Class: Intermediate ESL • Range: three months in the U.S.- two years • Period: 45 minutes long