Exploring "Systems" Visually in Grade 1

Grade 1 students have been inquiring into a unit with the central idea: "Effective communication systems allow people to communicate locally and globally".

As such, to increase understanding of vocabulary terms such as communicate, sign language, Skype, video conferencing, telephones, effective, and ineffective, students have practiced communicating in different ways using different equipment and applications.

They were thus primed to learn the meaning of the word system which describes a way of doing something, a process, and various components.

Homeroom teachers and EAL teachers felt that the concept of systems could be best understood as visual diagrams. We thought, however, that students were not ready to simply draw these diagrams themselves. After discussion, teachers thought that the best way to help students think about and show their understanding communication systems might be to scaffold the concept using images that students could rearrange and physically connect. Students could then use these physical models to help them draw and label diagrams.

We then hunted for descriptive visual images using icons from the Noun Project, a unique new initiative of the sharing culture. We looked for images that students might seize upon as being a component of a communication system, such as computers, mobile phones, and envelopes. We also looked for images that might help students express more subtle understandings, like cell towers, satellites, wires, wifi, eyes, ears, and speech bubbles.

We then ran an introductory lesson where we discussed with students how when we write we use a system that students are very familiar with. As students discussed this process with their homeroom teacher, the EAL teacher (me) modelled how to draw and connect images and arrows to show the system and how different components connected together in that system.

Next we gave students the option of working with a partner, group, or individually with the various icons and pieces of wire to be used as connecting elements.

Students came up with unique combinations of icons and connectors which we then used as discussion points with them to gauge their understandings of both what a system was and how a particular communication system worked. We questioned students as to what each component was, why they thought it was important, why they put icons in certain orders, and suggested ways perhaps that students might think deeper about systems.

Later, when students completed their summative assessments, as part of which they had to draw images showing how a communication system of their choice worked, they were allowed to use these icons and wires to "construct" their understandings first!

The grade 1 teachers and EAL teachers felt that this lesson was helpful because it provided students with a hands-on-minds-on physical manipulative and visual cues to enhance comprehension. Students also seemed to love the task.

Focusing on Language for a Grade 2 Unit on Urban Environments Part 2

This is the second part of a two part blog on how EAL teachers and homeroom teachers worked together to help grade 2 students tune into a unit with the central idea: "By developing an awareness of an urban environment, we can understand and modify the way we live within it." In part 1, I wrote about how we began by asking students to think about elements and uses of language and what types of language they might need to discuss urban environments in detail through an interactive language acquisition strategy called Numbered Heads Together.

In this part, I will discuss how language instruction proceeded for all Grade 2 students. In the third part, I will write about how the EAL teachers tried to encourage deeper language development for students who had less proficiency with English.

Asking students to think deeper about their prior knowledge and vocabulary

As teachers, we started students out with discussing general language and the kind of language they might need to talk and think about urban environments. We now wanted students to think deeper about language that they already knew that might be useful for them in their new discussions of urban environments.

For this stage of learning, we still wanted students talking, but we wanted them to begin taking more responsibility for producing and thinking about language for the unit. We likewise still wanted a record of this stage of the inquiry, and we also wanted to subtly begin front visual information that we as teachers felt would be important for the unit.

I started at this point to think about how technology might help us meet some of these aspirations. Google Forms came to mind and I created a survey that we asked students to complete on iPads with a partner. They were instructed to only write words, not sentences, and were taught how to use speech to text on iPads to help with spelling.

How we used student responses

Students were shown how to check other responses on the form, and they had a good time seeing how their responses compared to other students' responses. I then used Google Forms' spreadsheet feature to see all students responses for each question aligned in columns. I then copied these responses for use in the Tagul word cloud application. I created a word cloud for the responses for each of the questions, some examples of which are below.

Student word responses to how can we make urban environments better places to live in.

Student responses as to their favourite places in urban environments.

These word clouds became very helpful visuals for our inquiry, showing some of the basic vocabulary that students began the unit with and also gave us information of the students' levels of understanding about some of the main concepts of the unit.

Later on, as an extension activity, students used these surveyed words to create their own word clouds.  

As further practice, later in the week, students were given copies of some of these word clouds words and sentence starters in a bank. 

Students then used these sentence starters and some of the words they had thought of earlier in the week to write down sentences on large lined sentence sheets that they then shared in a group. To make the activity more indicative of how all of our inquiries connected with the inquiries of others and to encourage everyone to share an idea, we created a spider web of responses with yarn.

When the inquiry is finished, students will complete the Google Form again to see how their responses and the vocabulary they use to discuss urban environments have changed and grown over the course of the unit. 

