Book’s Blog 10

Chapter 7      Teaching Academic Language and Subject-Area Content                 
The Freemans start this chapter by confirming that many ELLs do not develop academic language proficiency. They review test results in order to consider several factors  that contribute to their poor performance such as:

• Inadequate first-language support and development.
• Inadequate instructional support.

They give an example of ELL high school learner who often spent hours studying and memorizing but none helped him to become more proficient in reading and writing in English. He always blamed himself for his poor grades and his teachers assumed that he had not studied hard enough.

This beginning enables them to provide some suggestions for improving the academic performance of ELLs & struggling readers. They start with major suggestions to synthesize the current research:

1. Success despite despite work.
2. Identity, engagement, and motivation with culturally relevant texts.

Then, they introduce nine effective practices that Short & Fitzsimmons (2007) identified as being critical for school success for ELLs.

1-     Integrate all four language skills into instruction from the beginning.

2-     Teach the components and processes of reading and writing.

3-     Teaching reading comprehension strategies.

4-     Focus on vocabulary development.

5-     Build and activate background knowledge.

6-     Teach language through content and themes.

7-     Use native language strategically.

8-     Pair technology with existing interventions.

9-     Motivate ELLs through choice.  

I like the example the Freemans provide from a teacher, Mary, who have worked successfully with these students. They proof that Mary’s lesson incorporated all these suggestions and practices.  

For teaching both language and content, they start with Barwell’s general definition:

                    “Language and content integration concerns the

                   teaching and learning of both language and

                   subjects area(e.g. science, mathematics, etc.)

                   in the same classroom, at the same time” (2005, p. 143)

To consider in teaching language and content, Barwell outlines a framework of 4 dimensions:

1)     The policy and curriculum dimension.

2)     The institutional dimension.

3)     The classroom interactional dimension.

4)     The theoretical-methodological dimension.

I think teachers working with LTELs, SELs, LFS students, and struggling readers should consider these dimensions when they organize curriculum. If content and language teaching experts collaborate in designing and implementing curriculum, those learners benefit. For example, one such collaboration has been between science teachers & ELL teachers & researchers. The result is a book published by the National Science teachers Association, Science for English LanguageLearners: k-12 Classroom Strategies (Fathman and Crowther 2006).

                   
                                   

The Freemans provide numerous recommendations from the research demonstrating how teachers can build curriculum that teaches both content and language concurrently, using thematic approaches and culturally relevant materials. They mention 4 reasons to teach language and content:

1.  students learn both language and content.

2.  language is kept in the natural context.

3.  students have reasons to use the language.

4.  students learn the academic vocabulary of the content areas.

All in all, the final chapter goes back to the broad, school-wide challenges of supporting ELLs for academic success through the integration of language and content instruction, while also giving a detailed description of a unit developed by a teacher on the novel The Circuit that addressed the students’ need for identity, engagement, and motivation. Although ELLs face double the work of other students, they can succeed when teachers implement effective instructional strategies and teach both language and content. I believe that this chapter has many steps and answers to questions 2, 3, 4 and 7 of farming questions for our course.