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.

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?"

Building a Community of Learners in Grade 2 EAL Classes

A student shares his group's ideas for our Essential Agreements

Some of our Grade 2 students attend English as an Additional Language classes during the times that other students attend Foreign Language classes. In these classes, students will engage in language experiences that deepen their understandings of concepts related to their units of inquiry and literacy lessons. These classes are taught by myself and two of our very capable EAL teaching assistants, Ms. Mom Meach and Ms. Boramey Bun.

However, as in all types of classes, students spend a few lessons getting to know each other and collaborating on a variety of projects in order to build what we refer to as a community of learners. As part of this first week's classes students created informative "ID Cards" that they wear in class to help other students remember their names and find commonalities. As part of a lesson we introduced with the question, "How do we get to know each other?" students completed key sentence frames that they could refer to as they circulated around the class introducing themselves and listening to information about their peers. 

Students also worked in groups to think about, discuss, and scribe rules that they thought we should live by in order to make sure our classroom is a good place to learn. Altogether, students came up with the following Essential Agreements:

Clean up after ourselves!
Give friends a chance to speak.
Take care of books.
Listen to the teacher and others.
Help each other.We respect each other.
If we want to talk, we should raise our hands.
We are allowed to run outside with permission [but should walk in the class].
We should do good work.

A student demonstrates how to make eye contact while reading... 

Moments from class!

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.)