Transitioning from Academia to Life

Hello All!
Sorry for the radio silence in the month of March, I had a few medical issues to contend with, not to mention the snow days obliterated our meetings ...but now I am back online and ready to talk about the next steps!

Here is something that no one wants to think about in April; essential questions, and key understandings. At this point in the year, you're hoping that what your students have learned has at least been influenced by your teaching a little. It's getting to the final stretch, the end of the year. Unfortunately, we are also-many of us-either starting or thinking about starting the final unit that we will be doing with our students. With that comes the finale of "What have I not taught them that they REALLY need to learn before moving into the next year of their adorable (or deplorable) little lives." Thus, we think about essential questions and key understandings.

Now, if you have been following along with the blog, we have covered writing some focus goals for our units. Then, we can think about the knowledge and skills that we want the students to learn, of course, we need to include something about the language skills and what the students will know about the language. Much of the knowledge and skills will come from the standards that you are using. For your ELs you may have to get a little more inventive. The language standards don't necessarily cover what your ELs need to know now, to build up to being fluent speakers at their grade level. Here is an example of what that could look like:

        -Students will know transition words to show sequence.

        -Students will be skilled at writing sentences containing the words; first, next, then, after that, and last.

SEI (SCI) teachers will probably only have one or two of these for a whole unit and it will most likely be something that the entire class will benefit from.

After that, we think about the understandings that we want them to take with them to other domains and tracks of life, and, of course, we think about the main life questions that we will address through our lesson (yes, perhaps I watched a little too much of Boy Meets World as a child).

At this point in the unit development you might think you'll find this step easy because you already have all of the activities you want to do with the students in mind. Well, stop it. Seriously, the activities may not even show up in this blog! Keep thinking about the life take aways and the skills that you want the students to know. How do they relate to the topic at hand? What is the BIG take away? What are they going to carry with them for the rest of their life that will help shape and mold the way they see the world? Well, at least their world right now.

Let's throw another wrench in the cogs, now think about the language that the students will be using. How are you going to highlight that in the vast web of your thoughts for their understandings and what they will take away? Well, start with the language of course! You already know what you want those little cherubs to know linguistically because that's how you developed your goals. Where will your goals take the students? Teaching claims? Maybe you want them to understand that there is a difference between being a critic and just being plain mean, or debating and fighting.

I recently did a unit on opinion writing and wanted to include some higher level lingo for my second and third graders. Here is something that I came up with:

       Students will understand the differences between a good critic and a bad critic.

One of the essential questions became:

        In what ways does language impact how other people perceive you opinions?

In teaching this way students were reminded that the things they say to others are important. They have been far more careful and thoughtful with their words than I would have ever hoped. That is more than what I was aiming for in the unit.

Use your goals that you made to make your unit really count! We are molding the minds that will care for us in our old age. Together we can take that from scary to at least plausible...

(To be honest, I didn't think this is where I was going with this post. If you think about it, I basically just gave you a think aloud, just like we do with our students!)

As a bonus, I would like to include a few videos provided by CAL (who I am working on this project with) that are worth a view. If you do not service any ELs, you can always tap into this for looking into the students own cultural background.

Digital Chalkboard: Primary Language Support        

 Teaching Channel: Deeper Learning for English Learners (start at 6:17)

More soon!