James Britton says, “Reading ‘floats on a sea of talk’” (1970, p.164).  I would like to add that learning floats on a sea of student-student interactions. Talking is an act of creating; creating is the fruit of learning.  

And when ELs create, they’re more likely to internalize content.  Too often in secondary classes where content is king, teachers dominate the talking.  Even worse, their preferred form of talking is not with students.  They default to talking at them hoping that the downpour of facts somehow leads to long-term learning.

Unfortunately,  teachers talking at students is actually the fastest way for students to become passive learners.

Designing lessons with SIOP

Structuring Student Interactions in SIOP

So how do we avoid this? What should we do differently? In Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (5th Edition) (SIOP Series), Echevarria, Vogt, and Short recommend four things teachers can do to better structure student interactions:

  • Provide frequent opportunities for interaction and discussion between teachers and student and among students, which encourage elaborated responses about lesson concepts.
  • Arrange grouping configurations that support language and content objectives of the lesson
  • Afford sufficient wait time for student responses consistently provided
  • Present ample opportunities for students to clarify key concepts in L1 (language one aka – home language) as needed with aide, peer, or home-language text (2017).
Provide frequent opportunities to process content

In Part 3 of this Sheltered Instruction Series, we discussed the concept of chunking, which means breaking content into manageable units.  I wrote that content is like a pizza pie, impossible to eat whole, but manageable when cut into smaller slices – just like learning new content.

Pausing to allow students to talk to each other to process information is one of the simplest ways to chunk content.  For example, Mr. Anam wanted his students to learn about Ebola as part of a Systems Unit and planned to have students watch this documentary.  Normally, after watching 4-5 minutes, Mr. Adam would pause and talk at the students to make sure they understood.  

Who was doing most of the processing work?

Instead, I suggested that he ask students a text-dependent question each time he paused.  For example, he might ask, “How does Ebola affect the body?”  Students then talked in their table groups.  This allowed students to process the information and increased engagement.  

The simple act of pausing to chunk information and asking text-dependent questions made students become more active in learning the content.

The next day, Mr. Anam sent me this unsolicited email to express how much he liked this structure. Being praised is not the goal – making content accessible for ELs is. 

Arrange grouping that supports learning

If student interaction facilitates learning then what’s the best way to group students?

Even though there are many ways to group students, when they are collaborating, I like to group students based on their academic language skills.  Like many teachers, I used to place the students with the most advanced academic skills with students who had the least academic skills, believing that this would:

  1. give the academically advanced students leadership skills
  2. and raise the understanding of the least academically proficient student.

However, this grouping frustrated both levels of students. And the huge gap between their academic language abilities made each feel uncomfortable. One student felt annoyed at being slowed down academically while the other was struggling to keep up.

Thankfully,  this article from NPR convinced me to change my grouping practice.  I still grouped students together based on their academic language skills, but they weren’t all in the same group, nor were they in groups with titanic skill differences.

SIOP Model interactions

Afford sufficient wait time

We need to add more time for students while they are:

  1. Processing oral language
  2. Organizing their ideas and words to produce an oral response.

One of the main killers of wait time is the tendency of teachers to rephrase questions one after another.  Often, teachers will ask a question, observe that the EL is struggling to understand, then rephrase the question. This is not as helpful as it seems. In an effort to help the ELs, we cause even more confusion for them because they’re still processing the previous question.

It often sounds like this:

  • Teacher: What are the different symptoms that a person shows when they have been infected with the ebola virus?
  • EL: ( thinking )
  • Teacher: Ok. What signs reveal that a person has the ebola virus?
  • EL: (thinking interrupted)
  • Teacher: Umm. What happens to a person who has the ebola virus?
  • EL: (feeling overwhelmed)

In this example, the teacher is merely rephrasing the same question over and over again.  Instead of firing off rephrasings, teachers can wait for a response from the EL and then repeat the question.  I’ve trained my ELs to say either:

  1. Can you say that again slower or
  2. Can you rephrase the questions?

This will produce significantly less confusion. We don’t have to ask perfect questions the first time, but we have to provide a respectable amount of wait time each time we do ask.

Valentina Gonzales also posted about the issue wait time on her blog.  Though she teaches in an elementary school, her framework for wait time is applicable to secondary students as well.

Valentina Gonzales

Present ample opportunities for home language clarification

Oftentimes, the language barrier is the only thing preventing ELs from accessing complex academic content.  In these situations, ELs are best served most when they:

  1. Discuss their understanding with a peer who speaks the same language or
  2. Read or watch a video about the concept in their home language.

For example, Mr. J wanted students to analyze a conflict in human history.  Ayaka, a Japanese student who has advanced academic Japanese skills, wanted to study the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  She was struggling to access the English resources because she is new to English.  Instead, we taught her how to use the Google Translate Chrome extension to turn her English resource into a Japanese one.  

Once the page was translated, Ayaka happily continued with her research and engaged in the same rigorous academic task as the others in class. It didn’t matter to Mr. J and I what language resource she was using as long as long as she produced English for her assignment.

SIOP teaching language and content

Takeaways

Learning is social (Vygotsky, 1980). Therefore, we have to design for students to interact with each other, intentionally group students, provide adequate wait time, and encourage students to refer to their home languages.  In doing so, we as teachers shift ourselves of the spotlight of learning and allow students to shine.  Teachers should be the directors of the play but never the main characters.

 

Echevarria, J., Vogt, ME, & Short, D. (2017). Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model. Fifth Edition. New York: Pearson. 

Nora, J., & Echevarría, J. (2016). No more low expectations for English learners. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.