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 3

This is part 3 of a three part blog on how EAL teachers and homeroom teachers encouraged language development during a grade 2 unit of inquiry with the central idea: "By developing awareness of an urban environment, we can modify and understand the way we live in it."

In part 1 and part 2, I focused on language development activities for ALL grade 2 students, EAL or mainstream. In this part, I will focus on how EAL students learned more in depth language through a series of authentic activities during our pull-out EAL lessons that occur when mainstream students attend foreign language classes and Khmer students (some of who are partial support EAL students) attend Khmer language lessons.

Students in this 45 minute pull-out EAL class that occurs three times a week receive more practice speaking, listening to, reading, and writing in English as it is used for more academic purposes. After analysing some of the EAL students' responses from a Google Forms based survey (described in part 2) I knew that many of these students would need a reason to practice and use both the vocabulary of the unit that touched upon features of cities (tall buildings, traffic, public transportation, etc.) as well as language used to identify and describe these features (adjectives, prepositions to describe location, sentence structures like: "It is a...It has a...It is (preposition of location)...There is a...next to...etc.) I also knew from planning with homeroom teachers that students were inquiring into maps and coordinate grids during math.

I therefore decided to try and develop an activity that would cause students to create and discuss maps using target language that they had developed together during their homeroom lesson times, augmented by prepositions of place supplied by teachers on a word bank. Originally, I had wanted my EAL students to create lists of words to describe location as well, but this would have stretched the series of lessons out too far.

Using mother tongue inquiries as a springboard into language development

Students began working, when possible with a student who spoke the same mother tongue to encourage more interaction, to begin to explore some vocabulary of the unit by finding out what terms like subway, building, park, etc. were in their mother tongues using Google Translate (or language specific platforms such as Hamariweb for Urdu to English translations including audio). Even if students could not write their mother tongues, as is unfortunately often the case, I wanted them to hear the mother tongue translations. Often, this hearing would provoke "Ah-haaa!" moments when students realised they actually did know a mother tongue version of the English vocabulary.




Using maps to encourage authentic vocabulary practice

After this initial learning activity to make students aware of their prior knowledge, albeit in another language than English, students with partners were then given a partially created map of a small urban environment.



Students were instructed to discuss with a partner and add pictures and labels of locations and features to this map to show what an urban environment was like and to maybe make this urban environment better to live in. Students were also supplied with copies of word clouds to help with spelling and remembering features of cities (described in part 2).

Students were then given a word bank with language to describe location and asked to write 5 "starter" sentences that could help them describe locations in their cities to others.



Increasing engagement through a barrier game

Then came the game-like aspect. Student pairs were paired off with other student pairs, a barrier was placed between them, and they were challenged to recreate each others' maps based on verbal descriptions on a new blank map. Before starting, we also discussed how to ask clarifying questions.

Overall students seemed to enjoy this activity and they did practice describing location using vocabulary they had already identified as important when discussing urban environments. As the unit continues we will keep using this vocabulary and descriptive language as students discuss what should be modified in urban environments, Phnom Penh in particular, to make them more liveable. 

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.