Focusing on Language for a Grade 2 Unit on Urban Environments Part 1

For the past month or so, grade 2 students have been inquiring into the the central idea that "by developing an awareness of an urban environment we can understand and modify the way we live within it".

Photo by the author

The grade 2 teaching team and EAL department wanted to begin this unit by really tuning into the language students already had mastery of about urban environments. We also wanted to provide students with scaffolds and encourage discussions that might help them extend their thinking and language about urban environments. The teaching team also wanted to involve students in the language planning for the unit as much as possible while making explicit language that students could use throughout the unit.

In thinking about how we, the EAL department, and homeroom teachers could help make students aware of and ready to use the language required for this unit I had previously begun to plan what language I thought would be most important in my language specific blog, The Language Acquisition Depot. I also drew great inspiration from a blog post about numbered heads together and another about webbing and use of key sentence frames written by my colleague and the creator of SPELTAC, Marcelle Houterman. Hey...great teachers beg, borrow, and steal for their students' learning!

Numbered Heads Together

Homeroom teachers and EAL teachers first team taught two lessons using a strategy called "Numbered Heads Together" in order to understand what perceptions students had about the language they would need in this unit and also to increase the amount of talking and interaction during our tuning in. In this strategy, students are put into heterogenous groups of 3 or 4. Each student is given a number from 1 to 4 (we wrote the students' numbers in marker on their hands to encourage them to remember). Students have a discussion about a question in small groups. Then teachers call a number from 1 to 4. Students with this number must share their group's answers with the class. This strategy, we hoped, would encourage all students to listen to each other, pay attention to, and take responsibility for participating in and adding to the group's ideas; these are collaborative goals that students throughout grade 2, but especially EAL students, need help in reaching.

As this was the first time we were asking students to think abstractly about language as a tool that we all use to communicate, teachers felt that it would be useful for the first lesson to simply center around the concept of language as a tool that we use for various purposes. As such, we asked students in groups to discuss and answer the following questions:

• What is language?
• What does language help us do?
• What are pieces/parts of language? 
• What are different kinds of words? 

We discussed the importance of talking and what it meant to be a good talker before the numbered heads together strategy, linking this skill to the learner profile attribute of being a communicator.

Students discussing the language related questions and recording as a group.

We then recorded the whole class shares using an application called Mindmup. Students had a lot of insights about language in general, although they tended to focus on language in terms of foreign languages, rather than as the medium of learning and instruction in general.

In the next lesson, we shifted the group discussions to language that might be necessary to talk about urban environments, a term we directly taught as meaning "cities". We asked students to discuss these new questions: 

• What language do we need to talk about urban environments? 
• What do we need language to help us do when we talk about urban environments? 
• What kinds of words do we need to talk about urban environments? 
• What sentence starters can we make about urban environments? 

Here are results of our discussions. You can see students had a lot of great ideas about both language and the language needed to talk and write about urban environments. Students are beginning to naturally think about language in terms of genres and language purposes/functions.







In part two of this blog post, I will discuss how we moved from discussing language about urban environments in general, to having students share vocabulary they already knew about cities, to writing and sharing sentences that helped extend their thinking about urban environments.

Cooperating While Sorting and Matching Pictures of Interactions in Grade 1

EAL teachers and grade 1 homeroom teachers collaborated this week as we asked students in groups to practice the interaction of cooperation in order to construct meaning of new vocabulary through closed sorts and matching activities.

We gave student groups pictures of various interactions and non-interactions and asked them to work together politely as a group in order to first sort the pictures into groups of interactions and groups of non-interactions. We went over key sentences frames that we wanted students to use like:

Words for cooperation and agreeing/disagreeing:
I agree. I don't agree, because...

Words for sorting (classifying):
This goes into this group because...
These go together because...

Students did tend to use these language structures as the four teachers in the classroom circulated among groups.

After students sorted, we then discussed what made interactions interactions and non-interactions non-interactions. Students volunteered that interactions had to involve two or more people.

Students sort interactions photos into interactions/not interactions.

Then we asked student groups to sort their photos of interactions into a positive/helpful interactions group or a negative/hurtful interactions group. We also began to elicit vocabulary from students as to what the interactions in the picture showed, and how the people felt while involved in these interactions.

These students have sorted their interactions photos into helpful/positive interactions on their left and hurtful/negative interactions on their right.

Finally, to begin attaching meaning to the actual written names of these interactions, we asked student groups to match labels to various interactions that they could identify, making use of stronger readers within each mixed group. 

From here, in the grade 1 classes we are going to move into looking at interactions and how they can create conflict or harmony in a few different ways. Ms. Rachelle and I plan on having her students review some videos they made from two weeks ago. Students will analyse the interactions they see in these videos, deciding if they are positive interactions or negative interactions. Students will then see the results of these interactions and decide whether the interactions created conflict or harmony, all the while a teacher uses annotexting to record the group discussion. 

