Creating Objectives

I think one of the most difficult things about teaching, at least at first, is making attainable objectives. Teachers have a tendency to write objectives that are vague and can be achieved in many ways. For some learners this can be an issue, in part, because they want to have mastered the objective and, in part, because for some students the goal is just not going to happen. I know we have our percentages of students that we want to have attained their goal by the end of the class, or the thought that they will have achieved the goal in part and that might be what we are looking for. However, I would argue that this line of thinking can cause more problems for some of our students than solutions.

In light of that, DESE's ESL department has put out many documents that can help us narrow things down. On their website, there is a document called Next Generation ESL Project: Curriculum Resource Guide. Even though in the title it claims to be for ESL students, there are great tools in this (quite long and thorough) document for any sort of classroom teacher. (See link below)

In this document there are multiple suggestions for writing specific, S.M.A.R.T, goals, or rather objectives (Specific/Strategic, Measurable, Action-oriented, Rigorous/Realistic/Results-focused, Timed).

There are five ways modeled in the document in section 5.3 (in mine that is page 136 but I'm not sure that will transfer to yours since you will be downloading to a different computer and computers are fickle creatures). I will highlight one below (because it is the one that I like and use the most and therefore have the most experience with).

All of the objectives (now, please mind that these are ESL specific but can be easily modified to fit any classroom) (tired of parenthesis yet?) begin with "Students will be able to" some schools may change this to an "I can" statement when presenting these to the class in students friendly language.

Model number three used "Students will be able to..." and then a key academic practice such as, compare and contrast characters in the story, state an opinion about Rosa Parks' protest, or explain how to find the sum. Finally, we specify the language that will be used to perform the academic practice such as, using conjunctions in complex sentences, using the simple present tense, or using ordinal numbers (first, second, third).

Your objectives will then look something like this:
Students will be able to + key academic practice + specific academic language form or feature

"Students will be able to compare and contrast characters in the story using conjunctions in complex sentences."

"Students will be able to state an opinion about Rosa Parks' protest using the simple past tense."

"Students will be able to explain how to find the sum using ordinal numbers (first, second, third)."

I actually enjoy making objectives with these guides because they help me get more specific with what I want the students to be able to do. It also helps the students to know what they will be working on. Some of the models even have what supports you will be using with the students, such as, groups, partners, graphic organizers, etc. These can really help your students to be more successful.

Here is the link, if you are interested, to the downloadable PDF version:  

www.doe.mass.edu/ell/curriculum/ResourceGuide.pdf 

Assessments: Do we have to do them?

Well, yes, of course we do! But the real question is how, how are we going to assess our students? Real people in real life don't always take multiple choice tests...there are other options. Are those other options good for our students? Yes! Tests should have more meaning to the students so that they can actually learn from the material that we are teaching them! What better way to do that than project based learning with a real and tangible outcome that can also be used as a test or rather an assessment. 

I would like to expand on that thought through the lens of the project I have been working on with CAL and the state of Mass for writing units. We have talked about learning goals, knowledge, skills, understandings, essential questions and how to work through each of these. Now using all of that information we must make an assessment. We are working with the end in mind, therefore, what is it that you want your students to glean from this experience? How will they show what they have learned? Well first, you need to know what you are evaluating the students on-look back at your knowledge and skills, what are you really teaching these students?

Once you have that down you can design your test. I encourage you to put that multiple choice/essay test back in the drawer and brainstorm some real life situation that could impact your students in a deeper way. Get them to create something where they have to transfer their learning into ideas that will possible make the world a better place, or make them a better person because they applied their learning to something bigger than them. Social justice is a great place to start with many things. Perhaps you can have them build or design something in math, write a convincing letter to the principal or the president for some kind of change in their world, a public service announcement, or if you're not feeling that adventurous simply have them create a video, song, or even just a poster outlining something they learned (just to change things up a little).

If you're stuck because it's the end of the year, think forward to next year, embellish on the unit that you're working on and create your CEPA (Curriculum Embedded Performance Assessment) in a way that you feel comfortable (or not, be adventurous!) and that will help your students focus more on what they can so for the world and less on what the world can do for them.

In that light, this past week at CAL we talked about argumentation. Most students love to argue and it is an important part of learning. Here are some great resources for teaching argumentation in the classroom:

http://www.argumentationtoolkit.org/

https://www.scoe.org/files/Argumentation-Activities.pdf 

Happy Planning!

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!

The Collaboration Tool: Links Revealed!

Hello!
I have had a few questions regarding the next steps for the Collaboration Tool. Great to know that I have some readers! Thank you for helping me with this project.

So, we have the Collaboration Tool. We have thought about the direction we would like our unit to go in. We have chosen to write our language goal(s) for the unit. For example:

Recount (Macro Function) by naming, labeling, and/or identifying (micro function) historical events in a sequence using multiple medias (key academic practice).

Without all the jargon and gobble-de-gook reads like the following:
Recount by naming, labeling, and/or identifying historical events in a sequence using multiple medias.

You just wrote your first language goal! Great...now what?

Now is when we begin looking at HOW? How are you going to teach this explicitly? How are you going to know what the language is that goes into recounting? There must be a lot because it's a Macro function. How are you going to know how specific to get? What if the students already know what I choose to teach?

