Investigating Best Strategies for Academic VocabularyVirginia Dept. of Education

Title III Statewide Consortium Conference

Audrey Cohan, Ed.D. Molloy College

Rockville Centre, NY

acohan@molloy.edu

Audrey_Cohan Created with Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld

Session Objectives

In today’s session we will:

• Discover new aspects of academic language to

meet the needs of ELLs;

• Consider ways to create multiple opportunities for

students to use academic language;

•Learn strategies for the word, sentence, and

discourse levels.

What do teachers need to work effectively with ELLs? (Rojas, 2001)

SLA

Empathy

Strategies and techniques

Quick Write or Quick Draw

Teaching academic language to my students is like __________________________________ because__________________________________________________________.

How to use sentence starters?

• I think…..

• I wonder…..

• I feel…..

Definitions of AL offered by several educational researchers:

• “...the language that is used by teachers and students for the purpose of acquiring new knowledge and skills...imparting new information, describing abstract ideas, and developing students’ conceptual understandings” (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994, p. 40).

• “...word knowledge that makes it possible for students to engage with, produce, and talk about texts that are valued in school” (Flynt & Brozo, 2008, p. 500).

• “Academic English is the language of the classroom, of academic disciplines (science, history, literary analysis) of texts and literature, and of extended, reasoned discourse. It is more abstract and decontextualized than conversational English” (Gersten, Baker, Shanahan, Linan-Thompson, Collins, & Scarcella, 2007, p. 16).

• “Academic language is the set of words, grammar, and organizational strategies used to describe complex ideas, higher-order thinking processes, and abstract concepts” (Zwiers, 2008, p. 20).

Features of Academic Language

Word/Phrase

Sentence

Discourse

• General, specific, transitional, and technical

language

• Words and phrases with multiple meanings

• Formulaic and idiomatic expressions

• Collocations, nuances, and shades of meaning

• Types and varieties of grammatical structures

• Conventions, mechanics, and fluency

• Match of language forms to purpose/perspective

• Amount of speech/written text

• Structure of speech/written text

• Density of speech/written text

• Organization and cohesion of ideas (thinking)

• Variety of sentences and sentence types

Framing the Teaching of Academic Language

• Word-level

• Sentence-level

• Text-level

Which words do I teach?

Tier 2

Tier 1

Tier 3

Common every day

words that many

students know

well.

Words that appear in a single

context, often domain-

specific/technical vocabulary

that often needs to be

explicitly taught.

High-utility words that occur in many

contexts, may have multiple meanings, and

are used to process Information. The

“power” behind students’ curricular

connections.

Teaching VocabularyEssential Criteria

Conceptual Understanding

POWER

Importance and Utility

MILEAGE

Read It, Say It, Write It

• “What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.”(Cisneros, Sandra. “Eleven.” Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Random House, 1991. CCSS Appendix B, p. 87).

Read It, Say It, Write It

• Students can use the following sentence frame borrowed from Cisneros to discuss their own experiences of being an adolescent, the member of a sports team, or any other challenges they face:

• What they don’t understand about ____________________ and what they never tell you is that ____________________.

Tricolon

• A series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses.

• Words such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.“

• Phrases such as "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Famous Speech

• If there is anyone out there [1] who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; [2] who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; [3] who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

The Magic of ThreeThree nouns (or adjective-noun combinations):

______________________, _______________________,

and ____________________________ swam by us in the

aquarium.

Three verbs:

I was ____________________, _____________________,

and ________________________________ in the park.

Three parallel phrases:

At school, it’s important to

_____________________________________,

___________________________________, and

____________________________.

Text Mark Ups

= Confirmed my thinking

+ Added to my thinking

Changed my thinking

Supporting Language

Functions • Acknowldeging ideas:

– My idea is similar to _____

– I agree/disagree with ______ because

– My response to _______ builds upon _______

– As it has been established by others, _____________

– As previously mentioned, ____________

• Synthesizing:

– The main points expressed in these poems are ______

– The significance of ________ is ____________

– The notion of _______ can be expressed as _______

– From my perspective, what these poems mean is _____

Questions? Final Thoughts?