In Mrs. Corey's class, students will be: planning a series of interactions to either escalate conflict or reduce conflict, photographing themselves staging these conflicts, and then creating a Comic Life story to show these interactions and their results. 

Plan for Comic Strip (above) and Example Finished Comic Strip (below)

Grade 2 Students Use Mother Tongues to Begin Inquiry into Nutrition

As students inquired into nutrition this week, we presented them with many English words related to food and healthy eating in an A3 grid. We then put students into pairs or groups of three based on, as much as possible, the languages we have identified as being their primary languages, or the languages they can best speak and listen in, and asked them to discuss these words in their shared mother tongues.

We also asked them, as much as they were able, to write the words in the alphabets of their own languages, or draw pictures of what they and their partners decided the words meant in the eventuality that they could not actually write in the script of their mother tongue (a very common scenario with international school students whose mother tongues do not use the Roman alphabet for encoding). Students also learned to use iPads equipped with the Google Translate app to assist them in their inquiries and writing of their native scripts.

Some students found this strategy to be very useful, and even identified cognates between their mother tongues and English.

When teaching with strategies such as these that require students to make use of their mother tongues, we want students to learn and understand that:

• Their mother tongues should be the first information sources they check upon encountering new vocabulary in English. Students should ask themselves, "Do I know this word/concept/picture/thing in my mother tongue?"
• It is important when learning new vocabulary in English to begin to understand that same vocabulary in their mother tongues.

Mandarin Translation

Hindi Translation

Khmer Translation

Spanish Translation

Finnish Translation

Malay Translation

Inquiring into Grade 2 "Who We Are" Unit of Inquiry Vocabulary

Working within the framework of the PYP can pose challenges for not only our students who are learning English, but for English mother tongue students because they too are ACQUIRING cognitive academic language. Some of the vocabulary of the essential elements that frame our units, our pedagogy, our expectations, and the ethos of teaching and learning in our school is quite sophisticated. Students must peel back layers of these vocabulary words to gain meaning in a methodical fashion, reflecting on their growing understanding as they go.

Previewing the Big Ideas Behind the Unit

In Grade 2 this week and last, students began to really think about and analyse some very conceptual words as a result of planning between the Grade 2 homeroom teachers and the EAL team. Together, grade 2 students and teachers quickly read through the following statements:

Who We Are

An inquiry into the nature of the self; personal, physical, mental, and social health; responsibilities; what it means to be human. 

Central Idea

Our choices and mindset effect our personal growth and wellbeing.

Lines of Inquiry

The responsibility we can take for our wellbeing.
Ways that we can be personally, physically and mentally healthy. (function)

From these important central language components of the current unit, the EAL team distilled the following vocabulary we felt would be challenging for all students:

choices

mindset

personal

growth

wellbeing

responsibility

physically healthy

mentally healthy

personally healthy

function

inquiry

the self

social health

responsibilities

reflection

Students self assess their own proficiencies with unit vocabulary

In their homeroom class, we then asked students to reflect on what they could currently do with these vocabulary words by filling out a "knowledge rating chart", assuring them not to be upset if they found many of the words to be quite foreign. As teachers we also discussed with students how important it was to rate their knowledge at the beginning of the unit, as they could then compare this with a similar rating session at the end to see their own personal growth. We felt that understanding how we know little when we begin an inquiry but know much at the end of an inquiry would be important to the students' ultimate understanding of a growth mindset.

"Gallery Walk" strategy to begin collaboratively constructing meaning of vocabulary

Afterwards, students were placed into mixed English proficiency groups to complete a new task designed to help classes begin to construct meaning of these words. All of the identified vocabulary were printed in large font on A4 papers that were stuck around the room. Groups began at different spots in the circuit and rotated around these posted words, writing any bits of meaning that came to mind on sticky notes. Afterwards, the homeroom teacher discussed the information that students had posted.

It was intriguing to see how students were beginning to process these words slowly during these lessons. Further steps will involve adding to these gallery walk posters and knowledge rating charts as students ask themselves, "What have we learned?"

Stretching Vocabulary of Interactions with Grade 1 by Using the "10 Most Important Words" CALP Strategy

This week in Grade 1, the EAL teachers team taught with Ms. Rachelle in order to help students begin to build meaning related to the vocabulary of the current unit of inquiry with the central idea of "Being aware of how we interact with people can help us make good choices for ourselves and others."