Deep Breath...you have the links! Let's use the example we have going. It might be helpful to open up that Collaboration Tool and take a peek with me. Each micro function is linked to another document that is meant to help you narrow down those questions. For example, if you click (on my computer I have to push and hold the ctrl button on the keyboard and then click on the link) on the micro function name/label/identify up will pop up a document.

On this document you will find the micro function along with some defining terms, tasks, and key words. This is a great check point to make sure that you have chosen the correct micro function for what you want to be doing linguistically with the students. If you look through the tasks and key terms and think, "huh, that's not what I was envisioning when I started this..." Then you simply go back and try again. You can look through the other micro function documents and they can give you ideas before you have finalized your goals. If you're anything like the rest of us who used this document, you will go back and change things at some point.

Then we can look at the multi-page grid. This has been divided by proficiency level based on the states guidelines for ESL students. Since 6 is proficient it is not included in the list. The document breaks down what should be taught at each level, beginning with 5 down to 1, based on what a student should be able to do at that particular level and therefore be able to accomplish the goals of learning because it is at an attainable level.

Teaching fluent speakers? Not a problem, there are generally gaps in their learning and understanding and this tool can show where those gaps are and make you better equipped to attend to those gaps.

The goal of this is to keep language in mind and help you better identify what the needs of your students are and how to address those needs.

Now, each level is broken down further: Discourse, sentence, and word level. Many who think of teaching language this vocabulary and while this is an integral part of language it is certainly not the end all be all. This document breaks down the different functions of language so that you can address each on separately or jointly depending on what you are teaching and how you want to teach it.

As an added bonus, if you look to the right of the document there are sentence frames and starters that can help students frame their thinking and get them writing in a way that is conducive to the genre that you are looking for! If you scroll down there are also questions that you can use with the students.

These documents are one of the most helpful tools I have used as a language teacher.

Feel free to comment below with further questions or comments.

The Collaboration Tool

Here it is, what you've all been waiting for...Post number 2! Okay, so maybe you haven't been waiting for it, but it's here.

This month I am featuring something that any classroom teacher can use in their daily lesson planning as well as full unit and curriculum production. Though it is geared toward  Language teachers, every teacher should really have the language of their domain in mind.  It's called the Collaboration Tool. This tool was created by people who have spent some time in the classroom (teachers!) and know what the language needs of the students are. That's right, finally we have something that was not just created by bureaucrats and politics, but by the people who bleed and sweat with us in their own classrooms everyday!

The Collaboration Tool is honestly one of the coolest (professional I know...) and most useful tools I have in my personal professional tool kit that I actually just used this past week while looking at the opinion writing lessons that I started today. If you are not a language teacher (you're lying to yourself because if you are a teacher you teach language to some degree--feel free to comment on that thought below!) you can still easily use this tool to help you think through the lessons or unit that you are working on.

When you click on the link below expect to feel a bit overwhelmed. There is a great deal of information on the one page tool. Never fear! I plan to break this baby down in at least 2 posts.

The first thing that you need to know is that the tool was created to make a formula. MACRO language functions cover ALL language in just 4 easy functions (hence macro-they cover everything), therefore they are included in unit planning no matter what. Now if you are writing lesson plans you will be using the micro functions far more often because you are using smaller steps to get to the bigger picture at the end or the macro functions. (i.e. you state an opinion or claim to begin to argue-see CT)

If you are just getting to know the tool look in the lower right of the screen and you should see some formulas that are color coded to match each column, you should also know that Macro + micro + key academic practice is the most commonly used because of its specificity.

Now, here's the really interesting thing in the tool; there are links right in the tool!  Go right on ahead and click around some of that and I will have another post that goes more in depth with what those are and how to use them.

Here is the link for the Collaboration Tool which can be found on the DESE website:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/ell/curriculum.html

The Collaboration Tool is about half way down the page. Feel free to explore that page as well, but I have a feeling the Collaboration Tool will be enough to blow your mind!

This is a hugely confusing document, if you have any questions please comment below and I will answer them the best that I can.

Introductions

Greetings!
For those of you who do now know me: my name is Dani Matern.  I am an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher Fitchburg, Massachusetts.  I have originally created this group as a forum for information that I will share based on the class that I am taking with the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)--once the class is over I hope to continue this blog as I learn more about my trade.  In this class we have received some great information about technology that can serve us in the classroom for teaching, planning purposes, and collaboration with other teachers.  I know that many of you teach in a small school, but that does not mean that it is easy to get together to plan across domains or collaborate in your teaching.  Perhaps that is not something that you have considered in the past. As educators we know that our students need to make connections in their learning, they way that they need to make connections in their lives.  Some of this technology can help both us and them work toward the goals of a higher education.

Please respond with your thoughts on any post, questions about the post, or how you could apply the information to your practice.  You may decide that the information does not suite your students needs or your needs as a teacher. If that is the case, please share that information. Any and all information is welcome.

Thank you so much for participating! Here is your first post on technology:

Through CAL I learned about an interactive video conferencing website that allows multiple users to not only chat face to face on the internet, but view presentations, view webinars, and share documents.  I have discovered that this can be used when planning with colleagues from the comfort of my home and in my most comfortable clothes!  This web conferencing also allows those on vacation, sick leave, or maternity leave the option of participating in important meetings that they might have otherwise missed.  In addition, it can be used by students for collaboration on group projects, whether that be from the comfort of their own home, or collaborating in separate classrooms. 

Please check it out at the link below and share your thoughts in the thread!

https://zoom.us/