Now at the beginning of each unit, homeroom teachers and EAL teachers try to come up with a list of vocabulary, language purposes, and possible strategies we can use to help students develop understanding of the meaning of this vocabulary. We also use an app called Bitsboard on iPads to develop activities involving visual, audio, and textual information that for the most part students can use to explore this vocabulary during independent station activities.

Graphic Organiser by Chad Manis www.DailyTeachingTools.com

In addition, during this unit, some teachers have elected to ask students to prethink what they believe the 10 most important words of the unit will be.  The 10 most important words strategy is a valuable tool which can be used at various points of the inquiry process. It can be used, as in this unit, as a tool to show how students are accumulating growing understandings of important vocabulary, especially if students' statements about which vocabulary is important keep being revisited.

As part of using this strategy, the EAL teacher and homeroom teacher led a discussion about the word "Interactions" to show students how we wanted them to think of the different words they had been hearing and seeing in the past three weeks. Students were then asked to think of more words that they could remember or think of that they thought we might encounter as we inquire further.

Students then worked with partners to fill up their lists, while practicing English for the purpose of agreeing and disagreeing. In the next lesson, the homeroom teacher and the EAL teacher then discussed key sentence frames necessary for the purpose of EXPLAINING. After asking students to explain WHY they had written certain words, we highlighted how their responses almost universally began with "Because...". We wrote sentence frames on the board:

We think this word is important BECAUSE...
This word is important BECAUSE...

Students then reunited with their partners and wrote an explanation of their thinking behind some of their assertions.

This learning engagement really helped us understand how students are taking on the language of the unit. It showed us that their lexical knowledge is currently quite basic, limited to common terms used in the classroom such as: sharing, playing, swimming, respect, etc. We know as a team that we must create further materials to help students take on more complex words like: cooperation, complimenting, conflict, conflict resolution, etc.

In completing this lesson, I also decided to do a bit of research on this strategy and other ways in which it is used.

I found out that the 10 most important words strategy can also be a useful tool for checking the comprehension of more proficient students as they read through texts related to inquiry topics, as can be seen in the presentation below.

Week 2 in Review - Introducing, Practicing, and Extending Basic School Language and Interactions in EAL Grade 2 (During Foreign Language Times)

It has been another exciting week in EAL during Foreign Language times slots this week as we have wrapped up our introduction lessons intended to help build our community of learners, make newcomers feel welcome, and make sure that all students have some utility with discussing classroom and school items, school places, and behaviours we need to exhibit in class to learn well together.

After a quick teacher scribed and led discussion about what it means to respect each other on Monday, students began to try to answer these questions:

What things do we need in the classroom and school to help us learn? Where can we find them? 
What places are in our school? What things do we do at these places to help us learn? 

Students first wrote down the names of different classroom items on scrap paper, engaging in a learning strategy known as "Mix and Match". As teachers, we noticed that students seemed to only write down, discuss, and be familiar with a limited amount of classroom items. We therefore devised a second activity where in three groups, students played "Headbands" in which they helped describe a school item to a student wearing a photograph of the item on his or her head.

"Family playing the headbands game" Photo by Lars Plougmann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Next this week, students pooled their knowledge while working with their "12 o'clock buddies" in order to describe places around our school during a learning activity entitled "Roving Charts". With their buddies, students rotated around pictures of various places at our school. At each picture, they had to try to answer the following questions with words, phrases, or sentences:

Where is this place?
What do you see in this place?
What words describe this place?
What can we learn to do at this place?

Here is the information they came up with:

Students then practiced listening to the names of various places by playing a game called "Go to the..." in which individual and groups of students were "sent" to various "places around the school" in the form of signs hung up at different places in the classroom. Then in three groups, students practiced "sending" each other to these different places, sometimes by naming the place, other times by describing the place.

As part of a future game when we have ten minutes, we may reinforce basic descriptions and names of places around the school by playing "I have...who has...?" involving these places.

All of these early language activities involving discussing and describing various people, items, and places in the children's learning environment allowed them to practice using English for the purpose of informing.

Next week, we begin to dive into language related to the students' current unit of inquiry.

An Ocean of Collaboration Between Homeroom Teachers and EAL Specialist in Grade 1

Navigate through this Prezi to see how the EAL department collaborated with Grade 1 homeroom teachers at ISPP to help students gain Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency in English at the end of Semester 1 in 2015.

(Hint: Click on areas of the Prezi like text boxes, circles, and pictures you are interested in, and your view will zoom IN to that area. Click outside (in the mostly gray areas) and you will zoom OUT. Watch on an empty stomach your first time.)

Using Key Sentence Frames and Mix and Match Strategies to Help Students Learn the Language of Measurement

Play this podcast while watching the slideshow please!

Click Here to See A Slideshow of this Lesson!